I am very interested in the methods that people use to song-write. Specifically, I believe that music creation, aside from being simply an enjoyable pastime, can and sometimes does provide a "mental out" for peoples of all generations and of all societies and I'd like to test my claim by conducting a little research here. Sorry if you feel I'm using you as a guinea pig -- it's true, I am!

As products like BIAB, RealBand, etc. help us to create music, I'm more interested in the creative part of a person's methods rather than what is done with software to create it. I'd like to know if your creation of music has a procedural system in it or if you rather enjoy haphazard creation. FYI I'm beginning some research for my college project and I haven't yet developed a thesis -- I may decide to write a thesis depending on the results of my research and how interested responders were to my questions.

Also, as I realize that many of you who participate here are professional musicians and that some of you even have music-related degrees, music awards, etc. I would like to ask that if you feel there would be additional questions that might generate some interesting results, please let me know -- I'm a musician too so I'm all ears!

I think I'd like to address this question from two angles -- Lyric Writing and then Song Writing. For these questions you may decide to generalize and this would be fine. We can assume that if someone wanted to know more details about your responses, that they could then request this from you and you would then have the option of disclosing this or not. On the other hand, I am personally very interested in reading your answers to these questions, whether I end up writing a thesis on the basis of this research or not. Thank you in advance!

Questions:
1. Lyrics - Do you have a 'standard' method (and what is it) or do you just wing it? Tell us why you prefer one way over another.
2. Song - Do you have a 'standard' method (and what is it) or do you just wing it? Tell us why you prefer one way or another.
3. Which do you prefer to do first / second -- Lyric writing or Song / Notation writing? What's the reason for your preferences?
4. What was the best song you've ever written, what was your method for it's creation and why do you feel it ranks as your best?
5. As a percentage of your total play time (your total being 100% percent), what percentage of your time would you say is spent playing your own original music (versus playback of music created by someone else).
6. Given your entire music 'world' (everything that you do around the clock pertaining to music), on a scale of one to ten (one being the most important and ten being the least), can you rate the importance of original music 'creation' by you (versus playing music already prepared by someone else).
7. How many years of your life have you been involved in learning music and playing a musical instrument?
8. Do you teach music in any capacity? How long have you been teaching? Why do you teach it? To what age groups do you teach to?
9. Do you consider your musical genre interests to be wide and/or varied or the opposite. Why do you feel that your musical genre interests are one way or another (for example, "I come from a musical family" or, "I was exposed to a wide variety of music in my youth" or, "So-and-so was my mentor", etc. etc. etc.
10. Has technology (i.e. PC's) made it easier or more difficult for you to write? Why?
11. How influential is technology to your song-writing?
12. Do you feel that with the advent of technology to music creation / production, that the technologies themselves have created a sort of cookie-cutter generation of musicians (or what is your take on this question)?

To All -- Thank you again for taking the time to read and reply to my questions! As always, a wonderful group to be part of.

Last edited by ikeinblackriver; 05/25/10 10:46 PM.
Ike