[atlantaprog] Re: Dream Theater song writing Contest

>Hal I think the idea here is to have a format of a song never heard and
>allow bands to interpret it in their own unique way. I don't believe
>they sit down and say hey let's do 5/6, 6/6,

TECH NOTE:  The second digit in a time signature is ALWAYS a power of two.

>I agree though that if you sat down and said hmmm let's write our songs
>and choose time signatures before deciding the music you'd loose all
>heart of the music.

Only if you understand that no one decision will guarantee good music--that
is, that once you've decided that something would be *kewl*, that's no
excuse to throw just anything in there.  Would you blame a 19th-Century
composer for deciding, "Hey, I think I'll write a waltz"?  After all,
that's a decision to use a particular meter, right?

I don't think there's any set way of deciding just how to start writing a
piece of music.  You could even start with an overarching form, which is
(to an extent) what I do sometimes:  "OK, I want the intro to these big
long chords, then I want a series of episodes that have such-and-such a
sound going through some other sound to yet another sound, and I want all
that leading up to a big chord dying down into a 12-string guitar solo
passage which would lead into four vocal stanzas..."  And so on.

(BTW, I don't like the word "feel", though I know I have to use it in order
to be conversant; it's just way overdone.  *Everything* has a feel; it's
only a matter of whether you like the feel or not.  "It's got no feel" is
largely an attempt to attach a moral dimension to "I don't like it.")

>...would Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb sound as good with a
>faster guitar shred instead of the style in which it was written? Would
>it have as much soul?

That question was answered a long time ago.  We *know* that shredding
sometimes isn't the best thing.  In fact, by now we know it *much too well*.

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