Do you guys ever wonder whether thinking is counterproductive when it comes to writing music?

When it comes to improvisation you kinda just "do it". I remember I used to suck at it but at some point I was finally able to do it while having a conversation with someone at the same time. Point is I guess is I've always had a very analytical/mathematical approach when it comes to writing music. What's annoying about that is I try to analyze everything and it can be paralyzing when I come across things that don't make sense to me intellectually.

I'm beginning to question whether I've been taking the wrong approach and whether trying to "understand" everything is just holding me back. Perhaps the doing without thinking is the more efficient approach? I know what I'm referring to is somewhat abstract but it'd be interesting to hear your guys opinions.

Is writing music with the approach of "just doing it without thinking" more effective than trying to understand "why" what you're doing actually works?

- United States
- Progressive Trance, Melodic Dubstep, D&B, Electropop, Rock, Post-Hardcore, Progressive Metal, Future Bass, Jazz-Hop, Orchestral,
- Zedd, Grey, Madeon, Rameses B, Virtual Riot, Seven Lions, ATB, BT, Avenged Sevenfold, Plini, Animals As Leaders, Periphery, Nujabes, Joe Hisaishi, Yoko Shimomura, Nobuo Uematsu

Kinda lengthy but really just the beginning.

Some of seven lions stuff is like 132 and it has halftime drums like in "don't leave". Not sure if that's what you're looking for.

Definitely IN

Lol thread hijack

"Should I Drop Out Of School To Pursue Music?"

GO

I like my music to be very pretty and I use lots of undiatonic chord progressions. I don't think it makes it cheesy.

It's hard for me to say what makes a song cheesy musically. Lyrically though it's love songs. I stay away from them because in my experience most people don't know how to write one without it coming off cheesy. Some lyrical cliches can be cheesy as well. Stuff like..

Fading away
Love is blind
Lost without you
I'm down on my knees
Fly high

etc...

I guess if anything were to sound cheesy to me it's when I hear new producers use triads in there music but they're ALL in root position. You can tell that they don't really understand voice leading so it's like they just put there fingers in a 1-3-5 position on a piano and started picking random notes.

The cheesiest chord progression IMO is the I>V>vi>IV progression.

Here it is at 1:20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1IcnSj3Fas

AGAIN in this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fa-aN8GQQQ

Again this entire song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT0g16_LQaQ

AGAIN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JV74i4yvcA

That chord progression to me is just pure cheese. I avoid it like the plague.

For example, I love the main melody in Years of War by Porter Robinson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34thwBLMe4g.

So do I. Great song. Don't find it cheesy at all though.

to me the cheese comes from a combination of sound and notes being played, this is how i feel when it comes to playing instruments.

The last thing we want is more producers making music without any notes in it and just making sound design porn.

How do you guys feel about pop albums with a large amount of songwriters? Personally, I don't understand albums that have 100 different writers on it. I mean Kanye's new album has 103 writers! It's good music but what did he actually do? Even Justin Bieber, Beyoncé, & Tiësto. I get it's a business and everything but how can you honestly perform in front of a crowd of 1000 people knowing that you didn't write your own music? It's not Drake's album. It's god knows who's album.

I know I'm over exaggerating a bit. I'm not trying to undervalue a great vocal take. I'm not trying to say that these artists did absolutely nothing. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth to hear people talk about how great "X artist's" album is when you know that the majority of the writing was done by other people. Sure they get "writer credits" on the album but at the end of the day it's "Drakes" album or "Justins" album.

It kinda feels like these pop artists are just brand names that the "real" songwriters use as devices to get their music out to the public. All at the sacrifice of not being able to put their name on their own music. The tradeoff being that the pop artist is the one who get's to call it "their" album.

How do you guys feel about this?

The dude seems a lot more like an over glorified internet marketer than he does a respectable artist. Not a fan of any of his work. Wouldn't take advice from him on writing music in a million years.