There's no such thing as "cheating" with chords.  Chords aren't "owned" by anyone in particular.  And unless you completely copy (plagiarize) someone's chord progressions and instruments in a song, I hardly think cheating is possible.  If you're using Cthulhu on your own, there is no way you can cheat. 

I was listening to Porter Robinson's Language this morning and thinking about some of the songs that give me "the feels".  Songs that either give me chills or cause some deep emotion to rise up in my soul.  A lot of songs are good. A lot of songs are fun.  But there are very few songs that give me the feelz. 

I thought it might be neat to see what few songs give y'all the feels.  Feel free to describe the emotion you feel, or just post and see what others think.

Here are a couple of mine:


When the chords hit, I feel like I'm bursting with my arms open with the brightest light shining on me and through me. I'm smiling with a smile that reaches beyond my face and everything is beautiful.


The title of this song matches my feeling. Floating among the clouds, an intense peace and happiness and a resolve deep in my soul.

You've listened to this song for 547 days in a row? That's quite a lot.  Or an exaggeration.   

Really the possibilities all of us have in damn simple EQ8 in Ableton are miles away from what those massive tracks of past were mixed with.

Nailed it.

Oooh, I had this crysis too. ...I'm not sure who's quote it is, but some big musician once said that there's only four original songs in whole music history and all the others are inspired. Obviously this is exaggeration of him, but in a sense he's right.

Everyone had their influences. You need to have them to know what music is at all. Otherwise you could call any noise a "music". Even those most ground breaking artists have them. I heard Skrillexe's Scary Monsters were massively influenced by Noisia. I'm sure guys from Noisia have their inspiration too. And so on... When people say "music evolves", this is what they mean by that. This image of producer sitting in the dark, when out of a sudden big yellow shining lightbulb appears above his head and he spits out next world-famous music genere, that's just plain wrong. It's a sweet image, because we'd all love to be that guy at certain point, but it doesn't work that way at all.

...and it's not just about music. Steve Jobs once said (can't find the video, damn...) that the best innovators always feel a bit shameful when someone praises their work, as they always know they just put different pieces together. It's called "lone inventor" myth. Even people like Einstein, Newton or Edison didn't come up with their work alone. They had coworkers and inspirations too. And that's what I think is important here.

I believe it's vital to listen to at least a bunch of different music styles. Trying to combine your influences makes your style. I don't think there's same in that.

Spot on FarleyCZ.  I remember jobs said something about "I didn't do anything special. I just took all the pieces that existed and put them together." 

This is a curious issue to me.  As Mussar says, the lone inventor myth is fatalistic.  So then, why do "creative types" have such a fatalistic POV?  What is it that makes us so hard on ourselves?

PLEASE BE MORE SPECIFIC