Writing Music and Lizards

Once upon a time I would pick up my acoustic guitar and jib along, stringing notes and chords together until voila! - I had discovered something to my liking. Then I would install the riff into a music program and go from there, adding drums, bass, piano, trumpet, etc... There was no theory involved whatsoever. The only thing that mattered was this: DOES IT SOUND GOOD? Yet behind this innocent maxim lay a real contempt for musical theory. Is it in C Major? Psssh! Is that a D Minor even? Whatever! As long as it was music to my ears then so be it. Scales were just cages in which a blooming musician might wilt; where creativity might never escape its scaly confines. However, there are two conditions closely related to the supposed freedom offered by scale-disdain:

1. Because you're thrashing around in a limitless musical landscape, I found that each and every song I settled on was different. Maybe this in itself isn't a bad thing, but if you grouped your songs together they would make for an appalingly disjointed album. One track would sound like Deftones, another like Nirvana or even Greenday. This bridges well into my next point...
2. Because you haven't a structure to guide your efforts, you would tend to write things that sounded like music you liked. If you're constantly listening to Megadeth and Metallica (who's better btw?), the odds are you would reproduce a particular phrase of their's. This is really frustrating because you don't want to commit to something that has already been done, so all that creativity which you had quite naturally enjoyed was wasted.

The latter point needs a little qualification because it is also true that by sharing a scale with a favourite band, you might also trap yourself in a never ending circle of unconscious reproduction. Let me assure you, having to continuously disgard riffs because they sound like something else is a demoralising place to be.

      So what are the advantages of using specific scales? Well, alternative to the above, you can employ a scale divergent from your beloved band to create tunes totally different from your regular listening. This is probably a step too far because most people want to be inside the same genre as their adored bands, but not exactly like them. This is where scales come in handy because you can employ the same style as (insert_band), but in a different scale, which can often give a complementary, rather than slavish sound. 

     The next boon offered by scales are there anti-desiccation properties. Unlike amphibians, who have to remain in watery environments, scales offer reptiles protection against dehydration. (HA!) Anyway, the next boon offered by scales is related to the first point up above. If you want to have a thematic continuity in your music, a good way of achieving this is through using the same scale(s) consistently. For a long time I have employed G and sometimes C Major. G Major is definitely my most abused scale and I can jam inside that indefinitely. But using G does chain you to happier sounding music - which was fine for a while. Recently I switched to an E Minor Harmonic. This scale gives you a much darker, more ominous sound. Humourously, I discovered that in reality it differs from G Major in only one note, so perhaps I am not as adaptable as I think I am:) 

     To finish then: once you have stopped hacking at your instrument and have figured out some creations of your own, do not be prejudiced against structure. Do not be prejudiced against the unstructured either, because you will probably find that those freebooting tracks fit inside a scale you were not aware of! And remember - DOES IT SOUND GOOD!