electromghxcstep wrote:I think a lot of you are limiting what theory is. Just cos youre writing music based on theory doesn't mean that you have to write notes only within a certain key, and theory includes a lot more than the western major and minor scales. The thing is, if you do write a good bassline without theory, its preetty unlikely that you've invented some new type of scale or whatever, and writing it if you understood what you wrote and writing the rest of a song around it is going to be a lot easier.
i think thats relevant..
Yeah, the basic point of theory is to explain how something works once you've seen that it does work, not to tell people what will work, if you see what I mean.
For instance, a lot of people say that the 'rules' of writing harmony say that you musn't use parallel fifths, ie if you've got two parts (say two vocals or trumpet and saxophone or violin and viola or whatever) and they start on two notes that are a fifth apart, you musn't have them move to two more notes that are also a fifth apart (eg if one moves from D to C and the other starts on A then it musn't move to G), and this is because parallel fifths are Bad.
But AIUI, that bit of theory would be better expressed as "one of the reasons that Bach and Palestrina's melody lines continues to feel like independently moving melodies was because except under certain circumstances they didn't use parallel fifths, and if you want your melody lines to feel like they're moving independently then it's probably best if you avoid parallel fifths too unless you've come up with a better idea."
Theory is a toolbox that can stop you reinventing the wheel unless you want to and give you a load of useful stuff to work with, if you find something that works that isn't described by theory then either there is some theory to describe it that you don't know yet or you should go ahead and do it anyway and let people think about why it works later.
anyway dubstep with some twisted korean time signatures could be awesome...
