Seriously, this was one of the nicest things I've been told.....
Things That Are on Your Mind
- Thread starter Johnny Sooshi
- Start date
There's a certain mindset amongst some gatekeeping listeners of music who then go on to learn an instrument and start writing their own songs.
They're inspired by big art pieces by bands like Symphony X, Dream Theater, Tool, Pink Floyd, Rush, and such and want to try their hand at this type of songwriting.
Look, I love prog rock and prog metal as much as the next guy. Hell, I even love very technical music, considering the genre my band writes in is basically summed up as progressive/technical thrash and groove metal.
So I have some experience in writing songs like these.
The mindset is summed up with this comment:
This mindset is ridiculous, and shows a clear lack of appreciation for how hard it is to write even a short song with a simple structure. There's a certain artistry to writing such a song and make it catchy, fun to listen to, and meaningful.
But, the reason the mindset is ridiculous is that, quite simply, longer songs do not equate to better songs. Complex songs, with complex ideas, with a non-traditional song structure, sure, may be impressive, but it doesn't equate to a better song.
Am I saying that complex songs, with complex ideas, with non-traditional song structures are bad and you shouldn't do them?
NO!!!!
I'm also not saying that through-composed pieces are inherently bad. One of my favorite classical pieces is through-composed. Through-composed means that each section is composed with no repeating parts.
But, if you go into writing a piece of music with this mindset of through-composing everything, you will not finish the song!!
Even worse, suppose you do end up through-composing a piece of music, and you go to show your friends and you see their eyes glaze over, despite every cool idea you included, you realize your masterwork through-composed piece is meaningless.
Because this idea doesn't encourage development of musical ideas, it encourages vertical development of one idea, then you come up with an unrelated idea, develop it vertically, tack it on to the previous one, and on and on this goes until you run out of ideas.
All songs, regardless of length, have a structure, and all pieces of music tell a story in a musical way. If you don't know how to develop ideas, that's fine to look at existing structures and utilize those.
So when writing a song longer than 5 minutes, it helps to pre-define the scaffolding you're working in, the journey you want to take the listener on, and you want each chorus, verse, pre-verse, pre-chorus, bridge, solo section, breakdown, crescendo and de-crescendo, and such to add to the plot of the song.
That's what we're currently doing with our Time series which is about the consequences of apathy, a fatalist mindset, and climate change, starting with the first part written by the other guitarist, which itself, was a full song on its own. I worked with the idea and developed the next song, which is really part 2 of the whole piece, which is itself a complete song that leads off the last chord of the previous song. We're all currently writing the 3rd part which the defining scaffolding so far is metric modulation with 7/4 and 7/8 time.
Now, that sounds complicated, but there's a narrative reason we're undulating between those two odd time signatures. They're disorienting.
That's because the next part is like the apocalypse scenario, the bad ending, the consequence of apathy and a fatalist mindset, everything crumbles.
The whole point is that the end part is unsettling.
Once you have the defining identity, the skeleton, the scaffolding, it makes developing ideas for the piece much easier.
This is what Symphony X, Dream Theater, or any progressive rock or metal band does when writing such long, complex pieces of music. You want the song in the end to be impactful.
And the only way to achieve that is intent, and the only way to get that, you need to have some sort of idea of where you're going.
Writing long songs is a lot like writing a long novel or a fantasy series. When writing stuff like this, you want to cut out what doesn't work for the intent of the piece.
That's how you get meaningful music that uses a non-traditional song structure that sounds through-composed.
It requires a songwriter that's done their due diligence, and has an experienced hand, and when I hear this cork-sniffing, pretentious mindset, it tells me that these people probably never wrote a complete piece of music and finished it.
Because that mindset leads to scope creep, which is the idea that when creating something or starting a project, there's continuous or uncontrolled growth in a project's scope, generally experienced after the project begins. This can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled.
Notice that, in the definition of scope creep is the scope of the project is not properly defined.
That's what this pretentious, cork-sniffing mindset of "pRoG sOnG sTrUcTuReS" really is, and what it leads to. It leads to you not finishing the project.
In all creative circles there's a mantra of "kill your darlings" which is the idea of letting go of your creations, even ones you've sunk a lot of time and energy into. The reason you do this is for the sake of the piece you're writing, drawing, or creating. Sometimes, your ideas may be great, but aren't what that project needs, so go ahead and get rid of the idea, store it somewhere, as you never know when it'll work for a project.
Trust me, I have a mountain of riffs, melodies, and song ideas that I'm sitting on, because they just didn't work.
When writing songs or composing music, it's perfectly fine to use existing structures. There's no shame in that.
Hell, the tech death bands Allegaeon and Gorod use pop song structures, yet their songs don't sound like pop at all. They sound.... proggy, through-composed and such.
That's what happens when you take a given structure and turn it on its head with development of musical ideas.
They're inspired by big art pieces by bands like Symphony X, Dream Theater, Tool, Pink Floyd, Rush, and such and want to try their hand at this type of songwriting.
Look, I love prog rock and prog metal as much as the next guy. Hell, I even love very technical music, considering the genre my band writes in is basically summed up as progressive/technical thrash and groove metal.
So I have some experience in writing songs like these.
The mindset is summed up with this comment:
This mindset is ridiculous, and shows a clear lack of appreciation for how hard it is to write even a short song with a simple structure. There's a certain artistry to writing such a song and make it catchy, fun to listen to, and meaningful.
But, the reason the mindset is ridiculous is that, quite simply, longer songs do not equate to better songs. Complex songs, with complex ideas, with a non-traditional song structure, sure, may be impressive, but it doesn't equate to a better song.
Am I saying that complex songs, with complex ideas, with non-traditional song structures are bad and you shouldn't do them?
NO!!!!
I'm also not saying that through-composed pieces are inherently bad. One of my favorite classical pieces is through-composed. Through-composed means that each section is composed with no repeating parts.
But, if you go into writing a piece of music with this mindset of through-composing everything, you will not finish the song!!
Even worse, suppose you do end up through-composing a piece of music, and you go to show your friends and you see their eyes glaze over, despite every cool idea you included, you realize your masterwork through-composed piece is meaningless.
Because this idea doesn't encourage development of musical ideas, it encourages vertical development of one idea, then you come up with an unrelated idea, develop it vertically, tack it on to the previous one, and on and on this goes until you run out of ideas.
All songs, regardless of length, have a structure, and all pieces of music tell a story in a musical way. If you don't know how to develop ideas, that's fine to look at existing structures and utilize those.
So when writing a song longer than 5 minutes, it helps to pre-define the scaffolding you're working in, the journey you want to take the listener on, and you want each chorus, verse, pre-verse, pre-chorus, bridge, solo section, breakdown, crescendo and de-crescendo, and such to add to the plot of the song.
That's what we're currently doing with our Time series which is about the consequences of apathy, a fatalist mindset, and climate change, starting with the first part written by the other guitarist, which itself, was a full song on its own. I worked with the idea and developed the next song, which is really part 2 of the whole piece, which is itself a complete song that leads off the last chord of the previous song. We're all currently writing the 3rd part which the defining scaffolding so far is metric modulation with 7/4 and 7/8 time.
Now, that sounds complicated, but there's a narrative reason we're undulating between those two odd time signatures. They're disorienting.
That's because the next part is like the apocalypse scenario, the bad ending, the consequence of apathy and a fatalist mindset, everything crumbles.
The whole point is that the end part is unsettling.
Once you have the defining identity, the skeleton, the scaffolding, it makes developing ideas for the piece much easier.
This is what Symphony X, Dream Theater, or any progressive rock or metal band does when writing such long, complex pieces of music. You want the song in the end to be impactful.
And the only way to achieve that is intent, and the only way to get that, you need to have some sort of idea of where you're going.
Writing long songs is a lot like writing a long novel or a fantasy series. When writing stuff like this, you want to cut out what doesn't work for the intent of the piece.
That's how you get meaningful music that uses a non-traditional song structure that sounds through-composed.
It requires a songwriter that's done their due diligence, and has an experienced hand, and when I hear this cork-sniffing, pretentious mindset, it tells me that these people probably never wrote a complete piece of music and finished it.
Because that mindset leads to scope creep, which is the idea that when creating something or starting a project, there's continuous or uncontrolled growth in a project's scope, generally experienced after the project begins. This can occur when the scope of a project is not properly defined, documented, or controlled.
Notice that, in the definition of scope creep is the scope of the project is not properly defined.
That's what this pretentious, cork-sniffing mindset of "pRoG sOnG sTrUcTuReS" really is, and what it leads to. It leads to you not finishing the project.
In all creative circles there's a mantra of "kill your darlings" which is the idea of letting go of your creations, even ones you've sunk a lot of time and energy into. The reason you do this is for the sake of the piece you're writing, drawing, or creating. Sometimes, your ideas may be great, but aren't what that project needs, so go ahead and get rid of the idea, store it somewhere, as you never know when it'll work for a project.
Trust me, I have a mountain of riffs, melodies, and song ideas that I'm sitting on, because they just didn't work.
When writing songs or composing music, it's perfectly fine to use existing structures. There's no shame in that.
Hell, the tech death bands Allegaeon and Gorod use pop song structures, yet their songs don't sound like pop at all. They sound.... proggy, through-composed and such.
That's what happens when you take a given structure and turn it on its head with development of musical ideas.
Last edited:
I got 11 hours of sleep. Musta really needed that ****.
And again something I completely understand. I'm the youngest of 5 children but somehow my family always choose me as the "leader". And if I got angry or whatever it was impossible because "Not you, everybody but you."
Wolfboy
Awwwoooooooo!!!
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2023
I actually woke up really early today. So I probably didn't get enough sleep. Yet I think I feel pretty fine right now. I've been up for 4 hours, and it's 8:32 in the morning.
I got the Cynthia icon in TCG Pocket and all I can think of when I see it is “Jesus died for our Cynthias”
Wolfboy
Awwwoooooooo!!!
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2023
I fell out of the shower today. Just got out, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to fill the pain later today. It's already taking me longer to recover, due to slightly overworking myself, at certain points, throughout the 4 months I've been recovering from the surgery. Doesn't help that my bone density is slightly lower than normal, due to me being underweight. Thankfully, the surgeon team seems to not be that worried about how the recovery is going so far. But I'm dreading the pain now. However, I've been doing with so much pain a lot recently, that pain is pretty much the norm for me now. Sigh. I just don't want something to go wrong during the recovery process. I Don't want them to have to redo the surgery again.
Just be patient and gentle with yourself.
Take the pain medication when the pain becomes unbearable. I know I hate to take pain medication too, but it's there to help you.
Don't push yourself too hard.
4:3 0 wakeup isn't too bad really.
Wolfboy
Awwwoooooooo!!!
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2023
Very true. Waking up at any time before 4:00, immediately means that I'm going to be tired by noon. And that's before my surgery, I'm pretty sure I'll be tired instantly, due to my body exhausted from dealing with the pain as well as the fact that I woke up with too little sleep. So I'm bringing my threshold to 4:00 without getting tired. Usually when I wake up within the 4:00 hour of the morning, My eyes will be burning, until I've been awake for a few hours. Somehow that's still the case now. I thought it would be worse, since dealing with surgery and all that.
Thanks man. Me and my dad are just stubborn about taking pain meds. We'll complain a whole bunch about being in pain or being sick, both of us will literally do nothing about it, lmao. My sister is always like, "Well do something about it," or "Did you take anything for it?" My answer to those are always, "No."
Daku Rinku
Darth Talon's Slave
Yep, “others may, you may not.”
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2025
- Location
- Count Dracula's Castle
Freaked out a bit ago. I was outside, and only two foot away from a big snake. Possibly a venomous one, but idk I couldn't see it's head. It was coming outside of a box that I had already been messing with 
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2016
oooh you ok??Freaked out a bit ago. I was outside, and only two foot away from a big snake. Possibly a venomous one, but idk I couldn't see it's head. It was coming outside of a box that I had already been messing with
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2025
- Location
- Count Dracula's Castle
Yeah! It didn't bite me or anything, it was trying to get away. I think we were both equally terrified
Daku Rinku
Darth Talon's Slave
Yikes! Yeah they like boxes, sandboxes, and hoses.Freaked out a bit ago. I was outside, and only two foot away from a big snake. Possibly a venomous one, but idk I couldn't see it's head. It was coming outside of a box that I had already been messing with