Piggybacking a bit off this thread. Real songs seem to be determined by a given form. A certain level of prose with chords and scales.
What would be natural would be what comes to you.
I have done that often not knowing what the influence is to put that to chords and scales. Look to see what to have better assessed with what is understood strictly by ear.
There are few that could be understood and connect without a reference point. It seems to be what those few did not know about form and playing.
How many here create without looking at form one way or another? I know that would be not conventional or best likely to find work.
Being a career musician looks like it requires a lot of conformity.

I am not really sure I understood your comment, but if you are asking "Do you plan stuff out or just write regardless" I do the latter.

When I write music, lyrics or just words in an article or story, I just start creating randomly and let it go where it wants. I usually wrote entire music tracks with dummy lyrics first then I'd go back and learn what it was about as I wrote it. Styles came out without rules, but in the end sounded similar often to known genres. Sometimes a mix, and when I was lucky it was really unique but still accessible.

If that wasn't what you wanted, then please clarify.

What you said seems about rght.
What I might do for another's expectations might often not be what I would do myself to create.
But the best case scenario would be to balance both.

What can be about song or melody may not have a given reference point. There is the obvious with scales or programs, or ones interpretation..
But since the cavemen first beat rocks, what is natural or good has been subject to change.

I have a bit of a concern with how the entertainment community is being used politically. Makes me want to tune out of television and everything else. But you can run and not hide

Music is pure, honest emotion. Feelings that words can’t express. What one person feels often relates to their life experiences, and often music they heard as a child. A time when life was more innocent & secure. Though I believe there are more reasons why certain music affects us differently, but it’s buried deep within our souls and unidentifiable. Unidentifiable because words cannot express it.

John

I agree John that music is pure honest emotion ....but that's at its best.

When somebody is starting out they are just trying to see if they can make something that sounds good. And some are just trying to entertain than express true motion.

The lyrics I think add to the emotion, or just pinpoint it. The music might say I love you , but the lyrics say I love you Suzanne...

Music might say Im pissed off, but the lyrics might say Im pissed off cause the Yankees lost...

Music by itself expresses emotion, but its more vague. Ten people can think something different. But I guess the lyrics can be vague too.

JLS....do you think music itself can do that, or does it need a lyric, a visual, or some deeper context to make that all happen??

I'm thinking music in movies it adds to the tension if needed, so that it "scapes" the moods of the scenes.

But take Beethoven's 5th...I know it is a hard question, but it seems to me that context....is it live, is it a recording...is it on TV...is it on the radio, are you wearing head phones etc etc would somehow affect how you "receive it" mentally and therefore how it moves you emotionally

I expect too that in order to "appreciate it", you also need some context to understand Beethoven's place in musical history

But I'm totally shooting from the lip here

Yes shooting from the lip and stealing my commentary....

No, knowing Beethoven's place in history informs you he is important, but it doesn't make you like it any more.

Beethoven didn't have sound mediums in his time. He relied on the sound of the instrument as it was, no eqing to make it stick in the brain. He did that with the music itself. He probably sounded different in small venues, and more full in bigger ones. Also the way the musician touches the instrument has a sound to it.

Hard to say how the Beatles are any modern group would break through back then without recordings.

Most modern music is completely dependent on the sound of the recording.

Happy almost 2021 FD and another to you JLS

Adding to the question more I think because you are right about how music is memorized though technology into our ears and that a lyric makes music come alive and personal. Definitely

I'm just saying your favourite set of songs in life mean different things as they are heard throughout life and the context of the moments\minutes heard and remembered and experienced matters

And you gotta love and remember Beethoven for his wonderful symphonies and musical pieces and because he was so cooly writing deaf towards the end of his career. My university degree was an arts degree with a focus on economics that also included a CPA option. One summer I took a music "survey" course listening to the development of western music. Can't remember if we were told about eastern and african and indigenous music but the course started with church music as the origin of what we listen to as music today.

That Beethoven could write lengthy scores with instruments and harmonies that were new and complex on memories alone without physically hearing the music he was composing is a wonderful feat of mind.

Anyway, a better 2021 everyone

I agree with everything you said, only you said it differently the first time....

I think Beethoven's deafness is was more urban legend, he did have it but I don't think he was completely deaf. It is possible to play what's in your head, and he was so gifted he probably played it note for note. Without ever actually hearing it

I have written songs, and still do completely in my head before ever picking up the guitar. But I am singing it, in my head and out loud as I go along. Sometimes when I get to it, I say, what was I thinking that doesn't work....

I hear melodies I don't always hear the chords right away.

But far as lyrics go, there are tons of songs that I love, that my whole take on the song was completely wrong, the artist later reveals what its about. I'm like damn that's not what I thought . I also hear lines that they never said, they said something else. I then keep it for myself. That's happened dozens of times

At the end of the day its all just a wall of sound, the instruments, the mix, the effects, the vocals and the lyrics are just a blob of sound.

Theyre not lyrics. Theyre sounds. Theyre not vocals, theyre sounds, theyre not drums, theyre sounds.

So makes sense that the sound better be good, cause that's what people are buying. Not songs but recordings of songs.

I'm sure Beethoven would be blown away if he heard a modern digital recording of his work on a modern day system .

My thoughts are only for instrumental music. Lyrics need a different set of ideas. One being, lyrics tell the listeners what to think about the music.

John

Mozart seems to capture the worst of times.
Very gothic.
But then the scene back then could not just go with one source.