Dane you've seen a lot of music instruction/theory/? I take it you have.
My take on that is that "it kills the ability to write what you hear in your own skull".
Try just sitting down and hum yourself a chorus or verse, melodically speaking. Then you attempt to pen it. I use a little notation and a chordie, if you will. (the guitar is my preferred method of notation)
Then you play it over and over again, 40 days and 40 nights.
Slowly you will hear something evolve from it. You will sing it, you will hum it. It will drive you crazy or damn near. When you think you have a vocal for it, pen the lyrics and you will remember your own melodic portion of the vocals.
So you are looking for 3 parts, primarily. A chorus, a verse and a break.
ALL THE REST IS FLUFF. You can have that on top if you want, just be careful not to overdo it.
(Too much chocolate sauce on the sundae will give you a stomach ache.) (I commonly fluff everything after all the regular hard work is done.(the 3 parts))
When you use "the protocol", you are writing from the gut.
Yeah some of it sounds like this or that. So what.
By the time it gets done, it's unrecognizable to me. PERIOD.
Imitation is NOT the highest form of flattery. bullsh!t
Plagiarism is a sin vs all would be artists.
THAT IS HOW YOU WRITE VIA YOUR OWN STYLE.
WRITE FROM THE GUT OR HEART, not from anywhere else.
As far as my abstract manner of writing/thinking, it's head trauma and nothing more.
Plenty of people tell me, "I don't understand your references or how you think". I say " good, you aren't meant to" and half the time I don't understand it either. Do I question it? No, just roll with the punches and do the very best you can do at all times or walk away because anything in life worth doing is hard work and if you don't want to work at it, just quit. (And no I am not telling you to quit, Dane.)
Sometimes I get my best ideas, driving down the road. It's just tough to get back to the house so I can record them, so I can work on them later.
(I use a mini sandisk recorder that Les turned me on to.)
Machinery noise often brings me the most unbelievable music IN MY HEAD. If I can't record it somehow, it's gone. This is why i say I've forgotten more music than I ever knew and that's horrible to think about.
If you are guilty of anything, Dane, it's probably humming a few bars and thinking, "damn that's good, I should write that" and then falling back down on yourself internalizing/discrediting yourself via introspection.
The line goes, "oh I can't use that, it sounds like X".
99% of the people don't realize that by the time you get those few bars out, it really doesn't sound like who you thought it did, you just think it does. And then because of that mental tear down feature, your own musical style has to take a back seat and your possibly awesome tune NEVER gets written.
Les showed me this in an accidental fashion.
The guy is/was a really good keys player and I thoroughly enjoyed working with him, but no one will be telling me what sounds good and what doesn't...that's my job.
And if you collab with someone, neither dingle berry has the right to strangle out the other because it take the sum of all parts to make something extraordinary.
If I sit with a piece for 8 hours via a mastering process and it's "done", I damn well expect it to be similar to how I left it. I don't care what producer you want to work with, they have no right to chop your crap into something THEY want.
A pack of short sighted animals on long trek through the jungle with no water, lest they be doing it themselves.
Just like if you want to have the final say on everything that's done, RECORD IT YOURSELF. Then you don't have to argue with anyone at all.
VISION isn't something that everyone has but if you have it, you can tell if what's being produced is along the lines of what was originally foretold.
The next mfer that slices and dices something I am working on will get smacked, just like the last entity I worked with the other day.
We spent a lot of time smoothing out her tune and vocals.
The next time I hear it, it's been changed drastically.
The vocalist and I look at each other and shrugged.
I went outside and smoked a cigarette, it stressed me out so badly. (considering I quit smoking)
I then had a talk with the vocalist. She indicated that she didn't like the changes.
I went in to see the head honcho and told him it sucked. (privately)
Ended up rolling the changes back to where we left off. (good studios keep copy of what you've done even if it's not current)
We ended up doing some light changes to lower the treble and up the mids, added some coloring effects and voila, the main course was served.
Of course i can see that I angered the powers that be by "not lying down in the road and letting the trucks run over me", but you know I don't go for that sh*t now or ever.
The final disposition was the vocalist was happy with the end product and everyone else was pissy, but the "proof was in the pudding".
I.e> Everyone not directly involved in production thought that the product was due to the engineer's efforts etc, but I know better and so did the vocalist et al.
I'll probably get canned here soon because of it, but f**k it.
Better to do the job right and get kicked out than to stay on and be doing things wrong and sounding bad as usual.
Conversely if I thought everything I touched over there was going to be bad, I'd quit because I don't need to be associated with a musical entity that can't do it correctly.
If you don't like what I say, you can
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLqsfwRvYtU
