a ranger

MikeRobinson Bingo! Very good! - my thoughts exactly. There are so many artists who worry about "cheating" and producing non-art, or compromising it. But it's ALL cheating - we have just accepted & taken for granted our tools, like hands, fingers, practice, using our eyes, reading notes, symbols that represent sound, recording tape, mixing boards, electricity/magnetism, vinyl, capos, steel wound strings...but they're ALL ways of cheating, getting around some difficulty, making things easier, so we can get more directly to making music, and making the quality of sound better. Sampling is no different, in principle, than hiring orchestral players to play something that would be too much trouble for you to do on your own. The end product is the goal of our creativity. And while creating is a fun part that we don't want to miss, keeping it at a certain level of difficulty when we don't have to, will only hamper the outcome. Learning more about music, so you can do it better, is a way of cheating too, because it gives you what are, essentially, shortcuts to better music, so you spend less time with trial and error. What AI can do ultimately, is get more of the mundane out of the way, so you're efforts are whittled down closer to pure creativity, contemplating the result you want, which is always a matter of doing something that gives you feedback, which you use to decide how close to what you want you're getting. What AI will do, after the non-creatives exhaust what it can do easily, is up the expectations of our audiences...and ourselves. This is what happened with the techno-jump from analog tape to digital workstations, where anyone can have a recording studio in their bedroom for under $1000, with more capability than a pro-studio in the 70's.

Hi, if you're still looking, what kind of country are you writing - old styles or today's...like what are some songs that are the same general feel of what you want to do that I could check out on utube?

From the different replies, it's apparent that there are various interpretations of the question, or the definition of 'great'. Here are the main perceptions so far listed: [1] There is no great or crappy music - it's all in the listener and what appeals to them. Therefore no real answers to the question. [2] great music is that which has lasted longer in the limelight and is revered by more people, especially music history scholars. [3] personal experiences that connect us to the song influence which ones we like or identify with. [4] great is defined from what moves me personally, and consists of __, __ & __. - no reference to what people with different tastes like or why. So I think you have to hone the question down to something more specific unless you don't mind a whirlwind of unrelated or relatively useless answers. Having said that, I can only talk about what I like personally and define as great. So I have narrowed the question to #4 for my answer, which is really all I, or anyone else here, can do. I have studied just this question intensely for the last 15 years. The songs I chose to study had to fit 2 criteria: [1] they were personal favorites of mine [2] they were also chart topper smash hits at platinum level at some time, usually included on a "greatest hits" album. Many of them [probably all of them] are hated by someone for sure. What can you do? My answer is not really a practical "how to" answer [at this point] but only pointing to something ethereal, which I think most of you knew all along in some way. Artistic principles are at the root of it, which are abstract and cannot be defined in any technical terms or ways that hint at a formula that can be easily followed by intention without uncertainty. They're elusive almost by definition: Anything that can elicit feeling is going to be as elusive as feelings are. They have to be understood through intuition. If you try to look at what it is exactly about a song that you like, you can never quite put your finger on it except to point out a riff or a melody, but that same melody or riff [or other technique] might be used in a song that you hate. There is something in the way it all goes together that's ineffable. All you can do is filter ideas as they come through, recognizing which one's serve the artistic principles and which don't. This assumes that you understand thoroughly enough of the basic artistic principles behind all art. Usually it takes time & repeated listening to separate what 'works' or doesn't. If you do this with your songs - see how the song makes you feel, really, while listening - be honest and try to let go of your attachment to all the inspiration and effort you've put into it, the rationalizations of why it SHOULD be a good song [because the singer is really good & your guitar picking is crispy due to a $1500 mic] - you'll mature in your song production ability. You undoubtedly did lots of neat things in the song, but in the end it's how it all flows together in that exciting or not so exciting way. My musical motto is that a great arrangement can make a poorly written song sound better than a great song with a poor arrangement. An arrangement is to a song what chords are to a melody. Acapella only really works when the audience is already familiar with a harmonic version of the song. When you play a popular song around a campfire with your beginner's guitar strum, it's the original arrangement your friends are hearing in their memory, otherwise they would yack all the way through it [they probably do anyway - ha!] instead of sing along. In the effort to compose and produce a "great" song, one of 2 extremes often interferes with the process and judgment. On one extreme you have: [1] Repeating formulas that worked in a particular song, but don't have the same effect in the currant application because the over-arching artistic principle is not understood. At the other extreme: [2] being different for different's sake. This is my biggest peeve, and to me is the fatal disease that overtakes the music industry from time to time, [as well as the graphic arts]. Artistic value is forsaken for the easy substitute of just being different with no artistic merit. Nowdays it routinely takes the form of trying to be 'badder'. This is reflected in band names, as well as the lyrics which have to keep being more pessimistic, sulky, sexually loose, or even deranged. "Bad" from M. Jackson shows that you can pretty much brag about how bad you are now. It would almost be funny if it weren't so pathetic. It comes from the shallow and hollow conclusion that good is boring [which comes from a lack of patience to find something good which is also somewhat original], therefore we need to continually pursue 'bad' farther and further down a steeper & steeper incline. When artistic effort tries to come out of boredom it rarely succeeds in a lasting way. It's effect is meant more to shock rather than entertain, so it's not surprising that it isn't still being listened to much 40 years later. But I digress.... Somewhere in the middle you find gimmicks which can be a combination of both extremes, and be used 'successfully' for awhile 'til they wear out. Artistic creativity isn't found between those 2 extremes though. It's found where most don't feel comfortable, in the land of uncertainty, where you only know the feeling of when you've found it, but not so much how to get there from here. The need to crank out or finish something, get that album done, appeal to what you think fans want, will take you away from uncertainty toward formulas that by themselves don't really hold the answer. As I see it, there are 3 overlapping polarities at the very top of the concept of Artistic Principle: Contrast/Similarity - Repetition/Variation - Predictability/Surprise. A great song has a balance - not necessarily in the middle - of these elements. It's not easy to explain how these polarities are converted into sound, especially in a short spiel like this. The possible ways of expressing some give and take between these polarities is infinite, and which is why there is "no one right way" to do things. But if you analyse songs that have made the charts and stayed there for awhile, looking for the little things that keep your interest, you will find that they usually trace back to these 3 polarities. Following a technique's trail back to principles is fairly easy, but going the other direction . . . not so much. This is why knowing the principles does not help much - at first. But if you study the expressions of these principles in 'great' songs [disclaimer there] long enough, you will begin to see into the workings of artistic genius, and that your best creativity will be in finding new ways to exploit the principles, which your audience will intuitively find intoxicating without ever knowing why. The 'principles' are principles because they are intuitive laws of attention and interest. They are also used in great movies, graphic art, sculpture, story telling, all real art forms, really [not the fake, special interest propaganda crap known as 'modern art']. You'll notice that the 3 core polarities all have each opposing side as meaning something similar - Contrast-Variation-Surprise, on one side, and Similarity-Repetition-Predictability on the other side. They can mean close to the same thing, but also can branch out into very different types of expression in sound. Many 'great' artists stumble upon ways of exploiting these principles by intuition and accident, without ever really understanding the principles. And more bad news for the impatient songwriter is that a great song is essentially a new invention. There is really nothing quite like it: there are other great songs but they seem to have such different ways of appealing to you. If this were not the case, McCartney could just write another "Let it Be" or "Hey Jude" using the same formula or 'skill' he used on the original, more or less. Let me remind you that my theories here are based solely on, and validate, my own music preferences. My speculation is that if your tastes are different than mine, the principles still apply, but that you prefer a different flavor of expression of the principles that could still be traced back to them, while my tastes focus on another limited focus of the principles. Which path of expression of the principles appealing most to one person, need not be far from the path another appreciates more, yet the final expression can seem unintelligible or uninteresting to the other. In other words, from the core principles, extending out to varying modes of expression, they can be made to appeal to very different tastes. Because of this, it's sometimes possible to learn to like a kind of music you once hated. You just acquire a taste for the other ways of meeting the 3 polarities, which at first you didn't recognize, but once you do, it pulls you in. That is, provided the music is expressing a dance of the polarities in some way. FWIW