Tom Warren <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>I'm curious to know how a person who can't read music can write it.  How
>does he/she know what key to write it in, what meter to give to the piece,
>proper notation etc.  etc.  Does the person just write out a melody and
>leave the harmony to someone else? What's the story?

Come now, Tom, I suppose that a possible answer to your question is
that you hum your new tune a bit, try different chords up and down the
fretboard, and then get a nice A & R man called Martin, or similar, to give
you a hand.  I also doubt that McCartney is quite as short on musical
know-how as he may have claimed to be at the outset.

I've heard many "folk singers" sing passable harmonies while professing a
total lack of formal training, just through experimentation and the sense
we all have, more or less, to recognise what works and what doesn't.

Now I ask you this:  Does your average composer set out to construct a
piece according to all the known rules, and examine it retrospectively to
see whether it suits his lyric purpose, - or does he/she use his acquired
tools to develop his lyric ideas? An eminent poet was congratulated by an
equally eminent critic during a radio interview recently, concerning the
skill with which he had employed all kinds of literary devices in a recent
work.  "Oh Really?" said the poet, "I didn't know I had!"............
Clearly, the Muse is no respecter of persons, trained, or untrained.

Keith.