Chords and Scales in Composition

[Rainbow_Rage]

I'm wondering how you all go about composing your melodies. I often see people talking about the scales and staying within the scale but for me personally I like to work with chords. I often ignore the key and scale that my song used when composing and just focus on the chord I'm on at that spot (or if I'm feeling lazy I just use the Blues Scale, that guy works with anything. That's an aside though). Hell, when I want to use an entire scale I'll just use a 13 chord.

For me, the scale builds the chords and the chords build the melody. I want to know how you guys go about composition.

[LunchBagMusic]

I compose with ideas.

Small rhythmical motifs and the like that intertwine between my piece. The rest sort of just fills in.

I doodle around to find a motif I like and then write it down.

[Rainbow_Rage]

Hmm, those are good point and I'll admit, most of my music theory training was from my desire to improve my improv skills so there was a bigger emphasis on chord structure which probably makes me a bit biased. Knowing what scale I'm in is important, but I'm always paying attention to what chord I'm on and how it's going to change next.

My design flow often goes like this: Come up with great idea and figure it out on my keyboard, or find something cool while messing around on my keyboard. Then I make it work within the key of the song. Finally I use the chord progression as a guide on how to move forward.

[Rainbow_Rage]

Oh, I do the scales first (assuming I'm starting the song methodically and not just from a sudden inspiration, when that happens, I just run with whatever I get), and I build the chords from that scale. (proper terminology escapes me, but I swear to god my method make sense)

[Rainbow_Rage]

I suppose. Everyone's got their own way of skinning the cat.

[natsukashi]

Yeah I don't care much about scales unless I get an idea that is about a specific scale. I use my pitch to hear what works and not. I'd just say, go mad with your pitch, if I improvise a nice chordprogression I know that those notes will work with eachother and then knowing which mode it is simply isn't very important unless you feel like being a musictheory masturbator.