Interesting. I know most people think that way, but I really don't see it. Tchaikovsky (I think) wrote that he reserved the major scale for his saddest melodies, and I feel the same way. Yes you can write something very twee and childish/happy in a major key, but it can also be very very sad. Minor keys to me feel more hard-edged and strong, than sad.Kristie wrote:I always think minor key for sad songs, major for happy. But sometimes I've been subconsciously deliberately (paradoxymoron I know) reversing that to give an ironic feel
As for me writing ... my lyric-writing sucks rocks, so I mostly write instrumentals ... mostly.
My overall process is probably finding a cool riff or lick or chord, and then developing it. The developing is the "craft" part that you were asking about, Ash.
With reference to your question about when to use the "odd" chords, Ash, I can best illustrate with an old song of mine where the original spark I got was a melody (and lyric line in that case). It was in D major, and the first 7 notes could all have gone over a D major chord - and a whole bar of 4/4. But ... I wanted to have some movement halfway through the bar. The melody note at that 3rd beat was actually a D note, so the basic chords would have been staying on Dmaj (which I didn't want) or going to Bm or Gmaj - neither of which gave the effect I wanted: there was too much movement; in other words I wanted a D, but a different D. That immediately led me to think about diminished or augmented chords. I had been using a bunch of diminished chords in other songs at the time, so I used D augmented.
Further, the A# in that chord led pretty naturally to a B, and the melody started the next bar with an E note, so that pretty much suggested Em. That just "fell" to the next chord: a Cmaj (so that wasn't a consciously planned thing; it just "felt right"), which fell in turn to a G major. The Cmaj chord had made G sound like the tonic, and I wanted to get back to D major for the next time through, and I figured the strongest way to do that was with a ii V (which would be Em to A). That left the question of how to get back to the Em. I decided that since I had done an augmented chord earlier, it was now time for a diminished, so I did a walk up from Dmaj7 to D#dim to Em - then A, and back to Dmaj.
So for me it's generally a mix of thinking and feeling what comes next. The end result was this: http://www.owen.net.nz/raf/music/alittletattoo.mp3 (apologies for awful and lo-fi singing).
In summary, I find the "funny" chords provide colour (eg 9ths/11ths/13ths) or provide some motion without too much change in the chord, or help you move from one chord/harmonic structure to another (eg diminished and augmented).