Q: I'm a jazz guitarist and I know my chords super well. Every key, every extension, every inversion (thats physically possible to play). I try to rhythmically spruce up my progressions, but I really feel that the core of harmony (tonic, dominant, and predominant functional chords) is limiting. I, iii, and vi share two notes, ii and IV share two notes, and V and vii are basically interchangable. I got into modal interchange when I started to feel bored with diatonic progressions. At this point, I feel like I've emptied my bag of tricks. This is basically the ultimate struggle of composition. People have been trying to answer this question for hundreds of years. How do you combat the limitations of writing music? In other words, how do you push out so much material and still hold a constant level of creativity wit
h what y
ou write?
A: it seems you've left out one of the most important elements of a song, and one of the strongest sources of identity and guidance, in a song. and that's WORDS