No, there really isn't a better way. All the rules behind music theory are based on what sounds good, not the other way around.

What you can do, however, is push yourself to try out new harmonic structures. You can make your chords more complex, you can delay resolution much longer, you can shift keys.

There are also other musical idioms like polytonality, alternate scales, etc. that you can use to expand you horizons.

But ultimately, you still should pick something that sounds right to you.

Definitely agreed that theory follows practice, not the other way around.

BUT it's still good to work on a better grasp of the theory -- if you try chord progressions at random until you hit something that sounds good... yes, there's a better way.

The whole point of documenting lots of rules around "what sounds good" is that you can refer to the rules and save a hell of a lot of time in your experimentation.

"if you try chord progressions at random until you hit something that sounds good... yes, there's a better way."

This is definitely what I meant, and it's what I currently do. My grasp on music theory is shaky at best, and I'm not exactly sure where to start to fill in the gaps in my knowledge (this may be true of any self-taught skill).

One day I may finish up my website that will guide you in an engaging way through to a good grasp of the useful stuff, but at the moment it's just some practice drills and no guidance at all. :(

Dunno if you'll even see this comment.. but my short-version recommendation is to learn different types of chords, (major, minor, 7th, etc., inversions, different spacings) and chord functions, then figure out what the progressions that "sound good" are doing in those terms. That's a big step up right there, I think.

Definitely this.

It may be counter-productive to over-analyse these things too, at least beyond a point.

I ran myself into a bit of a dead end with jazz piano trying to be ever more inventive when it comes to harmony. I probably thought about it too much. The result was that I ended up pursuing it to its conclusion as far as my abilities went and then feeling like I had nothing left to do but flog a dead horse with the same improvisational tricks. Then I got tired and rusty.

(Any tips from musician hacker types here on how to get past this kind of 'improvisor's block' ?)

I guess my advice with hindsight would be: trying to get better by being cleverer with harmony hits a dead end. Instead try to get to a point where you can feel harmony in a textural way. Theory can help with that, but a little of it goes a long way, try to get as much as you can just from playing and listening. Watch out though as it's easy to get stuck in a feedback loop doing that which converges on a local optimum that bores you. Seek input into the loop which is outside your improvisatory comfort zone. And not necessarily in the sense of technically harder -- just different.

The best stuff I've been able to play has been when I'm in a state of mind when I'm able to play texturally without thinking very much about what I'm playing, but it's quite rare these days.

> Any tips from musician hacker types here on how to get past this kind of 'improvisor's block' ?

I've been a pro musician before being a programmer and here's my advice: look someone else's playing, that's it. Of course you can do it the hard way and painfully learn to play chorus from recordings, but it's really tough. However, you can learn a lot simply by observing someone playing on your instrument.

The latest trick I learnt this way is incredibly simple, really the kind of slap-my-forefront discovery: to play be bop tunes (Ornithology, Billie's bounce, Night in Tunisia) on solo piano, a good way to play both the bass and chords is to ditch the classic be-bop triads described in this article (7th-3rd-11th, 3rd-7th-9th and the likes) and simply play 1st-7th-10th (yes, a good ol' 7th chord) with the left hand, which provides both enough bass and enough harmony, while keeping the right hand free :)

Let's be honest, a large majority of charts follow convention, if not transparently in the case of a straight "I Got Rhythm" changes or blues, but more opaquely with substitutions or variations of predefined changes. This is true with jazz and even more so in pop music.

A trick I always use it to transpose into a common key and watch the overlap develop. It may surprise you to find most tunes are the same I IV V or II V I progression in various keys...

Of course, blindly creating something from such patterns is a not very fulfilling, but adding your own variations and color can be. Or, deviating from convention for effect becomes viable when you deeply understand those conventions.

voice leading is always a good thing to think about