Hi Tim. Great question! Me, I dig a great song. It can come in the form of a sweet track on an album that a bunch of people have spent a year working on or a few guys playing down in the subway, doesn't matter. If it hits the right nerves in my brain, I dig it.

I agree. I can understand why people love symphonic music or the lush production and compositional strengths of a Radiohead record. On the other end of the spectrum, I think witnessing the spontaneity and emotion of someone improvising well, like the afore mentioned Bireli Lagrene or John Mclaughlin, is a thing of beauty.

Great music is great music no matter whether it comes from being composed or improvised. I think that both have a place in music. To me improvising is more enjoyable because it usually does allow more emotional ideas to come out but composing is necessary to make the music have a form that is enjoyable to listeners with a recognizable repetition of ideas.

When I write music i come up with a chord progression and then record myself improvising over it for a while. From there i find cool things that become a loosely composed melody. For solos i usually improv but with a pretty clear idea of where i want to go stylistically.

So i guess for me, composing comes from improvising, i don't know if anyone else shares this view.

p.s. Satriani does a lot of improvising, pretty much all of the solos are improvised on the original recordings, and altered live through improv, and if i had to guess (this is only my guess) he probably comes up with melodies in a similar fashion that i do, although he was doing it first and much better than i am.

If you try a little harder, I'm sure you can find a thread that is a whole 3 years old...