For those of us writing music in our culture, there are historically well defined paths to creating harmonies and melodies. Gregorian Chant had its rules. Bach had his. Then there were the Romantics, Impressionists, and many others. Finally the modern composers often shun such things as traditional harmonies and put themselves in similar straight jackets, sometimes keeping to the rules at the expense of making music. Then there are Asian melodies which leave us in the dust with their seemingly unconstrained use of half and quarter tones and African rhythms which are often unimaginable to our western ears and can make even our most accomplished percussionists sound like a child with a new toy. When I write, I play an actor's role. I attempt to feel the emotion that I want to convey, and then write to the emotional rather than the intellectual constraint. Of course, my heritage is Western, so I tend to write melodies and harmonies prescribed by my culture, but I don't necessarily depend on them, despite the fact that - even when I stray the most - it is obvious where I come from culturally. So, is it tonal? atonal? polytonal? Build chords on thirds? fourths? I use whatever I need to convey the emotion of the scene. Like an actor, I call on emotional memory. The music evokes at least when the muse is with me - how I felt in another context, or how I would feel in the present context, and I can, sometimes, put those sounds on paper.