I agree. I don't discount the science of music or what it brings to the overall musicianship. It's actually balanced as you said, with each having it's only part in the complete composition. Emotion bring the sense of the song to life, and science makes that sense into a grand picture. Science also bring the understanding of what the music is made of, so natural you, as a musician, are going to dig into it and want to understand it. One can not exist without the other. If you just used emotion, your songs would be very plain. If you just used science your songs will probably have any random sense or worse no sense of itself at all. What I see alot of is, these equations like if you want to play something in a scale, you take all the notes and divide them by this, and you will get your chord progression. If it works for people that great, but I'm sorry. What art is in that? I could go roll a 12-sided dice and use that, and make it work. Or just spat out random numbers and make it work. Or any number of things that don't take true creativity.

The thing will Santana is that he's plays the same style over and over. The spanish romance type thing, which leads me to believe he is more of a scientific guitarist. He found something that works and he uses it. Of course he does have emotion in his music, but only one. There are many others, yet he chooses not to utilize them. A talented guitarist but too predictable, I also believe.

Yngwie actually comes up with some good solid music. Of course, when he's not ripping off bach or soloing. He has some songs that do hit the heart. I have the cd of his "facing the animal", he does have some nice tunes in that.

Vai is the same way. I don't think there is that many respected musicians who lack in either. Of course some choose to favor, but they both have to be there for someone to what to listen to them. Reemeber there are more than a couple of feeling you can get from a song. Some are more powerful, and those are classics.

Alot of people take the idea of I should only play what sounds natural. Like you said the dim chord always wants to resolve a 1/2 step. Of course thats right and it sounds natural, by why not resolve it to something other than that. Science used as a barrier! Sometimes you don't want a natural movement. Especially if you follow yourself, you find alot of unnaturalness. You want that dramatic change, take a live band coming out to a soft tune, then bang they start rocking. The crowd goes crazy, there's emotion there and evokes this. EVen if it's something you can't put into words. A dramatic side which is exciting, then there the Santana side who desires the move natural emotion. Even if you look at a picasso painting which is very dramatic in the artistic sense, it's not natural it's art and it's leaving an impression. Like a good song leaves an impression.

Everyone has there own way to approach music, especially the writting process. Music itself is a hearing art, so science itself is a limiting factor. When I say science I mean music theory, and music theory has rules. If art is freedom, then music theory is the secret police. You can't do this, you can't do that. What freedom is that? This is even noticed after a guitarist has been playing by those rules for a couple of years, they start altering scales. HAHA. Now they finally reach the point where they pay attention to their ear, and not rules. I just say bridge that and start with following your ear. The ear is the translator from heart to guitar. When you hear a melody in your head, are you thinking scientifically or by the way it sounds??

And you know once you get that idea down, you go ahead and your use what you know about music theory and apply it. Like if you have a melody, you use some science to put together a chord progression behind that melody. Still ultimately judged by your ear, and the understanding helps alot.

If you choose to use science first, you follow it's rules like a jazz progression follows this. So in the end you just wrote another jazz song that sounds like every other jazz song. Where's the art, creativity, or uniqueness in that?