| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Useyourname |
Posted - 04/20/2004 : 23:35:15
I'm looking for advice on songwriting, the music part of it. I can come up with lyrics pretty easily but whenever I try to write a chord progression or something I tend to play a song by a band I listen to without realizing it or I just play the same similar sounding things over and over again. How do you begin to come up with music for a song? What are you techniques and/or formulas? I'm having a pretty tough time creating original music.
Jim |
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| IceCream |
Posted - 04/23/2004 : 23:21:00
quote:
Originally posted by Useyourname
I'm looking for advice on songwriting, the music part of it. I can come up with lyrics pretty easily but whenever I try to write a chord progression or something I tend to play a song by a band I listen to without realizing it or I just play the same similar sounding things over and over again. How do you begin to come up with music for a song? What are you techniques and/or formulas? I'm having a pretty tough time creating original music.
Jim
I'd suggest using some REALLY oddball time signatures. We all know that part in "Los Angeles" that comes right after Frank says "How Come We Say Los Angeleez?", and it's only two chords, but it's so fun to play and listen to becuase that time signature is freaking insane. I agree with Jim's piano suggestion also.
I used to think songs were to be as weird and abstract as possible, and I used to think it'd take more effort to be weird. But on second thought, what's really hard is just to write a solid tune. If you can be simple and not use abstract riffs but still be awesome and write beautiful, meadningful tunes (case in point: Neil Young), it's amazing and commendable and quite hard to do, imo.
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| PsychicTwin |
Posted - 04/22/2004 : 08:26:24
Interesing bridges are key...
I have recently been pushing myself to write less "conventional" songs in terms of structure and changes. Many times this fails, but I've come up with some that just really flow well (I have Frank's influence to thank for that)
Experimentation is key...but I've found that you'll come up with something really good when you're not trying hard at all. Also, learning minor/major/augmented chord will really add color to your songs (I'm not sure what your skill level is, maybe you already know this...sorry if you do!)
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"I'd rather the stuff I do be half a dozen people's favorite thing, as opposed to 10 million people's ninth-favorite thing." ---Ricky Gervais |
| vigorstrength |
Posted - 04/21/2004 : 18:19:14
Chord substitutions are the secret. I mean, you can have 3 chords that fit the voice, but with substitutions you can use 15 also.
If you post up a mp3 of what you have so far, i'm so willing to help. I'm all about writing music at home. A few years ago, I wrote 69 songs in 69 days, calling the double CD-r "Sixty-nine". It was a song-a-day project. Currently, I'm thinking about starting up a sight for people to submit lyrics and I'll write, play, and sing a newly developed song.
For me, I've arranged a great version of Wave of Mutilation... using a different time signature (3/4 waltz) and many, many chord substitutions that make perfect sense. I just haven't recorded it yet because I've been lazy, lately.
Another suggestion of being inspired for chords: Drop D tuning. Learn how to play both minor and major chords and then mess around. It's great if you like to let the high strings ring, also.
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| El Barto |
Posted - 04/21/2004 : 13:41:49
Yeah, I'm all about strumming along and just playing random stuff. I found that music writing became A LOT easier once I started playing an acoustic a lot...it really strips out all the extra stuff and gives you a nice raw sound which translates well. Piano is also good for writing a melody.
Boycott cults |
| mrgrieves1971 |
Posted - 04/21/2004 : 08:04:07
John Fogerty once said that at some point every song that can be written will be. Maybe it's happened already and this guy is the only one that's figured it out.
But seriously, I'd love to hear more about this. While sometimes I'll come up with a cool chord progression, I don't know how to make that a complete song. I know a lot of songs in the last fifteen years have the same chords for chorus and verse, just make it louder and bring up the drums in the chorus, but how do you make it different? Write a bridge? Forget about it. |
| bumblebeeboy2 |
Posted - 04/21/2004 : 05:56:14
useyourname... i just tend to play random chords, maybe experiment a bit by lifting a finger off one of the strings in a chord shape, seeing what that sounds like, seeing if you can find some cool sounding chords... just play and play and play, lots of different chords and see if you can get a bit of a tune going along to the chords you're playing... that normally works for me. but i normally write my lyrics whilst playing guitar... so the music is always there with them.
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| mdisanto |
Posted - 04/21/2004 : 03:56:07
sorry to say that most of my favorite songs ive written were just stuff ive stumbled upon playing random stuff. Thats usually the way it happens. Although there are times when you can kinda hear or just know which chord could come next.
For instance if you have part of a progression you like and you need another part, just move the whole progression up a 4th! it works everytime. so if youre playing like G Emin C for a bit, then start playing C Amin F. Not really sure how that sounds, just kinda made it up on paper. but anyway, everyone does that kinda stuff at some point in their career, but still you can make it sound pretty good. sorry im not incredibly helpful, but like i said most of my songwriting comes down to random luck
-miked |
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