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Hey guys. I wanted to compare my creative process when writing music with others and thought it might be a good discussion for this here little forum of ours. So how do you guys go about writing your stuff? When inspiration doesn't quite come to you at will, do you have your own way of kickstarting your creativity? Care to share some of your tips and techniques? What I do normally is, I set a timer for ten minutes and give myself a specific task to work on during this time. Whatever comes out at the end of these ten minutes, I got it there. I can either work at it or leave it as it is and move on. I've found this to greatly enhance my ability to just get stuff done and not awaken my inner critic too early. Giving myself a short time like this leaves me with no time to be thinking critically about my work and I can allow myself to be mediocre for the time being. It's a great advice I'd heard someplace. For example, I could give myself ten minutes to figure out the structure of the song. Ten minutes for just the chords. Maybe even ten minutes for just the chords for the verse. I find myself getting much, much more in those ten minutes that I would have had done in two hours just sitting there and thinking with no pressure. I'd love to hear how you guys go about writing your stuff.
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Jun 24, 2017 19:57
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for inspiration ill often use my modular synthesizer to solve math problems the first one i figure out was how to have zero dollars in my bank acct 
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Jun 25, 2017 20:37
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Learning a new softsynth often gets me at least to a decent seed for a piece. Another technique I use frequently to start is writing down the structure of a favorite song or piece of music and then writing to that structure, or copying the feel of a piece to get myself going. After there are a couple of distinct parts, I'll cut out all the bits that I don't like (and mistakes), and then start trimming things down and moving them around in order to get to something that flows cohesively. Then I leave it for a while and work on other things, eventually forgetting all about it and never coming back to it to actually get it to a point where I want to share it with anyone, leaving me with fifty sketches of things in my DAW. Only the ones that are consistently the very most fun to come back to actually get to see the light of day  I like the timer idea. I'll give that a shot.
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Jul 8, 2017 21:37
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I'm a noodler, so I'll just sit for ages and little riffs present themselves to me over time. This means I have about 50 great motifs and no songs. The song itch gets scratched with my band though. With those guys I tend to be putting guitar to songs and the first thing I tend to do is flick through my pedal board while they play just to see if something pops out as a cool texture. After that it's a case of just playing and playing until we're happy. Some of my fondest memories are doing this, but just me and the singer at his kitchen table with acoustics, just playing all night. So I guess for me it's playing and playing until it's right and using the interaction of the other band members to play of, give each other room and let the whole thing breathe. Parameters like that can be very useful I find. I love the timer idea too, I will try that and it may help me solidify my noodles into proper songs.
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Jul 9, 2017 01:29
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I sit around with my guitar noodling away until something sounds cool. Then I play that over and over and try to develop the idea. Then I try and figure out how lyrics might fit in. Then I try and think of the words to sing along to the piece I've written. I'm in the middle of a song-writing bender and it's been a lot of fun.
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Jul 11, 2017 21:41
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At home alone I do rudimentary stuff, scales, triplets, playing runs of 16th notes, working on my strength and dexterity, trying to keep my callouses up to date. Then I get together with my buddies and we all just jam random poo poo together. We always have fun and sometimes we even get a pretty decent recording out of it.
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Jul 26, 2017 01:24
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I just sit down with 2-3 synths plugged into my interface/recorder and basically improvise my mood. I either give myself permission to do something totally unstructured and ambient, or focus on trying to get a solid 5-10 minutes of coherent, deliberate sounding playing with chord changes and few mistakes. When I get a good coherent take, I'll just layer upon that and tweak it in the DAW until it's a finished track. The ambient stuff I save in a folder in case I want to paste it on top of something later or use it to bridge songs together. Taking a tip from Brian Eno, I play my rough tracks on a playlist in the background while I do other work to get ideas and figure out if it really sucks or not. My process could probably use tightening up (10 minute rule sounds like a pro-tip).
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Sep 1, 2017 18:07
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Hit record, play, chop, learn to play that, record, chop.
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Sep 1, 2017 21:37
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I hum melodies in my head all day at work and record them to an audio app on my phone when something catchy comes to mind. Then when I have time, I go home and jam out a guitar riff to match the melody or chorus. Then I build the verse and song structure around that. Lyrics are always last and I just fit them in around the song structure, they're the least important part of the song to me. I'm far more productive this way than when I used to just sit down with a guitar for hours and have nothing to show for it. Time is too precious nowadays to waste doing that. I only sit down with instruments when I have a clear idea in my head of what the song should sound like.
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Sep 4, 2017 12:17
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write a baseline in a time signature try to figure out a harmonic structure that even remotely works over the top of that change my mind
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Sep 22, 2017 09:55
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The Shep posted:I hum melodies in my head all day at work and record them to an audio app on my phone when something catchy comes to mind. Then when I have time, I go home and jam out a guitar riff to match the melody or chorus. Then I build the verse and song structure around that. Lyrics are always last and I just fit them in around the song structure, they're the least important part of the song to me. This x 100000 Edit: Except while showering or making GBS threads
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Oct 2, 2017 21:11
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When I first started trying to write music a couple years ago, I'd just sit with my guitar and noodle, see what riffs came out and then quickly either hand write out the tab or have GuitarPro open on my laptop so I can get the tab down so I don't forget it. This is basically how I still write, although now I use the drum loops on my guitar pedal as a base to help me get into a mood as I jam out riffs. If I stumble on something I like, I tab it out and then try to get it recorded so I have a version of it. I've generally gotten better about not trying to cram every idea that comes to mind into a single riff/recording, if I've got another riff I think will work with the one I already wrote, I'll play back the recording of the previous riff to see how it fits and make adjustments from there. Ambient stuff tends to be "Plug in controller, load up a VST, press keys until something sounds decent"
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Oct 3, 2017 22:17
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Usually I will have a riff or two that I like, so I’ll put together a beat that matches, then record them to the beat. Then I’ll expand on the beat, adding or removing complexities, and figure out what should come next, until I have something resembling a song. Then I work on a vocal part by mumbling gibberish in a basic melody. Then I’ll listen to the gibberish and pick out things that sound like words, or at least match it with words that have enough syllables to fit, and expand the lyrics that way. Then I tinker with it for a while until I have it just right, and then re-record the whole thing, add more instruments, and mix it. Sometimes I will set a challenge for myself. For example, this weekend I challenged myself to record an entire song using only one microphone and four tracks. It ended up being 10 tracks, but still all recorded with one mic. Success!
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Nov 6, 2017 00:24
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PTSDeedly Do posted:write a baseline in a time signature wow are you my twin?
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Nov 30, 2017 16:18
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I make it a point to write something every day, whether it’s a vocal melody or a bass line or an interesting chord progression or even just a few lines of a verse or chorus. Sometimes those little ideas quickly evolve into full songs or instrumental pieces. Other times, when I’m feeling more activated creatively but don’t have anything specific I’m working on, I can dip into the well of ideas I’ve saved and see what I can come up with. I’ve been doing this for years. At this point, I have hundreds upon hundreds of musicals ideas stashed away in my Dropbox and on my phone’s voice recorder. My biggest issue with my process is finishing lyrics. I can write a verse or two with no problems, but developing lyrical ideas is a huge weakness of mine. On several occasions, I’ve approached that problem by collaborating with other people and usually end up with good results.
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Dec 20, 2017 02:43
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As I've been working more on recording/mixing/producing the material I already have written I've found I'm writing a lot less new stuff. How do most of you find a balance between the two? Or is it more of a back and forth?
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Feb 1, 2018 22:27
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Over the years I have tried to become more deliberate with my studio sessions. I will go into a session with the intent to create new stuff OR to finish old stuff but never both. And then I try to balance these two types of sessions so I am not spending all of my time on just one. Having a rough plan or goal before a studio session really helped me not get lost and at the end of four hours, have nothing to show for it.
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Feb 1, 2018 23:04
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1) practice a lot 2) realize it wasn't enough 3) practice more 4) repeat until dead
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Feb 3, 2018 18:31
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I have spring break off (HS teacher), and I'm planning on recording and polishing a few songs I've had in the works now for over a year. I'll aim for 4 songs out of the 10 or so candidates I have. I will be trying Reaper after years of working with Audacity. I really enjoy using the software as an instrument. Recording my acoustic guitar and vocal track, and then overlaying other sounds and tracks I think might help out the original idea/vibe. So far each of my recording sessions has resulted in very different types of music. It's exciting not knowing how things will wind up sounding until the end. Go with the flow, and all that.
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Feb 3, 2018 20:50
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DavidAlltheTime posted:I have spring break off (HS teacher), and I'm planning on recording and polishing a few songs I've had in the works now for over a year. I'll aim for 4 songs out of the 10 or so candidates I have. I will be trying Reaper after years of working with Audacity. I really enjoy using the software as an instrument. Recording my acoustic guitar and vocal track, and then overlaying other sounds and tracks I think might help out the original idea/vibe. So far each of my recording sessions has resulted in very different types of music. It's exciting not knowing how things will wind up sounding until the end. Go with the flow, and all that. That's funny, I had a recording session similar to that recently. I was making a beat and for some reason I felt like acoustic guitar would fit well with it so I started jamming a few different riffs/chords together trying to find something that worked. Nothing fit like I thought it would. Out of all the guitar takes, I only liked one little part where I did a slide. So I ended up recording the slide again, but backwards, and then reversed the sample in Ableton. I found that guitars sound really cool when you reverse the audio and after adding a bit of Reverb and Ping Pong delay, I had a super cool effect that doesn't sound anything like an acoustic guitar haha.
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Feb 3, 2018 22:04
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Really cool. That's exactly the kind of thing I meant by using the studio software as an instrument. Sometimes after I've added a few tracks, I mute my original acoustic guitar track, and often find a wonderfully sparse arrangement hiding underneath.
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Feb 3, 2018 22:28
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DavidAlltheTime posted:Really cool. That's exactly the kind of thing I meant by using the studio software as an instrument. I was working on a bassline the other night using my Korg Minilogue and when I was listening to the 4-bars back, something just didn't sound quite right and it was too busy. I ended up just completely deleting the first 2 bars and just having a listen and it sounded 100x better. I feel like the majority of the time I have a breakthrough, its the result of deleting something lol.
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Feb 4, 2018 00:31
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 02:14 |
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I wrote this tune in the last two weeks. It took a couple of days to write the musical structure and about five days to write the lyrics. I tend to compose first and add lyrics afterwards. In this particular case the tune came together very quickly. I usually have a more difficult time with the lyrics because I don’t want them to be boring or too easy to decipher. On a song like this I did a couple of passes, changing and tweaking things after rehearsing the song. The tune is called “If Not Today” and it’s a bit of social commentary on the divisive political climate we exist in right now. It also features the first use (at least I think) of the word “vantablack” within the context of song lyrics. That’s the scientifically developed coating that absorbs 99% of emitted light.... https://vimeo.com/ajrosales/If-not-today https://vimeo.com/256680374 ajrosales fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Feb 22, 2018 |
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Feb 22, 2018 20:43
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