It's time to tell me the secret of how to write a song where I record all of the parts, Sup Forums...

It's time to tell me the secret of how to write a song where I record all of the parts, Sup Forums. I have wanted to do this for over 3 years now, and it's not that I don't have the equipment to do it. I have a bass, a guitar, an electronic drum kit, and an electric piano, and an audio interface, and anything else I could think of besides a mixing board or something which I wouldn't know how to use anyways.

What do I do? Do I start with just chords and then layers stuff on top of that? How do I come up with the chords for a song? I try to sit down and think of something and I just have absolutely no idea. Do I have to wait for a song to come to me in a moment of inspiration or something? How long should a song usually take to write? It seems like a lot of artists wait a year or two before they come out with a new album, but I'm sure that they're not spending all of their time thinking of new material, they probably are doing other stuff like touring and playing their old material and stuff. I bet it only takes them a couple weeks of sitting around in a studio thinking up stuff, unless they're sort of uninspired.

I feel like it wouldn't be that difficult if I had some other people to play music with, but unfortunately I don't think that I will be able to find anyone nor really want to find anyone for that matter, because I'm sort of shy.

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What kind of music do you want to make?

I have no idea to be honest. My influences are a lot of joy division, slowcore, shoegaze, heavy as fuck distorted and depressing stuff. It would probably sound like something between have a nice life, joy division, true widow, red house painters, and lifelover.

early christian death would probably also be a big infliuence.

Do you know how to use a daw? If not this is crucial. I am only half-proficient in Logic pro but enough so that whenever I open it all creativity leaves me because I get so frustrated. If you don't know a daw inside and out it will intimidate you and cuck you.
That is my experience, anyway.

I have fucked around with reaper enough to know how to at least layer tracks to a metronome. I use audacity sometimes too.

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>true widow
meant to say duster

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Why have you wanted to write music for years and not just done it? Do you do something else with your time and music is a side hobby or something?

Of course I haven't just been sitting in my room in front of my amp for the past 3 years trying to write something, there's periods of months where I lose motivation and then times when I get really gung ho about it.

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do you know basic theory?

yes. I played cello for 5 years, I got through book 1 of a piano book in 3 weeks when I started up on piano, and I know a lot of guitar chords and can sing guitar and play.

if you're trying to make slowcore and shoegaze major7 chords are your friends. slowcore relies more heavily on dissonance and interesting guitar melodies than shoegaze. if you're lazy and want to make shoegaze you can write really really simple melodies, like 3 note shit, and get away with it if you have a knack for making it sound good

even just a basic I - IV progression can be good if you play around with different harmonies and production styles

honestly just coming up with a single repeatable lick is the most important thing

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>I feel like it wouldn't be that difficult if I had some other people to play music with, but unfortunately I don't think that I will be able to find anyone nor really want to find anyone for that matter, because I'm sort of shy.
Then enjoy not being able to make music you pussy

start out by playing around with an open mind until you stumble across something that is interesting to you or pleases you. don't stress yourself out about it, and don't think about whether something is "good" or not until it's completely done.

I'd kill people like you if it were legal you little bitch.

I'm definitely not interested in making slowcore. I think the biggest thing I would take away from slowcore is making music with no climax, which is calm throughout the whole thing. There's no way in hell I would want to make music like low duster and red house painters, I would feel like a painful ripoff artist if I were to do that. I would want my music to reflect a number of different styles.

Yes, do this. I feel that making any music (even if it sounds shit) is a stepping stone for writing better music as time goes on. It's good to just write music as exercise.

you kind of have to know what you want to make before you start writing dude, if you write a 3 chord pop song and then suddenly decide you wanna make blackgaze then that's not gonna help

if you're thinking about how you want your music to sound in the manner of not having a climax, that's a good start as far as structure. you could potentially just write a single simple progression that you drag out over a long period of time without a real catchy repeatable melody. steal a progression from a song you like and fuck with it a little to make it slightly different. it's all fair game, and isn't artistically unethical. if you have any sort of lead into what you desire from your music, follow it and exhaust it until it provides you with the most insight and ability to begin to create.

Okay I would do that except for I have to write so many pieces. I don't know how I'm supposed to make an entire cohesive song. I always convince myself that I'm going to make bear bones chord progressions and then layer stuff onto it, but I can hardly even come up with a song that way, I always come up with something and feel like every idea I come up with is cheap and I could be coming up with something better.

I suppose that's fine, except I would probably do a complicated song, because whenever I go to write something I always imagine that there would be a lot of changes in the song, because I like songs that have distinctive parts, where sometimes there's more than one part which could work as it's own song.

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If you can't improvise you can't compose. My advice is just sit away from your instrument and try to hear a song in your head. Sing it or play it on your instrument, either or. Fuck around with jazz improv for a while, it helps your lick creation a lot.

Also fuck it learn your favorite songs, gotta learn the language before you can speak it.

I'm not sure what a lick is.

I learned a my bloody valentine song in a couple hours the other day vocaroo.com/i/s12c6wJxQLmx

dont take yourself too seriously. you dont need to send a message, or be intellectual in any way, youre just playing for the sake of amusement. try to imagine yourself on a stage at an open mic with your instrument. think about the mood youd be in and how it would sound, then try to transfer that fantasy into music. usually what you come up with sounds nothing like you originally imagined but its an inspiration nonetheless. dont worry about writing shitty songs. you will have to in order to write songs you like.

So basically think of a lick as a phrase in English. Something you hear everyday. You take it and use it awkwardly for a little while, then you change it a little and it becomes yours, boom you created new language. It's the same with music. Take a line you learned from MBV and alter it. Figure out the theory behind it, and what they are doing over the chords. Analyze the layers, what effects they are using. AND WRITE THAT SHIT DOWN. Because it's all helpful reference info for what you do later. You learn stuff you like so you sound like who you like. You have to understand what someone does before you can sound like them. Personally an easy way to remember this process is "Imitate, emulate, innovate"
We imitate our favorite artists by learning their stuff, then we emulate their sound in your own songs, then innovate off what they do to create new ideas.
This too. The process is a long time. Just write what you think you would want to listen to. It's a nutty process. I can recommend Victor Wooten's book The Music Lesson, he made a lot of this easier to understand in a book better than I can put it. Book is an easy read too.

off-topic, but I'm so glad someone else loves Flowers Taped to Pens, I've been here a while and haven't seem them talked about once.

For some reason I find I'm most creative with drums, even though guitar and piano are my main instruments.
So I always start by playing around with different drum patterns until I find one that gives me an idea for other instruments. Like I'll find one and immediately think of a melody that would compliment it.

Drums might not be your thing though, so play around with your instruments until you find a pattern/beat/melody that gives you ideas for other instruments.

to be honest I only know how to do a beat with the kick drum and snare and high hat and some bullshit amateur drum fills which probably aren't even real drum fills, I never had any lessons, I always thought that I could just fuck around and do some sort of drum thing in the background and it would sound alright, as long as it's on tempo and I can do a pattern with the kick drum.

>We imitate our favorite artists by learning their stuff, then we emulate their sound in your own songs, then innovate off what they do to create new ideas.
I wish there was a way that I could do this to make it more fun. I've learned a bunch of really easy songs and stuff, like I can play a song by david bowie, my bloody valentine, duster, hour of the star, neutral milk hotel, nana grizol, and hell I'm sure that if it's just easy chords that I could learn it pretty easily. If there's one thing that I really don't think helped me at all in my endeavor to become a musician it's learning classical music. Seriously, there's not one thing that I remember from learning music theory and learning how to read all that musical notation from a book that I could think to apply to the songwriting process.

Classical just helps you quantify tension and release and how to produce it, and also associating certain sounds with certain keys or scales. A great way to make learning songs fun is to improvise off of the riffs. That's why soloing is a shit ton of fun. So take let's say Blackstar, and you learn every part. Record them all, but with your own spin, then for the solo you put in your own words and emotional contribution. It's about as fun as you can make it. It is practice and work for a reason. The creative process just takes time, you never know when one day you'll write something you love. Maybe find something challenging. Like really difficult and try to emulate that. A lot of the bands you listen to are more about the effects and atmosphere than the playing, so learn that. Or learn how they manage atmosphere. You gotta put the work in is the root of it.

Noodling on the guitar is a great way to come up with chord progressions. When you find one you like, write it down.

Next, rhythm section. Find a drum pattern you like and put down a bass line based on your progression. It's easier to write other parts when you have a rhythm section to work on top of.

After that start doing guitar parts. Since you seem to want to do shoegaze you can of course keep it slow and use pedals and effects to your heart's content to get the right atmosphere. Use the piano/keys for pads. It sounds like you're still a beginner on piano and it's the hardest instrument to play well, so keep it simple. I've heard a lot of very cringey piano parts by guitarists who aren't familiar with the instrument.

if there's one thing I wish I could play better it's single note guitar playing, like riffs with scales or something. I feel extremely limited with guitar because the only thing I know how to do is bar chords, power chords, and basic chords, but I know how to do a lot of chords. I feel I've been taught how to do scales before, but I just never seemed to put it into practice, I am always fucking around with chords instead of scales and it would be nice if I could do some more interesting guitar riffs, because whenever I sit down to write something on my guitar it's always bar chords or power chords.

Learn your pentatonic scales to start and get good at those. Then move to others. A few months of practice will get you a long way, especially for studio work.