Songwriting thread
Post songs you've written.
Talk about your songwriting process.
What're you're biggest songwriting influences?
Etc etc
Songwriting thread
Brandon Adams
Benjamin Price
>Post songs you've written.
Nothing high quality enough to share.
>Talk about your songwriting process.
Mess around with different things, wait until I hear something I like, and expand upon it.
>What're you're biggest songwriting influences?
"In the moment", pretty much nothing at all. I just try to get into the zone and see where it takes me. I don't try to think of specific feelings or memories or concepts most of the time.
Of course, subconsciously I'm probably influenced by every artist I like and the albums I've listened to within the past few days.
Jace Collins
I encourage you to post what you have even if you don't think it's high quality enough I'd love to hear it and i can give some feedback to help you improve!
Nolan Garcia
Sure, thanks for the offer. I don't really have a completed song yet, but here's a random melody I "wrote" (read: fucked with random keys on the keyboard and then consolidated everything) recently. It'd have some other things in the arrangement when in the finished song.
I don't really like it much by itself but in the context of the track I'm working on it does its job. Feel free to be as harsh or nitpicky as you like with your feedback.
Bentley Powell
Fug it, I'll post my song
m.soundcloud.com
My songwriting process for this song was mashing this chorus that came in my head while driving home with something I had made up years before. I just keep things stewing in my head and if I don't forget it, then I figure it's worth keeping
I suppose the Beatles influence me, but I really like Elliott Smith when it comes to songwriting, I guess because a lot of his songs are guitar based and I dont have a band
Aiden Ortiz
I really like the performance but the song (mostly the rhythm) is kind of repetitive/generic to me. IMO you're way more talented as a performer than as a writer. Keep practicing songwriting and production and you could end up with a hit at some point.
Ian Bennett
I think the song lacks in the chorus, seems underwhelming and flat with just the one guitar, and the lyrics don't really compare to the verses which suit the single guitar much guitar.
Cool song keep it up.
Luis Williams
>much guitar
meant much better
Juan Wright
this isn't rly the kind of stuff i usually listen to, but i like the sound of the synths. It makes me think of an aquarium or being underwater. I could see this being the music for an underwater level in a videogame. I'm interested to hear how it sounds in the full song.
Some advice I have is that if this is your main melody line, try to simplify it a bit. The goal, I think, is to make a melody that people can sing along to and remember after one listen and you accomplish this somewhat, but not entirely. I think it jumps around too much
cool vocal layering and you have a good voice especially on the words "let gooo"
my advice would be to let the melody inform your lyrics more so it doesn't sound awkward. for example in the line "I point at mirrors". the emphasis on "mirrORS" doesn't sound quite right. there are quite a few points in the verses where the melody and lyrics don't work together.
the chorus jams relatively hard. I like it a lot! and i'd love to hear it with a full band. Even if you don't have a band, I'd recommend recording it using software. Even with something simple like garageband you can program drums and play synth bass pretty easily.
keep working and improving!
ok here's a song that I made:
John Russell
>Post songs you've written.
Here's something I did for a vocaroo thread yesterday. I would try and get a better take for this thread but It's a bit late and don't want to upset the neighbors.
>Talk about your songwriting process.
It's all pretty unstructured and intuitive, just whatever works at the time. Some songs come out music, lyrics and all in 15 minutes, while others (like the one I posted) will be constantly fucked with and changed for months on end. So yeah, it's all pretty chaotic but I know no other way to do it.
>What're you're biggest songwriting influences?
Of course the greats like Cohen, Dylan, Van Zandt, also the more niche guys like Bill Callahan, Kozelek, Nick Drake, and Darnielle though most of my stuff sounds like poor rip offs Sufjan and Elliott Smith rip offs, who I do like as well, it's just the similarities are not all that intended. Nowadays though, I place focus on my guitar parts more than anything else, so in that way guitarists like John Fahey, Bert Jansch, Robbie Basho and the previously mentioned Nick Drake might be having the biggest influence on my stuff but who knows what the actual effects are.
Anyways, sorry for the blog post, this probably makes me look like I think way more highly of myself as a songwriter than I actually do, I recognize nothing I do is painfully interesting. Just thought I'd contribute to the thread.
Lucas Kelly
Mostly i write songs from riffs I made. I play riffs and hum some vocals to it and start to write lyrics. Then I try different parts together and see if they fit and get the basics of the song together. After that we arrange the song at rehearsals with band to see if it works.
I try different things like tempo changes and starting different parts from different key and so on to get some variety.
Tyler Adams
Thanks for listening and thanks for the feedback, anons!
And
You have a cool Jeff Mangum vibe. I like this song a lot. Do you have any more stuff?
Noah Russell
this is pretty neat, you don't normally see much of this kinda stuff on Sup Forums
Ian James
bump
Mason Brown
>It makes me think of an aquarium or being underwater. I could see this being the music for an underwater level in a videogame.
Thanks, I was going for something like that.
>Some advice I have is that if this is your main melody line, try to simplify it a bit. The goal, I think, is to make a melody that people can sing along to and remember after one listen and you accomplish this somewhat, but not entirely. I think it jumps around too much
That's a good point. I sometimes have a problem with adding too much to instrument tracks.
Carson Brown
I've written an albums worth of music that I feel has a lot of potential and I want to write lyrics for them, but I can't seem to do it and it's really bugging me.
Any tips on lyric writing? Everything I've tried is either too cliche/corny or too wordy/too much metaphor and sounds pretentious.
Jack White
Have you tried improvising?
You can sing complete garbage for an hour but somethings may well stick
Bentley Lopez
Yeah, I'll be giving that a go thanks. I think I'm very dismissive of what I come up with lyrically, just automatically think it's shit and toss it out rather than build it into something good, which I do with my musical ideas.
I just dunno senpai.
Luke Rivera
You have to work through the cliche/corny/wordy stuff to be able to write better. You can't jump directly to beautiful, strong lyrics. It takes time and practice.
There are tons of tricks and exercises for writing lyrics. One is making a word cloud and then branching off three words that relate to each word you originally word. Then use these words to inspire your song.
Or just free write for 10 minutes nonstop without censoring yourself or trying to accomplish anything. Then read it over and see if you like any of what you wrote.
Another technique is to include all 5 senses in your lyrics. This grounds your lyrics in reality and helps pull the listener in to the story your trying to tell.
That's another thing -- songwriting is storytelling. Remember that.
Also listen and analyze song lyrics that you enjoy. What poetic devices do they use and how do they use them (alliteration, symbolism, metaphor, consonance, assonance, etc)? Pull them apart and find what makes them tick. Steal from them, but be discreet about it.
Hope this helps.
Carter Kelly
Thanks family
Noah Flores
I write synthy DAW music that ranges from soundtrack stuff to 80's synthpop inspired melodic fuckabouts
>Talk about your songwriting process.
chord progression -> melody -> I like to write counterpoint sounding melodies so here I split the parts and give them to separate synths -> drums -> next chord progression
The songs end up really short because I'm not very inspired but still perfectionist.
>What're you're biggest songwriting influences?
Bach is mesmerizing. I love elliott smith and his melodic sense. People have said that I sound like Nobuo Uematsu, who I'm also a fan of.
Ayden Phillips
Not my song but a local band I had the chance of joining but did not.
soundcloud.com
I'll post one of mine once I'm off the shitter y'feel.