any amateur musicians here?
how do you write music?
discuss songwriting here
also this is NOT a soundcloud thread, I don't care about your shitty 10-minute long "ambient noise" track which is just a recording of a frog croaking paulstretched in audacity
I grab a six pack, smoke a bowl, then drink and noodle around on guitar until something seems to stick/stand out.
the actual songwriting part is easy, i mean anything can be a song but the lyrics part is the hardest part and then like combining it with the energy of the music to text paint is like the next level but both the music and the words need to be figured out before that happens well
hey grateful dead sold like 10 million albums that way, you could become a star
Jesus christ its the opposite for me. My lyrics are basically diary entries.
I can make up melodies, chord progressions, but i just can't fucking arrange anything.
I usually come up with loops and i dont know how to connect them.
Any tips, videos, or artists i should study?
>I usually come up with loops and i dont know how to connect them.
this happens with me as well
it always sounds jarring, like I'm mashing two different songs into each other
Sit with my guitar/bass and Guitar Pro.
Then I write half a song and never finish it.
does anyone know how to get passed this?
i can write songs on my guitar in minutes. i can write all of the chords and stuff without thinking and crank out a dream pop song in 10 minutes. then i just pick some notes from a pentatonic scale and make a melody in no time. but as soon as i go to record, my rhythm sounds way off or i can't find the right bpm, and my audio sounds like crap. i wish i could get a band going, or could afford studio time. i just need people to play the parts i write. i've tried just taking what i know and applying it to electronic music, but it always just sounds lifeless. but if anyone wants some tips for writing dream pop i can help
>but as soon as i go to record, my rhythm sounds way off or i can't find the right bpm
You sure it's not latency?
I'm the opposite i have good rhythm, but i just keep making loops, and also i have a good idea of what a song should sound like,but i can't make it come to life because i've never played an instrument just piano.
i use a cheap behringer DI into garageband so that's probably it. but i can't tell the difference between that and just me playing poorly. i also have no idea how to fix latency.
that's what i mean by soulless and lifeless when i make electronic music. the piano is a good composing instrument. try playing something on a midi controller and just play melodies. do you know how to make harmonies that work together.
>mfw when I have hundreds of recorded snippets of ideas and riffs but haven't written a completed song in a year
Make a loop, then open up a new instrument with a sound you like and try to improvise over it. Then drop whatever part of your loop takes up the same frequency range and extend it with the new thing. Then do it again, keep iterating until you have something cool and new, then take just the best measures of this long thing and they'll naturally flow together. That's one way out of it, but you get better as you keep doing it so you won't always have to do it that way
>but if anyone wants some tips for writing dream pop i can help
is it not just regular pop with tons of reverb??
Study music theory. I'm dead serious. Harmony is something you need to practice and fully understand if you want to write music.
practice?
learn theory, for example when i play guitar; i come up with lots of ideas but i dont know how to transition them, but i know there is the right ''transitional'' chord for me to use, once you find it you can then structure a sort of path to your next section
can i just say, good luck to everyone in this thread, its nice to talk to other amateur musicians and not soundcloud autists, i hope we all make it one day
I have a book about it that my uncle used to own. should i start with that?
This. At first it might seem like pulling teeth, but it's entirely worth it, and it doesn't take too long to get the gist of things.
musictheory.net/lessons
For theory, learning diatonic chords is a good first step. From there, learning your scales (and knowing them by heart) on whatever instrument you play would be the next step imo, since it'll enable you to play through chord progressions that you've made up (using your knowledge of diatonic chords). After that, I'm not really sure.
This reply was for you.
I'm not trying to actually make it big. I just wanna make god tier music for me and my buddies.
Fuck this is too real. Over 2/3rds of my FL Studio projects are just random cool sounds or riffs/chord progressions I saved without ever expanding on them.
Even after learning classic theory, it didn't even bother to help.
it's mainly about adding extensions to chords to to make it feel more ethereal. maj and minor 7ths and 9ths work very well for this affect. but that gets repetitive after a while. changing a regular maj 7th or 9th chord to a sus2 maj7th chord works well. i like to use sus4 chords with a minor 7th as a versatile and moveable chord. adding an 11th to a minor chord is also a good way to spice it up. staying on a dominant chord sounds too bluesy, but used sparingly it can work as a good build up.
i know a decent amount of music theory. i was asking the person who can only make loops if they knew how to make harmonies because that could help their songwriting a lot. thanks though.
I'll be honest theres moments where i write a full song and i don't know how the fuck i did it.
Its all there verse chorus verse and it just gets me soo fucking angry that its just comes out randomly.
Then again i don't really practice at all.
I just play the piano for like about 1-2 hours .
>i was asking the person who can only make loops if they knew how to make harmonies because that could help their songwriting a lot. thanks though.
This is me, how would i go about on learning harmonies. I've been making beats on garageband, but i wanna start actually writing songs with piano and guitar.
>how to make harmonies
can you elaborate on this?
do you mean harmonizing melodies above the chords? or the chord progressions? or something else entirely?
also cool stuff about the chords. I always thought of those as "jazz chords" but I guess in a dream-pop context they wont sound too jazzy.
like said, study theory. first learn the diatonic scale in one key, then learn how to apply to the other 12 keys. learn diads and triads and how they make chords. learn the curcle of fifths. once you do that you can branch out into more advanced stuff to make the style of music you like.
How do i come up with vocal melodies? I keep doing them but i always follow the exisiting melody of the music i've composed and it get boring after a while.
I want to compose something that will add to the song.
chord progressions, but also how chords can be created from melodies. if you have three melodies playing at the same time. they will sound like the fit if the notes playing at the same time fit the chord. also when i said dominant chords usually sound too bluesy, i also mean they usually also sound to jazzy as well. but like i said, they work as a build up if used in the right context.
Good luck on your journey
I personally composed from lyrics
the speaking tone of the words give you the rhythm, the melody comes from the music. that way they're similar but not perfectly lined u
I write a melody depending on my mood and write lyrics to fit the mood, not much else to it. I typically don't even think of the lyrics as lyrics, I just write whatever the fuck my mind wants to put down on the paper and fit it into the song. Im not good at explaining the process of actually making the melody, I play keyboard and I just try to find nice chords and a bass line to go with it.
I write in my journal, take inspiration from real like for lyrics. Get the syllables to sort of line up then mess around on mt bass or guitar till it all makes sense
Wish i had a band or friends though. Then we could make music together.
I start with titles and then go from there
I also open up a chord encyclopedia and fuck around and combine shit until I find soemthing that sounds good then write lyrics after making a melody.
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