Welcome to the Songwriting category - Let's get better at making music! Opinions welcome!

General Music Discussion Songwriting
#1

EDIT: I forgot the most important thing! The fundamental rule of this space is that feedback / advice should be specific, actionable and expressed respectfully.
Examples:

  • Your song sucks! → Not acceptable
  • Your main riff feels too repetitive, try to add some small variations or modulations of the main idea → Acceptable
  • Your ear is terrible → Not acceptable
  • I noticed a clash between the bass and keyboards in bar 5, I think one of them may be in the wrong key → Acceptable

Hey All!

For a while I’ve been wanting to open a space were we can discuss the mysterious art of music composition — so that hopefully we can all get better at it together!

So, here is my first attempt at opening that space :slight_smile:

Instead of giving you a long and boring set of instructions on how to use this category, I thought I’d give you a few examples of the questions / discussions I thought we could have on here (I’m just improvising* here):

  • How to generate musical ideas?
  • How do I turn a short idea into a 3-minute song?
  • How can I write lyrics for this riff I have?
  • What makes Song XYZ so good?
  • How can I arrange this melody / chord progression for a prog song?
  • Who wants to collaborate on my unfinished song?
  • I have written this rock song demo, how could I make the solo/melody/chorus/intro better?
  • I have written a cool riff, how can I write bass and drums for it?
  • Please listen to my song, and give me advice on how to make it more memorable

Let me know what you think and if you think it may be convenient to have more sub-categories like “Songwriting critique”, “Song analysis”, “Lyrics” and whatnot.

*=pun not intended

10 Likes
#2

This is great! I think one category is fine for all of this.

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#3

I Like it :metal: Having some loose category is best I think.

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#4

Glad you like it! I feel the forum needs to expand beyond “how do I pick pattern X” (which is very important of course, but is not the end of the story - more like the beginning!).

Another direction I really like, which would combine nicely the technical and artistic, is to create songs that are tailored to fit the strengths of specific mechanics (a bit like gipsy jazz does for USX-economy, but extended to more styles and motions).

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#5

I’ve always wanted the CtC applied to music theory, I know it’s been tested a bit but I think it’s a really hard one to crack, as at a certain point taking about theory will go way over peoples heads unless they’ve a proper foundation. And it become preaching to the choir in a way. I know the simple explanations CtC has done in past can be applied to music beyond mechanics.

And yes, one reason I like single pickslant is it limits the options, and that can be really useful for creativity. To many options is often disabling.

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#6

What about a “share your vocab” thread for various picking styles (USX, DSX, multiple-escape)? I’ve been wanting one for a while :smiley:

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#7

I think that would work great for “show and tell” (if it’s more of a finished product). But a “how to come up with more like X” could fit in here as well :slight_smile:

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#8

Great! I think one category is fine tbh. I’ve been working on an ep for quite a while now, so a space like this for feedback etc is great!

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#9

Would questions about music production techniques belong here? As an example, tips on how to program drums so they don’t sound like a robot etc ?

#10

I don’t make the rules, but I think production/arranging is a very important aspect of songwriting.

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#11

Same here… conflict of interest in my case? :rofl:

Yeah, depends on the specifcs! If it’s just about how to use a certain mixing tool, then it goes in “Gear”. But a case like your example could definitely go in here!

Edit: like @joebegly says :smiley:

In general, the “Songwriting” topic could become a bit of an admin nightmare because it overlaps with pretty much any category! But I think if we use our judgment on a case-by-case basis we should be fine :slight_smile:

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#12

This is kinda getting off topic a bit, but there are ways on many midi based daw drum samplers like EZ Drummer or MT that you can go in and randomize (humanize) the attack velocity, you can also I believe set the quantizing to be humanized as well so that it randomly isn’t exactly on beat. I think you can do this in the midi event screen on a lot of daws too.

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#13

Yeah, I tend to program it in myself though. It takes time, but I prefer it than many of the randomising functions.
I’ll probably open up a thread in here about this whole topic soon. There are quite a few easy to program things you can do which make a huge difference to the feel.

#14

10 posts were split to a new topic: Borrowing licks and ideas without stealing

#23

Any self-teaching recommendations for music theory? I think that would be relevant for this section. I can recommend the ‘fretjam’ youtube channel.

#24

I think there already is a theory section

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#25

I love the idea!

Some time ago i asked for some directions on the forum because i stumbled upon a plateau, and I started to feel burnt out.
Focusing on technique too much kind of blinded me to the fact that, on guitar, knowledge really IS power.

So now i´m cutting back on playing the same lick over and over until it´s up to speed, and I invest that time to follow a music theory/ songwriting course that I bought from a guy I follow on youtube. Taking it slow and step by step, i noticed that the mystery of how my fretboard works is slowly vanishing. It´s not like, oh, now i know about X, now i can shred, no…theory has this unveiling effect on me and it has nothing to do with technique, my view just gets clearer over time and now, i´m starting to like it.

Anything you guys would add about theory I would consider a very nice bonus in addition to what i´m learning in my main course. I will definitely try and be a part of this one way or the other.

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#26

I mean we only have 4 fingers so the big pattern list isn’t that big.

1234
4321
123
321
12
13
14
312321
1323

and of course you can play any of those fingers more than once but the basic shape doesnt really change.

we could grow it a bit bigger by adding in right hand tapping but you get what i mean.

It’s funny cause when I started back up playing I had this thought I should try to arrange a routine that would focus on certain techniques for only a limited time, and maybe focus only on certain kinds of technique every few days. Like one day do legato, the other picking, tapping, sweeping, chords, and just keep it to around under an hour then move on to the bigger picture. Either learning the greats phrasing, learning how progressions work, and working on changes. But guess I failed the idiot test. :smiley:

#27

This seems like a great idea!

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#29

I like this guy

I was messing with Bach style modulations a lot a few months ago

One example in this composition at about 1:40

I had been watching this video which went into a couple methods of cycling through keys back to the original key which I found interesting and borrowed the overall pattern for the above song

That led me to the music theory YouTube channel

3 Likes