Writing music with consistent feel (maybe not the right word)

Harmony & Theory
#1

Hello All,

I’ve been playing guitar for about 20 years now and one thing that I’ve never been able to improve is my writing ability. 99% of the time I come up with something on the guitar that I like, it’s a one off that I can’t expand on. I have written the occasional complete song, but in 20 years, I can count those on one hand. It’s really a big part of the reason I don’t play much these days.

Sometime last year, I dedicated a lot of hours trying to expand on two particular pieces that are each 20-30 seconds long and that I’m very fond of. However, after all that time (at least 15+ hours each), I couldn’t add a single note to either piece that sounded/felt right. I read through this other forum post that seems to be in the same vein but nothing really clicked or was new to me. My problem isn’t necessarily writing more to the piece, but writing more that works. Like, I could play the same thing on different frets (changing some fingering to make it work) but it wouldn’t mesh together. I could add almost random notes that don’t necessarily sound bad… but again, it wouldn’t mesh and doesn’t lead to anything else that has the same sound/feel without just returning to the same melody.

I’m not sure it matters but some of my favorite things to play are Midsummer’s Daydream and A Minor Prelude by Rik Emmett. They flow together nicely but they’re not like a lot of music where vocals go over the top and it’s a plainly structured verse-chorus-bridge-etc.

For reference, here is one of those pieces that I’d like to expand on. I’m hoping there’s some aspect of music theory I can learn and exploit because trying to expand on it by ear/feel/random experimentation just doesn’t cut it for me.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated,
Josh

#2

I’m going through a similar thing in that I’m trying to make music again after almost 20 years. The last music I wrote was in a full band and I’m wanting to make an instrumental record now. I already have a drummer and a bassist lined up to record all of the songs that have yet to be written lol I have all of the backing tracks for 1 (EZDrummer 3 and Xpand bass) and the beginnings of another. That’s it….

Out of the 15 songs my last band wrote during our short time, 12 of them completely ignored the “verse, chorus, verse” type of thing. And I think most of my new stuff will as well. I’ve been bored of standard song structure forever and though I love thousands of songs that use it, I’ve never wanted to do it. Part of that is probably because I can’t, the other is that the idea of a chapter approach has always been my favorite to listen to.

It’s all in the transitions. I think with heavier music, and say what you want about it, but it’s the one style that it’s okay to forego that structure. At this point, it’s about that left to do to be original. With a lot of the newer bands, they’ll have great section after great section but their transitions are a little lacking. It’s makes the ones that do it well that much more interesting.

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