General Music Chat

In my ongoing effort to put more questions related to music on this message board, we have question #3. Enjoy!



This question popped up in my head due to what happened to me this week, and because of how I've seen the chief songwriters in Audian work.

In essence: Do you compose with a specific mood/image in mind for a song you want to write and then try and write music that fits that image/mood, or do you just go with what comes out? (or both?)




Normally, when I write original stuff (which I've been doing a LOT of in the last three weeks), I just let my fingers find their way. I play with the fretboard, and eventually my fingers find their way to a chord progression or an arpeggio or something, and if it sounds good to me I go from there and try and evolve it until it's a complete song.


However, I've recently seen things done a completely different way. In Audian, for the last album, they did something I hadn't seen before. The scripted the entire album beforehand. They knew how many songs they wanted, in what ordered they wanted them, and what those songs should roughly sound like and what the content should be. For instance, they'd decide that song #3 was to be this really heavy piece, etc. etc. And then they sat down and wrote the music to fit what they scripted. I thought that might be a more difficult way to write music that way because you're really forcing yourself to try and write a certain style and capture a certain mood, but they seemed really good at it.


So, this week... I had a mental image in my head and I wanted to evoke that imagery with music. It was my first time trying to write music that matched something in my head. I wasn't sure how it would go...

The result was "Raindrops", which I wrote from scratch and recorded in under an hour (the whole idea was done in 15 minutes, but it took me 45 minutes to practice the arpeggios).

The song, to me, evokes exactly what I was hoping it would. It's beautiful, and the longing that I felt while I was writing it is there in the melody...

I've never written a piece of music like that before - by first having the image and THEN writing the music to try and fit it. I was surprised by the results.


So, I was curious if other people have done it that way and what your results were?


Thanks gang!

Most of the time ideas come to me when I am doing something other than thinking about music. A lot of my material came to me while I was cooking dinner for Buddy. He's my dog, and I cook meals for him. But he's not spoiled.

A hook will come to me out of nowhere that I think might make a good song. I think about it while trying to locate a melody in my mind. When I find what I am looking for, I write the rest of the lines in cadence to that melody.

Other times I will hear something on the news or in a line that someone says that triggers a first line of a song.

Just sitting down and deciding to write something seldom works out as well. Most likely because it feels forced. But I usually come up with a start that I may or may not finish later.

Some seem like a good idea at the time, but they fizzle out when I decide that it just must have been something I ate.

I've tried it both ways.

I got a call to write the theme song for a children's tv show, once. I knew it had to be playful, yet when I sat down to write it, I got this melancholy thing that just wouldn't work. I only had a day to write the song, so I worked on the minor chording until I got this idea that seemed to work. They loved it & used the original recording for the show's intro & outro for the entire time the show was on.

Other times, & most often, I work with the guitar & come up with a chord structure. Next, I try to find a whistleable melody to fit the chords. To me, if you can whistle a melody, ppl will remember it. I don't always succeed, but it does keep me trying to stay away from the "guitar lick melodic lines." Often, my verses will end up in that category in spite of my attempts to avoid it, but then the chorus will sing out with a strong line, & it saves the piece for me.

As I am an acoustic player, first (& not really all that good at it), I find that if I'm shooting for a lively song, it ends up being kinda jingly-jangly as I pound upon the strings with a fast strum. The quieter stuff seems to be my stronger point, & I can put in more colorful playing with that than I can the faster tempos.

Lots of my stuff could be seen as "sneaky." I put in odd little changes that drive ppl crazy when I'm teaching a song. You hafta know where you are in the piece, more often than not, or you'll miss something important that you can't make up for. There's often a little surprize here or there that's meant, I guess, to keep me interested, &, hopefully, the audience as well. That's what I've been told, anyway. I don't always follow the v/c/v/c/b/c format, though, so those little changes are necessary in my mind, to keep the thing working for me.

At my age, I feel that all my music comes from subliminal unconscious plagiarism.

Colors for me it comes from all sorts of angles.

Someone may say a phrase that sticks in my head and I put a melody to it. Or I may be playing the guitar and come up with a cool riff, or at least they seem cool to me at the time. I may write some lyrics, then put them to music or write some music and then put words to it.

Writing this I am kicking myself cause the other night I sat down with my acoustic for a few minutes and had this really neat little ditty going with a couple of lines. Ussually I will turn on the recorder in my phone and record what I have going on and then listen later. I had left my phone in the other room charging and didnt lay it down and I totally forgot it. It may not have been that good, but I say this if you are a musician and get an idea good or bad, always have some way to save it. Phones are cool cause you can record about 3 minutes voice notes on mine, which is all I need to store a idea.

I write on acoustic, electric, bass and sometimes just from a vocal angle. I dotn want to limit how a song happens.

I have taken a different approach to composing originals by developing a melody first and then writing the chords, progressions and motifs around the melody.

For a long time, I would do the reverse where I write the chords and progressions at first and then find a melody to go with it. I think that was easier but not better. In many ways I thought this approach was causing me to de-evolve musically.

Writing the melody first releases me from the restriction and boundaries of having to stay in a linear progression because a melody can relate to different keys. There is a chance that an artist can find several progressions to fit the melody and connect them for key changes. There are so many posibilities with this approach.

Melodies come to me in the most unsuspecting times like in the shower or in the middle of the night in bed. Usually at times where my instrument is nowhere near me. lol

Yeah, JW, I am finding I have my Zoom H2 handy at all times now. Moving into my own house has made a huge difference, I think, in terms of writing. I have my acoustic nearby at all times, and my H2, and while I'm waiting for a meal to finish cooking, or whatever, I pick up my acoustic and start noodling. And lately, all sorts of stuff has struck me. Well, the H2 is right there, so I just turn it on and get the idea down.

I've been so happy to have that H2... that thing has captured so much stuff in the last month; just tons of stuff I would have easily forgotten about.

Colors, I have the zoom H2 also, found it on a subway train. I've used it to record my live performance and the quality is very good.

At my age, I feel that all my music comes from subliminal unconscious plagiarism.

Lmao! I just started writing my own stuff, dont have a "method" yet, mostly writing down whatever pops in my head at the time, then trying to arrange it so it sounds nice..

Yep, I've done it based on mood evoked.
The song snippet 'letting go' on my profile was a result of some lyrics by sanshouheil that evoked a mood - I just kind of dabbled with chords and progession and let it form to the feeling in my head.
Then I took a couple passes at lead snippets, and left it at that.
I think I originally called it 'sans dream'.

I've written 3 songs with Chemikill so far.

Iceni Fire was jammed out in rehearsal. Dan came up with the main riff and it was built on. I got a vocal melody on the go but I hadn't any idea what the song was going to be about until Damo sent me the music and I decided to write about "Bodecia"

"Rourkes Drift" was Gaz's idea. He decided he wanted a song based on the "ZULU" film so they used a riff from an old chemikill tune and built on that and I worked on lyrics and vocal arrangement.

"Witch" was an idea I had. I explained what I wanted it to be about to Damo and he came up with the music, then I set about with lyrics and vocal arrangement.

When I worked alone, i just strummed something out on guitar then added lyrics. I've never had lyrics worked out before the music.

For me its now the keys sadly. I say sadly because everything before was on Guitar, I don't know whether that even sad, just different.
Generally I'll turn turn on the keyboard and starting playing around with various things. I always get something like but always its just an extract, a fragment.

I suppose that makes me slightly different judging from responses so far although I know one or two others that right bits and then hook them together in a chain almost? Lyrics are almost always last for me. The piece signals the mood, the mood the lyric, then the lyric changes things around.

Funny, someone recently asked me much the same question about some music I had composed for my second-degree blackbelt presentation (I use music for pretty much everything, yes, it's true).

I thought about it.

I pretty much throw a bunch of stuff together as it occurs to me and then start deleting the stuff that isn't working for me until it feels like it's done. Then I only actually finish the stuff I like at the time.

So I never really know what I'm going to come up with.

And I invariably hate it all six months later.

Why?

And I invariably hate it all six months later.

I usually figure out the entire song, music and lyrics, in my head first. Then I sit down with the bass and learn the bass-line, then write the lyrics down. I have no idea about the other parts (guitar, saxophone, drums, etc.) because I don't play any of those instruments. When I show the band what I've got they just add whatever they want and eventually with tweaking we've got a good song. I don't know anything about theory but the songs usually work out quite well. Professionals can add something good to any music. And they usually work much better when left alone and enjoy it better that way as well. Might not be the usual way to write songs but it works for us...