General Music Chat

I just wrote a song called She talks in her sleep / "Incubus" that began about a woman talking in her sleep. Somehow, right after the first verse, it changed to her being tempted by a mythical spirit being and being eager to meet him every night. Generally I try to keep a song on track with the original inspiration but sometimes they do get a mind of their own.

How many of you find yourself writing something that you had really not planned to as the song took over?

Absolutely brother.

I started on that Zombie multi-media thing and as soon as I had a first draft, it told me i had it all wrong and start on the rewrite.

My vocalist pal was laughing yesterday when I told her I was having trouble figuring out how this one song wanted to be played - and she said, 'But you wrote it!' Well- kinda...

Glad to hear I'm not the only one!

cheers
Talbot

I'm far from a prolific writer, but just about everything I've ever written has just popped into my head from who knows where, and usually ends up almost completely different than it started.

Usually I can't think up lyrics if you stuck a gun to my head, so it's mostly instrumentals but around 3 or 4 years ago a chord progression developed and a line popped into my head, so I grabbed pen and paper. 30 minutes later a complete song was there, it only resembled what it started out being because it was the same acoustic guitar chord progression to start off with...

Silhouette Of A Daydream started off as a simple riff I kept doing trying to work with open G a little more. About 2 or 3 weeks of doodling with this little riff and one day it grew a mind of its own and developed into a song. A couple of months later I completely changed one section, only a couple of seconds, but it changed the entire character of the song.

So yeah basically everything I do, what little of it there is, pretty much has a mind of its own.

We're pretty blessed when you think about it.

Talbot

The songs I have written all have different inspiration and methods of being written. Usually I come up with an idea and follow the song. One song on my player I turned on the recorder with no idea at all and started playing. Recorded all the music and then wrote the words to fit. Being frustrated with the politics of this nation out popped a song called "In My Mind" I actually wrote it in my mind on the way to work stuck in this God awful Houston Traffic on the Gulf Freeway LOL!

Hey Slacker, I love the song its in my iTunes now

About half my songs stay in the same vein they started.
The other half metamorphosize over time.
I have one song where the music came to me at 2 different times.
I had the first part written, and it was the 'hook.' I just recorded it, and set it aside.
Then about 3-5 years later I listened to it again; it was pretty good.
So I sat down with my guitar and Found a great set of chords for the verse.
By then it was begging for lyrics, so I was adding them and changing them every week or two.
.
The added music of the song is distinctly different then the original, first half of the song.
The lyrics kept the same theme throughout, though.

I also have a folder of uncompleted songs that I suppose will get completed eventually. Sometimes I get a great verse, then nothing. I won't fight it, instead I file it.

I've got a folder of lyrics unused, too. Every so often I'll be noodling around on guitar, come up with some decent patterns, then I'll go hunting in the folder to see if any lyrics fit it.
Other times, a song will write itself - lyrics an dmusic come togehter with no effort (to start, anyway) and one par tafter another will just flow together as if I wasn't writing it, just channeling it from a higher place.

Mine is a file called "spare lyrics." Since I've been working on a larger than usual project with lots of new music I used up the high end of that file.

I finally found a place for my favorite all time lyric, "I stick pins in myself - and somewhere, a doll is screaming!"

I just throw everything in there and if I don't like it today I might find a use for it tomorrow.

In my conceit I take anything that stubbornly refuses to be a song or part of one - and deem it a poem!

Talbot

Are you talking your spare lyrics file or your actual songs? It would seem a waste if the former - natural if the latter.

Talbot

I am up in the air over this one, I have read rock magazine articles citing David Bowie's "Let's Dance" album in which Bowie speaks about song ideas in his head, concerning certain tunes, were nowhere near the final result of some of the tunes on Let's Dance once finalized.. Nile Rodgers the best producer in the biz, caused much of that, probably quite an improvement relative to Bowie's "ideas"