The Legendary Zoltan Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 This is for some research that I'm doing. You're input is greatly appreciated. This question is open to everyone but most importantly, I'd like to hear from guitar players. If you feel like you are a beginner at song-writing right at this moment, then you're reply is pure gold to me and I want to hear it. So what part of writing a song was hardest for you at first? Was it coming up with good original riffs? Or maybe you had a bunch of awesome riffs and couldn't figure out how to string them together. Was it chord progressions? Was it writing lyrics? Was it writing drum parts? I want to know! This is a question about composing so please refrain from talking about EQ, mixing, or mastering issues. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esker Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Harmony is the most dificult thing to use in music. For me is not too dificult to write a melody line but even knowing what harmony theory says all my efforts don't fill the music in a way I fell it like a professional song. Songs everytime sound empty and many times I made something that I enjoyed it was achieved in a lucky way, so knowledge didn't helped much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WillRock Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Making something unique. I'd just end up rewriting some of my favorite tracks without meaning to, which is probably why remixing came so naturally to me. Don't have that issue anymore tho... yes i'm a guitar player, but i'm not sure how that impacts on the question tbh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aster Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 I placed too much credit in the way I thought of how others operated. Call it insecurity or a lack of confidence but my first forays into recording were an experience of me over-questioning the things I made and there were many decent tracks where I'd record and delete media literally hundreds of times to finally erasing the whole project. In the end, the things I posted ended up always being inferior to the middle idea recordings perhaps 10-20 revisions in. So yeah, don't overthink your work and learn to run with ideas that feel above what you believe you can do. To gain more self worth I just took tracks from a member on these forums whom to my tastes believed to have the best music on the whole site and cloned the crap out of their stuff. I placed their track at the top of my project and track by track learned everything I could pick out by ear then reconstructed the whole thing as close as I could to their work. Doing this was fantastic exercise for lots of skill areas. Eventually I reworked these cloned songs with my own ideas of development so I could hear what I would sound like if I could be the best. Oh yeah, buy a yourock midi guitar, I can't do any of my synth solos without it now. DoD swaaag Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esker Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Other bothering thing when writing in previous days is that I had tendency to change notes in one instrument at a time throughout the sections. When I felt happy with a single section I listen to it for a couple more loops and after I got a feeling that something need to change and I just did it in one instrument each time. Needless to say in my beginners times I didn't realize what was melody and what was harmony, I just felt that changes must happen and then I pick up any instrument in the section and write new notes to it. The funny thing in all this stuff is that I came up with songs more often, now that I realized that this is quite a "mistake" to sound professionally I feel obliged to make it right at first glance, and my adventures in composition turned out to be more less frequent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JH Sounds Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Probably the most difficult thing for me was working out lyrics that fit the tone of the writing. For example I'll have a melody I like that has a haunting gloomy feel, but it'd be attached to a placeholder line like "I don't know how that chicken got in here". At the very least I try to keep the early WIP versions to myself until I have a suitable lyric. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noTuX Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 When I decided to try making music, I had absolutely no musical background whatsoever. With that said, I had a really hard time understanding the musical lingo when I received feedback on my work. I constantly had to ask for explanations and examples to understand what I needed to do to get better. Even now, I still don't know much about the technical aspects of music like scales, chords, notes, time signatures, ect., which makes me terrible at giving other feedback on their work and doing collabs. With the experience I've gained so far, I simply know how to make things sound good together, but I couldn't really tell you how I do it. Not knowing how to play any instruments also made things a little more difficult. Now, I'm not saying its absolutely necessary, but it could help. I really wish I learned how to play piano and guitar at an early age when I had more free time to do so. Now, life is much busier and I often find myself too busy to take classes or even pick up a guitar and just pluck on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jnWake Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 When I started I always had trouble with the intros and endings of the songs. I could never get to sound them right... I didn't know (and still don't) much music theory too, but I think it hasn't affected the quality of my stuff too much. I just wish I knew some jazz theory because some of those chord progressions are so cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cash Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 I'm still a beginner. My biggest issue right now is writing transitions. I make some interesting arrangements, but I have a hard time connecting the parts together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gollgagh Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Probably the most difficult thing for me was working out lyrics that fit the tone of the writing. For example I'll have a melody I like that has a haunting gloomy feel, but it'd be attached to a placeholder line like "I don't know how that chicken got in here". At the very least I try to keep the early WIP versions to myself until I have a suitable lyric. man, I would love to hear those Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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