Composing and Songwriting

[Osorio]

Somewhat simple question: How do you go about writing your stuff? Do you play then just write? Do you write and then play? Do you care about scales and modes? Do you write everything at once or you try to keep a line of thought on one or two instruments until you have a piece and then write the rest of the stuff?

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This is just a huge wall of text to contextualize my question and give out my particular answer to my own problem, you don’t need to bother with it.

I’m currently 23 and I have been playing guitar and piano on and off since I was about 14. When I was 17 I was a musical theory MONSTER, I used to compose with just a blank sheet music in front of me. I would write a key, a series of modes I wanted to use and the structure of the song (dynamics, passages, mood changes and how I was going to employ the modes I wanted), I knew exactly how long it would end up being, and after I had it all “figured out” I would just “fill in the blanks” with the actual notes (or just improvise the shit all over it following my own instructions). Then I would learn it and eventually record it. It was one WEIRD writing process (according to pretty much every other musician I have ever met) and it generated some of the stuff I’m most proud of.

Now, I’m a different person living a different life and I can’t seem to be able to write like that anymore. I’m having bucket loads of trouble writing at all, really. Which is why I’m creating this thread, I wanted to know what works for you guys and gals. I’m absolutely lost in this writing process.
I’m apply for Music University next year, and I intend to major in Composing, so this is feel of loss is ever more taunting to me. Of course, on one hand all my problems with this could be solved by what I will learn during my education, but even so, it is frustrating that I will be practicing my playing throughout the year and I can’t seem to write anything worth of using the technical prowess I’m amassing.

 

[Winspear]

That sounds like a really cool writing process. I'd love to be able to do that. Sounds like something that orchestral composers would do more. I guess if you're a theory boss it would work.

I just play and write around riffs I come up with. I wish I knew theory because it would make composing extra parts much easier. I also have a bunch of conceptual ideas I'd love to make into songs and your method would be great for that.

I don't care about scales or modes until I'm trying to write a melody over a complex riff. I had one very chromatic riff a few years ago that I was trying to write a solo over. I broke it down into chunks that fit into scales, then wrote that little bit of the solo using said scale, before moving onto the next. It worked very well and came out very melodic.

 

[TimSE]

Man, that is a bizzare way of writing!

My way is entirely spontaneous. Really frustrating a lot of the time. 9/10 time i come up with something acoustically/clean and if it catches my ear i record it. then add to it. and add to it. and add some more! and usually before i know it, iv got a song done and an entire day has disappeared.

I like coming up with something simple and adding a leadline with clean guitars over the top and harmonizing the shizz out of everything

 

[SirMyghin]

The way you used to write is kind of what I do, except I always start from somewhere ( a seed, and idea). I don't really 'fill in the blanks', but I do set out some harmonic ideas I would like to use, if they fit anyway. I do end up having to learn it all after the fact though.

Keys and modes aren't something I actively think about albeit, I let modal ideas sort of happen, opposed to forcing them. That is to say I don't separate key and modes from eachother, it is all about feel changes for me, whether that implies modulation or not.

I am very odd in I don't know what a song is about, consciously, until after I have written it and think on what I am actually trying to say. Most people start with an idea, I start with something typically quite intangible, like a feeling or mood setting.

Generally only 1 section is going to come as the 'seed', or natural bit that just happens. The rest I extrapolate, contrast, etc.

 

[Skyblue]

I'm really not methodic in my way of writing. I simply come up with ideas, and then sit and work on them- see what fits, harmony wise, or melody wise, or rhythm wise. whenever I get stuck, I'm trying to use some theory to help fill in the blanks, so to say. It does lead to stuff not feeling coherent at times, which is definitely a problem...
My main problem is that I have TONS of ideas in my head, but a lot of them I have absolutely no idea how to bring to the paper. you have no idea how many times I'm hearing full orchestra pieces in my head, and I'l be damned if I can even start trying writing that stuff done.

Do you think you can spot the location of your composing problem? Is it like what I described- having ideas, but you can't get them out? Or is it getting stuck with existing ideas? I think identifying the problem might help you in your way to solve it.

 

[Explorer]

This guy.

I always have it in my pocket, and when something occurs to me, either a melodic line, a chord progression, two lines which intertwine harmonically, a set of lyrics, it gets recorded.

If it's a new set of lyrics (including melody and rhythm) sparked by a known song or a bit of music in a movie, I also make a note of what it was, and (if a movie) when it happened, so I can find a DVD and remember the full context.

When not at work, I'll listen to what I've recorded and sort it out into chunks.
Once I have the chunks, then I might see where the melody goes, or the chord progression, or whatever.

The recorder is also great when I look for just thematic inspiration. Books are very evocative, and when I was in Barnes and Noble the other day, I came out with a huge amount of possible song titles.

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I might also be inspired by a chord progression I'm toying with, or a bassline.

One of the reasons I like composing away from any instruments is that I don't fall into familiar patterns. I can easily break out of vertical vox limitations later, once I have the basic ideas down.

 

[Guitarchitect]

One of my favorite quotes about composition came from Vinny Golia (who's probably written a thousand tunes or so and plays dozens of instruments at a virtuoso level).

He said the difference between composition and improvisation is time. The process for getting to the end result is the same, it's just that when you're improvising you have 5 minutes to make 5 minutes of music and in composing you have whatever time you take for those 5 minutes.

I think it was Stravinsky's autobiography where he talked about how there was one point where he would face paralysis when he sat down at the piano to write because he was faced with so many options that he was overwhelmed. It was only when he put a key and time signature on a piece of staff paper that he could work within that limitation and start getting down to the writing.

For myself, it's all about working within limitations. Starting with a riff or a chord, or a scale and determining that I'm going to make something out of that. Deadlines are a big plus as well. If I have to have a tune ready by the next rehearsal - that's going to limit the scope of what I'm trying to do.

Just my $.02. One other thing. I haven't used them but I know that Line 6 has that backtrack product. Basically you just plug a cable into it and then an out into your rig. It's just always recording but you can mark something that you like and then dump it as a wav file. I think new they're like $200 but I've seen them used at GC for $60. If I see another one I might just grab it for this reason.

It's also what experience you have as well. You really do have to learn a bunch of other people's songs to start to sort out the compositional techniques that work for you. The more diverse music you really listen to - the more you'll have to draw from.

I hope that helps!

 

[Mr. Big Noodles]

At the OP:

That's how I write when I need to get something done really quickly, so I understand where you're coming from. I've found that my ability to do that, too, has deteriorated from when I started composing like that, and I've only been able to revive it recently by paying more attention to certain things. For me, I would also impose a form before I wrote. Then, I make my phrases longer than I think they should be. Somebody once said that composition is the art of limitation, and this is definitely an example of that: make parameters for yourself, then go with it. Also, composition is something you need to practice, so I suggest you just try to turn out as much as you can without worrying about the outcome, but try to make it fit a form and a harmonic scheme. This way, you'll develop a sense of what works and what doesn't work and you can then use that knowledge when you want to compose more seriously.

 

[thedarkoceans]

MY ONLY WAY TO COMPOSE: creating drum beats.i know it's fucking odd,but i imagine cool beats in my head,and i put guitar in them.I guess i'll download a program for programming drums,since i really want to record this.

 

[Dayn]

I usually get an idea, and try to think about how it sounds overall. How I get those ideas is varied: small chord progression; small melody; awesome rhythmic idea, et cetera... But my biggest failing is in not sticking to a form and just leaving the end open, ready for new passages. That just gets me stuck more than anything.

So what I do, in ideal circumstances, is:

• Get an idea;
• Create a skeleton of the entire structure;
• Flesh it out;
• Alter the skeleton if need be;
• Really fill it out;
• Add spices;
• Polish;
• Languish because I can't record much yet.

 

[Varcolac]

I often write with a blank sheet in front of me, though it's more often a blank project in Sibelius or Guitar Pro.

I'm with Explorer on the pocket recorder thing. I think Stevie Wonder sang the hook for one of his hits into his own answering machine. Most of my writing is done in my head, hummed into my phone's recorder, and made sense of later. I sometimes have a story to tell with music, and for that I'll diagram it all out with the peaks and tension and releases before I start piecing things together. Other times I come up with a cool riff and it just seems to flow from there. I think it's very important to be comfortable composing and improvising in a variety of different styles. All approaches to writing feed back into each other, and if you exercise your improvisational "hey that's a cool riff" muscles as well as your "modulate, recapitulate, d.s. al coda" ones, the results will be much improved.

 

[Solodini]

I used to do the whole paper, pen, brain thing around 1st year of uni but slipped out of the habit, for whatever reason. My approach has always been very scientific, in that I've learned what intervals I like in what combinations and what rhythmic devices I like so I then think about what I've written a lot of lately and generally try to do something different, just to keep my brain sharp on writing different sorts of thing.

If I've been doing downbeat stuff then I'll try to do something funky and bouncy. If I've done sad sounding stuff then I'll try to do something happier, possibly using the same scales and chords but reappropriating them to give different implications. Sometimes that won't work but it can be an interesting experiment.

I generally listen out for chords or rhythmic figures which I like and analyse them so I can build similar things without just copying that chord or plugging in the same 2 beats into a bar of my own music.

That way, I can sit down and know what devices I can use to create the sort of thing I'm looking for and create a starting point without inspiration. It may turn out terribly but, as SW and others have said, you need to practise composition to know what works so mess around and get your process of elimination out of the way while you're not under pressure.

 

[Mr. Big Noodles]

I used to do the whole paper, pen, brain thing around 1st year of uni but slipped out of the habit, for whatever reason. My approach has always been very scientific, in that I've learned what intervals I like in what combinations and what rhythmic devices I like so I then think about what I've written a lot of lately and generally try to do something different, just to keep my brain sharp on writing different sorts of thing.

If I've been doing downbeat stuff then I'll try to do something funky and bouncy. If I've done sad sounding stuff then I'll try to do something happier, possibly using the same scales and chords but reappropriating them to give different implications. Sometimes that won't work but it can be an interesting experiment.

A big +1 to this. In my composition class this semester, the comment I kept hearing from the professor was that everybody's pieces were too static. It was kind of funny, since I mocked people in my class for consistently describing their pieces at the beginning of the semester (when we were studying Debussy) by saying "Um, it uses a whole tone scale and a pentatonic scale, and it sounds mysterious," and they were saying the exact same thing for the final project. (Meanwhile, this is the climax of my final piece. Fuck tonality.) I wish he had elaborated on stasis and perhaps delved into how to prevent it, but I believe that the core of the problem is staying within your comfort zone. Whenever you can, try to familiarize yourself with different ideas. Make an effort to use a particular scale, harmony, rhythm, tempo, form, or range.

My bandmate pointed out the other week that everything we've written so far is basically the same tempo, so you can bet your buns that I'm going to write a little more adventurously, tempo-wise, for a while. I've said it here before that musicians, composers especially, have to develop the skill of self-criticism. It's hard to know what you don't have, but it's equally difficult to place what you do have. The challenge for us is to show the depth of our ability and to expand that to encompass as great a range of emotion as our mind will allow us, if not more.

 

[McCap]

I think it was Stravinsky's autobiography where he talked about how there was one point where he would face paralysis when he sat down at the piano to write because he was faced with so many options that he was overwhelmed.

Exactly this happens to me if I start from zero!

So I normally wait for inspiration to come...and it may come in various ways:
1. I hear a song I like and want to copy the general vibe.
2. I noodle around and some part really speaks to me.
3. I get theoretical ideas just sitting around and want to try them out.
4. I hear songs and get a general arangement idea I want to try out.
5. I have lyrics and try to write something around them.
6. I have someone tell me what they like to hear and try to write it (had this for theater)
7. I have a band member come up with a cool part.

So basically for me it's as SirMyghin said, I need a seed, a starting point.
Knowing that I can also set myself starting points, like a certain arrangement type I want to try out...

 

[SirMyghin]

^^

Your list is much more succinct than mind, but it seems we think somewhat alike. You album is very cool, btw.

 

[Osorio]

I have been meaning to reply to this thread for a while now, but my internet sucked balls and died on me... anyway: Huge post, lots of quotations... Sorry.

“That sounds like a really cool writing process. I'd love to be able to do that. Sounds like something that orchestral composers would do more. I guess if you're a theory boss it would work.”

When I was a little kid, I did choir on my school, and the regent was a guy that is now a teacher on the University I’m applying to (the university in question is an EXTREMELY conservative place). I remember him telling me, I was about 9, that I needed to be able to hear music from the paper. I guess that was what inspired me to write like that in the end of the line.
I also ALWAYS had difficulty discerning pitch. I have no idea what a A or C is in the middle of a melody, I just can’t spot them. But I can define a tonal center pretty quickly and I write relatively. So even if I don’t know how it will effectively sound, by the intervals, I always knew how it will be perceived by the brain.

“Keys and modes aren't something I actively think about albeit, I let modal ideas sort of happen, opposed to forcing them. That is to say I don't separate key and modes from each other, it is all about feel changes for me, whether that implies modulation or not.”

What freaks me out is that I have absolutely forgotten how to use modes effectively. I knew, I could infer feelings through modal changes. I effectively knew what the Dorian mode was and how I could use it, but I can’t anymore. I don’t even know why, it just doesn’t sound as good as it used to. I have either become EXTREMELY more critical or I have really forgotten something absolutely essential which I can’t put my finger on.

“Do you think you can spot the location of your composing problem? Is it like what I described- having ideas, but you can't get them out? Or is it getting stuck with existing ideas? I think identifying the problem might help you in your way to solve it.”

I think it is kinda all over the place. Musically speaking, I believe I need to learn to use rhythm more effectively, or at all. Most of the time, I just play straight eight-notes with various dynamic changes to “imply” rests but I never really do rest. And as much as I absolutely hate the word, I might be under some kind of “block”. I used to write articles regarding games and music and I haven’t been able to write at all for a while now as well.

On a general note, I'm loving what I'm reading here, lot of good ideas and "methodologies". I did the whole "I want to try this that I have never tried before" thing for such a long time, but I believe I was not a very good student when I did it, and it ended up blocking me quite bad at the time. I couldn't write anything that I didn't hate.
For a while I decided the keys of my songs by playing dice. I had some d12 die from my RPG days and I used them for key changes and experimentation with atonality. Fun stuff, not very pleasing results though.

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A quick edit:
Now that I'm studying more seriously, I'm trying to stay as far away from notation software as I can, or at least disable "play during edit" functions. I noticed I have been relying a lot on the "play" function to know how it sounds instead of reading, or even better, KNOWING what I am writing. That put a serious dent on my composing skills, I believe.

 

[Grimbold]

]
I’m currently 23 and I have been playing guitar and piano on and off since I was about 14. When I was 17 I was a musical theory MONSTER, I used to compose with just a blank sheet music in front of me. I would write a key, a series of modes I wanted to use and the structure of the song (dynamics, passages, mood changes and how I was going to employ the modes I wanted), I knew exactly how long it would end up being, and after I had it all “figured out” I would just “fill in the blanks” with the actual notes (or just improvise the shit all over it following my own instructions). Then I would learn it and eventually record it. It was one WEIRD writing process (according to pretty much every other musician I have ever met) and it generated some of the stuff I’m most proud of.

thats pretty much how i do my solos
it makes them easier to memorize...

as for riffs and stuff i just say

hmm havent written a mixolydian song in a while
then i miss around with mixolydian and come up with a riff and use that as the basis of my song

 

[Repner]

The way you described your writing process sounds exactly like the way I hope to write some day.

What works for me? Nothing! I have had constant writers block for years. I'm hoping learning to write and use theory can help me

 

[Trespass]

I have a Flip cam that I'll record spontaneous ideas on. The benefit of video is great as well. Since I do a lot on piano, I keep a fairly universal Midi to USB cord with my laptop (which sadly goes everywhere with me). Pretty much all modern keyboards have a midi out I can hook into.

Like others in this thread, I also enjoy writing from a blank sheet. It helps organize my ideas much more effectively, and see the structural relationships between my progressions. In the past, my writing has been very "stream of consciousness"-y, and this method definitely helps ground in my perspective.

 

[Tyler]

You sound like you're possibly trying too hard to write, just let it come to you. If you're stressed out by the process then take a break and come back to it later, or play another instrument and it could possibly spark an idea. I noticed I got better at writing guitar parts after writing orchestra symphonies.