Drew
Forum MVP
Interesting thread idea, thanks.
I guess I have two major things I've been wrestling with lately, and they're both, more or less, related to composition.
1.) Songwriting, in general. I feel like I've gotten out of one rut and into another. The stuff I've been writing lately, when it goes well, sounds more like "me" by far than my last album did, I think, which I'm stoked about - I did some soul searching (promted by seeing Gregory Alan Isakov live in a small venue, who was fucking awesome, but the opening band that I was less taken with at some point in the show made reference to "our lord and savior Tom Waits," who full disclosure I'm also a huge fan of, and it occuring to me that of COURSE someone playing acoustic based indie/folk/whatever music was going to be a huge Tom Waits fan, it tracks perfectly, that was the least surprising thing they COULD have said on stage and it was on me for being a little surprised... and, by extension, it wasn't all that interesting that they were Tom Waits fans, too, because your influences that are in your genre or genres close to you really are pretty predictable, and the things that make you interesting are the influences outside your genre that you wouldn't necessarily expect... like Steven Wilson being a Tom Waits fan and showing that influence here and there with his use of noise and "dirt" in mixes and arrangements, or Opeth being Steven Wilson fans and their use of melody in between the heavy parts... or my dad actually kind of liking Opeth because the vocals remind him of Tom Waits. The inflences you have that DON'T make sense... that's where the fertile ground is. Long tangent, but I feel like I'm finding my voice by thinking less about Joe Satriani or Andy Timmons or John Petruccu, and more about Tom Waits and Gregory Alan Isakov and old minor-key folk songs and the like) between this one and the last and feel like the "sound" is more me. But, at the same time, writers block is back in a big way, and when I do come up with a cool set of chord changes or watnot, I'm having a hard time coming up with melody lines that both sound "interesting" and not-predictable, but also sound musical.
2.) solo writing. I've mostly just improvised. My last album, all the solos were improvised, with a bunch of punching in when an otherwise good improvisation went a little off the rails here or thwre, or I loved the first part of a solo but thought the second should go in another direction, etc. Increasingly, I'm feeling like if I want to write a really GOOD album of instrumental music, with memorable, ear catching solos, that's not gonna cut it. But, 've never really "written" solos before, so it's sort of a long, laborious proicess for me where I just start improvising around on the solo break, doing take after take, listening back, and finding things that work and trying to do more of that. I have no idea if at the end of the process I'll have a solo that I'm going to want to transcribe out and learn note-for-note, or if it's going to be more a "ok, fast lick with this basic contour, resolving to this note, slower line acending like so to here, fast note that needs to respove to this pitch, another fast run starting and stopping with pauses on this note, this note, and this note" and just improvising a little but within a very rigid framework. It's a whole different process for me, though.But, like, no one does shred albums these days were they're playing long improvised solos, and there's probably a reason for that.
2.a.) As a complicating factor, my first album was VERY diatonic - for the most part, I'd start off in a scale or mode, and pretty much stay there. I'm increasingly feeling like diatonic music is kind of a trap, where it's very easy to play Am-F-C-G and stick to A minor and everything's going to sound good and flow really nicely and fit together and you don't have to think much, you can just play... but doing that is a GREAT way to write the same couple songs over and over again, so one of the things I'm truing to do this time is do a lot more non-diatonic writing, where a song doesn't stay in the same key or tonality throughout. The two best peiecs of music I've written so far, I think, one has a minor-key chorus in an otherwise major/mixolydian verse and, well, actually I forgot where the solo ends up, but I think it's basically the relative minor of what would be the major key part if you ignored the occasional mixolydian bits, and the second is pretty diatonic for the most part but has a solo section that's modulating between what's basically C#m and A major (the tonality for the rest of the song), which are two closely related scales (differing in the D/D#) but definitely requires some real paying attention at speed.
Fun stuff to talk about, though.
In general, I've got a lot of hope, and I think the problems I have now are a better set of problems than I was having the last time I worked on an album.
I guess I have two major things I've been wrestling with lately, and they're both, more or less, related to composition.
1.) Songwriting, in general. I feel like I've gotten out of one rut and into another. The stuff I've been writing lately, when it goes well, sounds more like "me" by far than my last album did, I think, which I'm stoked about - I did some soul searching (promted by seeing Gregory Alan Isakov live in a small venue, who was fucking awesome, but the opening band that I was less taken with at some point in the show made reference to "our lord and savior Tom Waits," who full disclosure I'm also a huge fan of, and it occuring to me that of COURSE someone playing acoustic based indie/folk/whatever music was going to be a huge Tom Waits fan, it tracks perfectly, that was the least surprising thing they COULD have said on stage and it was on me for being a little surprised... and, by extension, it wasn't all that interesting that they were Tom Waits fans, too, because your influences that are in your genre or genres close to you really are pretty predictable, and the things that make you interesting are the influences outside your genre that you wouldn't necessarily expect... like Steven Wilson being a Tom Waits fan and showing that influence here and there with his use of noise and "dirt" in mixes and arrangements, or Opeth being Steven Wilson fans and their use of melody in between the heavy parts... or my dad actually kind of liking Opeth because the vocals remind him of Tom Waits. The inflences you have that DON'T make sense... that's where the fertile ground is. Long tangent, but I feel like I'm finding my voice by thinking less about Joe Satriani or Andy Timmons or John Petruccu, and more about Tom Waits and Gregory Alan Isakov and old minor-key folk songs and the like) between this one and the last and feel like the "sound" is more me. But, at the same time, writers block is back in a big way, and when I do come up with a cool set of chord changes or watnot, I'm having a hard time coming up with melody lines that both sound "interesting" and not-predictable, but also sound musical.
2.) solo writing. I've mostly just improvised. My last album, all the solos were improvised, with a bunch of punching in when an otherwise good improvisation went a little off the rails here or thwre, or I loved the first part of a solo but thought the second should go in another direction, etc. Increasingly, I'm feeling like if I want to write a really GOOD album of instrumental music, with memorable, ear catching solos, that's not gonna cut it. But, 've never really "written" solos before, so it's sort of a long, laborious proicess for me where I just start improvising around on the solo break, doing take after take, listening back, and finding things that work and trying to do more of that. I have no idea if at the end of the process I'll have a solo that I'm going to want to transcribe out and learn note-for-note, or if it's going to be more a "ok, fast lick with this basic contour, resolving to this note, slower line acending like so to here, fast note that needs to respove to this pitch, another fast run starting and stopping with pauses on this note, this note, and this note" and just improvising a little but within a very rigid framework. It's a whole different process for me, though.But, like, no one does shred albums these days were they're playing long improvised solos, and there's probably a reason for that.
2.a.) As a complicating factor, my first album was VERY diatonic - for the most part, I'd start off in a scale or mode, and pretty much stay there. I'm increasingly feeling like diatonic music is kind of a trap, where it's very easy to play Am-F-C-G and stick to A minor and everything's going to sound good and flow really nicely and fit together and you don't have to think much, you can just play... but doing that is a GREAT way to write the same couple songs over and over again, so one of the things I'm truing to do this time is do a lot more non-diatonic writing, where a song doesn't stay in the same key or tonality throughout. The two best peiecs of music I've written so far, I think, one has a minor-key chorus in an otherwise major/mixolydian verse and, well, actually I forgot where the solo ends up, but I think it's basically the relative minor of what would be the major key part if you ignored the occasional mixolydian bits, and the second is pretty diatonic for the most part but has a solo section that's modulating between what's basically C#m and A major (the tonality for the rest of the song), which are two closely related scales (differing in the D/D#) but definitely requires some real paying attention at speed.
Fun stuff to talk about, though.
In general, I've got a lot of hope, and I think the problems I have now are a better set of problems than I was having the last time I worked on an album.
