Having trouble deciding what instrument to start with! any suggestions on this?

[gammagoblinz]

well before i decide to make a song i always just start with the chord progression, lets say its for example this one:

F# G#m C# F#

after that i start adding drums, but after that i cant seem to get any further! i would like to start making the melody already after that but i always end up getting some boring long chords!

how do you make songs?? i know the basic's of music theory..
im trying to make electronica/pop/alternative music! 4/4 and 100-150bpm..

[randyandyvandaman]

Try and derive a melody from a line of lyric. Tap out the rhythm of the lyrics slowly then slightly faster until its all natural. Now that you've got the hook/ melody in your head. Try now and recreate that with your keys/guitar. Play it over and over until it sounds right.

Its a good idea to get your melody first then most of the rest will follow.

Cheers

[asnor]

I've found that working with just a melody and a counter-melody (bass) works well. From there it's easy to come up with chords if I want them, or add a 3rd, or more counter melody to fill out the harmony.

[ahjteam]

I have a drummer background, but I've moved to guitar in the past three years, but I still usually start with getting the rhythm guitar part down. I play some sort of chord progression of the song with a guitar and then I tap the tempo of the song to the metronome and just add some basic kick+snare+hihat loop similiar to the guitar rhythm. Then I duplicate the loop for a bit over the lenght of the song and then I record down the basic rhythm progression. I usually use some sort of colorcoding so I know when to change parts, just in case

The leadmelody is one tricky pony sometimes, because I really suck at figuring out chords (like "A+C+E = A major"), but I know when something sounds good, so I end up sometimes using a lot of odd chords and progressions and harmonies, so it's sometimes hard to figure out the key of the song, but I can hear the melody inside my head sometimes that fits the song. I'm no singer and I really don't have an ear for recognicing exact notes or chords if I hear them (like "ah, that is an Am7 and that vocal melody goes like C E G A").

I can cope them out by playing them on guitar, but that is really time consuming and frustrating, so to overcome this shortcome, I have developed this method to figure out the melodies. I record and sing the melody to a microphone (no need for real words, just something like "da daa da di da dii"), then watch what the notes are with melodyne and if I just sang it way off, I can correct it to the correct one. Then write it down as midi and then record it with guitar or what ever will be the final instrument.