Starting composition,any ideas?

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

I guess everybody have his own way to do it, but it's interesting to hear how kvrists start a composition,i try to find my way of composing,not the 'best' or 'right' way,just what satisfying or at least is interesting enough.
My first steps always are :
1.Basic chord progression and melody (on guitar,then may be translated to synth).
2.Drums and bass section (preliminary,later will be changed for sure)
3.Critical listening and improving of tempo,chords,sounds so on.
4.What more can be done?
Please give some ideas or advise how you make your things,sharing ideas and opinion help all included people to grow up communicating.Thanks

[MMaarrkk]

I don't do much different, but I usually end up spending quite a bit of time just playing. I use a midi keyboard, put on a synth or a digital piano and start playing. Because I use FL, I just end up playing for 10 to 20 minutes and just dump everything I've played and just revisit what I've liked, or if something feels just right, I stop right away and start adding other elements and develop the sound more. Usually, the next step is percussion, drums and anything else that seems necessary and then I move on to further develop the track as is.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Thanks for feedback.It seems topic isn't very interesting for 'best' section' i had desire to start conversation like this,but anyway...so it's very different from my experience if composer can play any instrument and if just 'draw' some notes with the mouse,not that is 100% necessary,if you know theory enough you can make really cool stuff these days without touching ever a real instrument,but it's different point of view,personally i know guys,who had no idea what minor or major is but have really fresh mixing ideas.Cheers

[Passing Bye]

Work pretty much the same way, piano and MIDI keyboard, than preliminary drum kit and bass until I get sense of direction I want to go with everything and start changing and adding new sounds and etc, don't remember last time I started from drums, of course, sometimes I would start differently, maybe some good sound inspire something and I would start building a track around it, but as colleague above said, I would just play and than save best bits and interesting ideas for later on and maybe get inspired with them, I try to do as much as I can on piano, I'm chords and top line guy and until I get something worthy going on, I'm not leaving piano, do as much sections and variations I can, believe that good promising song should sound good played on just piano.

[Boone777]

You could try to compose a melody and then harmonize it for a change. It tends to give results a bit outside of the box.

[Passing Bye]

Absolutely, it's also great to have phone with audio recorder with you to capture sudden inspiration, so much gold in my Voice Memo's, also found having mic ready to go all the time can be really fruitful, I lost so much good ideas because I couldn't find the way to capture them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU8BEMi8UyM

Also beatboxing is pretty cool in my opinion, even if added as layer later on, it's so immediate.

Doing whole MPC/sampling thing could be nice for inspiration too, you just go and record stuff on pads and play with them, even just do it with your voice, without browsing through tons of samples, presets, finding perfect 1176 emulation or whatever useless thing one can do in the middle of creative moment.

Bitwig really gave me kick in good direction, let me do simple and creative stuff fast, I started feeling that labor I put to do simple stuff in my other DAW at the time is taking fun and essence out from my moments of inspiration, I could have my voice played chromatically in mater of seconds and have Drum Machine with anything I want in it and ready to be played in instant with my controller in Bitwig and that blew me away, clip recording and launching approach, browser that is accessible in seconds which can find stuff so quick on the spot, samples, plugins, presets, clips and whatever, it felt fun making music again.

I know some folks are hard into devices that generate chords and stuff, I have mixed feelings about them, can see huge advantage in some live setups, but feel like you are ultimately doing yourself huge disadvantage if you are relying on them for all source of your composing labor, sometimes you do something on accident and that turns out to be it, this is like generating correct thing no matter what you play, but different strokes for different folks, sometimes immediacy of some of that devices can generate tons of new ideas in mater of seconds, worth a try.

[MMaarrkk]

don't remember last time I started from drums, of course, sometimes I would start differently, maybe some good sound inspire something and I would start building a track around it

I think it's also heavily based on the genres people like to work on. Even though I usually don't start with drums myself, a more drum and percussion oriented genres could benefit from starting that way, although that's probably quite obvious. If you like using sampled drums and you find a really punchy snare you like, that could be a very decent starting point.

[MWilson]

I always start with an interesting melody (with or without lyrics). I play it on the piano. Listen to it the next day to see if it's really inspiring to me. Best of luck.

[VELLTONE MUSIC]

Same here,never know what next morning will bring as idea,mood or inspiration.
It's very different to be good player and good composer - some of most interesting stuff i ever did was kind of 'mistakes' and curiosity 'what if' in translation between a guitar part i play and synth notes i write
Drums are definitely last part of composing process,always melody and chords as a start in no particular order,interact each other,always could change some notes or entire mode.
For example i adore Phrygian minor as solo guitar,not very popular in modern music, but for solo guitar sound amazing Cheers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCZezZf9bi0

[fese]

Practically every song I wrote originated by me playing on the guitar, trying to find interesting chord progressions (or sometimes very simple ones) and singing to it. Sometimes without any lyrics, but I usually prefer to write to pre-existing lyrics.
I find that singing is the most immediate way to find good melodies because they, well duh, tend to be “singable” but also translate well to instrumentals, if needed.

I usually do singer songwriter stuff, so it’s probably the natural approach for that style, but even for the couple of times I took part in the “one synth”-challenge here on KVR, I did the composition with guitar and vocals.

I rarely directly record composition ideas, but just play it several times and try to work out a song structure. Then I leave it be. If I don’t remember it the next day, it probably wasn’t very good to begin with.

[Anlon]

Interesting thread.

I usually start by singing, I find that more enjoyable than using a keyboard. In Cubase recording is a breeze and once I find a melody I like, I start building my track around that. I love that part of songwriting: coming up with chords and fill-ins to accompany the song and also working on the lyrics.

What I really really hate is mixing I know a lot of people mix on the fly, but I leave it to the very end. I just hate it so much. If I was rich and famous I’d have a mixing engineer to do that for me.

[MMaarrkk]

What I really really hate is mixing I know a lot of people mix on the fly, but I leave it to the very end. I just hate it so much. If I was rich and famous I’d have a mixing engineer to do that for me.

I don't blame you. Mixing can be a serious task that many people solely specialise in. But I think there's also an important layer of creativity and your unique flavour behind it.

[ramseysounds]

What I really really hate is mixing

Mixing is part of the creative process. How you mix can make or break a track. It should be considered as part of the production process.

[schpaeckulum]

I follow the 'monkey with a typewriter' approach.

[ariston]

Going at it from a creativity POV:
the day before yesterday, I played some guitar while my son played the drums (8 years old, starting out). While we were jamming, he improvised a shit ton of lyrics to a simple but nice melody that he had come up with. The following day, we decided to "compose" the track fully, picking up the leftover ideas from the day before. I got a piece of paper and a pencil ready and fired up the ol' DAW. And then it happened: he froze. He felt that he had to come up with something "worthwhile", now that things had become "serious", and it killed his creativity. Gone was his timing, gone were the lyrics, gone was the playfulness. And it reminded me of something I had observed over time: whenever I TRY to come up with something, it's usually garbage. Whenever I goof off and mess around and just generally have fun, I usually strike gold. So before I even consider chords or melodies or whatever, before I even pick up an instrument, I try to enter that "fun zone" where I'm just goofing off. That can mean anything from banging a rhythm on the table, or taking a shower and doing a Pavarotti or a Robert Plant, or trying to make Acid Wookie Jazz.

tl;dr: Creativity happens when you're being playful. Creativity dies when you try to force it. Try being a conduit rather than a creator.