Making tunes is just plain difficult...

[eLawnMust]

I know not this 'tunes' of which you speak.

I don't sing, so they ain't "songs".

I don't sing either but I cuss & grunt... Those can easily be placed within a tune...

What are you having a problem with?... Give me a melody & what kinda feel & I'll generate chords for it, then you can drum it... Or give me chords & I'll generate a melody, I don't require any credit...

[BONES]

That sounds like a very ordered way of doing things. I prefer a much more organic approach.

Seriously, making tunes is very difficult. I don't know what else to say, except that it's kicking my butt.

I've never really found it so, although I've gone through several dry spells over the years, one that lasted the best part of a decade. It never worried me, though, I knew it was just a loss of interest, not ability or anything else. It definitely can require a lot of work, which I don't enjoy, but I'd never describe it as "hard" work.

As I said above, I prefer an organic approach. I'll play around with an instrument or two and, sooner or later, something useful will drop into my lap. Usually that's the hard part over and the boring part can begin. We try not to be too cookie-cutter in our arrangements but I pretty much always work with some kind of verse/chorus structure. Beyond that, though, anything goes.

You're lucky you don't sing because I find writing lyrics far and away the hardest part of the process, which is why I am more than happy to let generative AI give me as much assistance as it can. Doing so has probably halved the time it has taken us to get our new album finished and has definitely improved the quality over the shit I normally come up with on my own. Maybe you could find inspiration by playing around with some of the music-making AIs?

When we decided to ditch a piece we'd being trying to get into shape for our last album, I came up with a replacement song in a morning by playing around with a "kit" I'd bought from Reveal Sound. It was an "EBM" kit, which I'd thought would just be Spire presets but it contained drum samples and MIDI files. I played around with some of the MIDI and had something going fairly quickly. Given how the demos sounded, I'll guarantee it wasn't what the kit's creator had in mind and I doubt he'd recognise it as based on his work by the time we'd finished it. So maybe that might be something you could look into to get you going? You don't have to be proud of it (although that particular song is one of my bandmate's faves on that album) but it might get your creative juices flowing again.

My final "maybe" is that maybe you could simplify your process. Just work on the big picture stuff and leave the minutiae for another time. That's how I tend to work. e.g. Most of the time I'll do 90% of a song with just a 4/4 kick and fill out the drum arrangement when everything else is finished (because I don't care much about drums).

OK, I just thought of another one - maybe you could work on some cover versions for a while, just to get back into the groove of doing something? I started working on 80s covers during COVID lockdowns and it's ended up being a whole side-project for me now. In fact, I recently split if off into two side-projects because I've got so many different songs done now. I start with MIDI files, which I don't see as anything more than digital sheet music, so I don't have to work anything out from scratch. These days, whenever I get sick of working on NOVAkILL stuff, I'll fire up some of the covers and just rehearse them for a few days before getting back into the "important" work. It makes a good palette cleanser for me.

[mjolnir]

@BONES: Yeah, covers might be a good idea. Thanks

[BertKoor]

Has it ever been easier to make "tunes"?

^ this.

[BONES]

Has it ever been easier to make "tunes"?

I don't see that it's any easier to get started. If anything, I was way more prolific in the 80s than I am today. I was writing as many as 20 songs a year back then, now it's two or three every couple of years.

What has changed is the ability and ease of finishing things to a very high standard. The actual song-writing process, though, is pretty much how it always was - play around on a keyboard or in a sequencer until you find something with legs, then tease out an arrangement, write some lyrics and you're done.

[mjolnir]

@BONES:

I too was more productive when I was younger.
I was really really busy in the 90s. My sound quality wasn't very good, but my musical ideas were much better than recently.
I had a lot of health problems that ended up interfering. And one of my only backup copies of my main tunes was stolen around 2014 right after I made some really good tunes. I've tried to just "get over it" and make new tunes, but the ideas just don't flow as fast as they used to. Also, I have different gear and new health problems.

Sometimes I just feel like quitting.

[BONES]

I'm lucky - my band-mate is mostly our ideas man. He sends me stuff, sometimes almost finished and sometimes just a few bars, and my job is to turn it in to a song, if we think it's worth the effort. When we started it was the other way around. On the first two albums, all but two songs on each are mine, whereas since then it has been exactly the opposite - all but two songs are his. The good thing about it, though, is I don't think anyone could pick which were which.

I think I used to have more song ideas because I needed to. In the 80s I was a solo artist so if I didn't write songs I wouldn't have anything to perform. These days I can still pull something out of my arse when we need it but the way I usually work now doesn't really lend itself to new ideas.

Is there anyone you could work with? The way I got out of my 10 year slump was to start meeting up and rehearsing every week. For years we'd do our own practice/rehearsals and only meet up once or twice before a gig to make sure we were on the same page. But since 2017, when we were gearing up to go to Germany for the second time, we've been getting together every week and it's made a huge difference to everything, really. It took us 13 years to get from album 1 to album 4 but we've pumped out 5, 6 and 7 in less than 5 years since we started weekly rehearsals. More importantly, those three are a quantum leap up from the earlier material in pretty much every way - better songs, better production and better performances.

[ROTMetro]

I don't really have anyone to play with anymore. Sometimes I'll go on youtube and create along with people that have videos of them laying down tracks. From simple how to videos like



to more advanced. Illangelo (you might know him from his work with The Weeknd) is currently making songs on youtube and I follow along and noodle around in sync with what he's does.



Or some others:



Lenno on there can be fun.

[mjolnir]

The styles of music I do aren't really communal, I mean, I'm not in a rock band, nor a jazz band, nor a jamm band, nor an orchestra or anything like that. The type of music I do is usually just done by one person. And that's fine. Most people can't relate anyhow. And I'm not doing lyrics because my music isn't centred on words.

But thanks for the brainstorming anyhow.

I just have to keep trying.
There's no way around that.
It's just hard work.

[ROTMetro]

I don't write scales, but I warm up by playing scales. You don't have to mess around with those things to produce something, just to have fun/spark creativity. You already have the talent/skills so it's not for that, it's just a way to have a no-stakes mess around music sesh.

[funky lime]

Is there anyone you could work with? The way I got out of my 10 year slump was to start meeting up and rehearsing every week.

This, so much this! I know it's cool to be self-sufficient and wear all the hats and do it all for yourself first and foremost, but humans are communal creatures. Even as an anxious, socially-awkward person, I get so much more done when there's someone else involved in any capacity at all. Whether it's bouncing ideas off of each other, holding each other accountable, or even just having an audience, having another person involved (even remotely/virtually) has always been a huge boon to my productivity.

So far, the most musically prolific periods of my life have been when I:
a) was in a band or had a music-making partner
b) regularly had an audience (gigs, busking, open mics, etc)
c) am a friendly competition where some friend(s) and I have a time limit (sometimes a very strict one) to make a song, and hold each other to it
d) had someone in my life i wanted to impress
e) was surrounded by creative people (artists, musicians, writers, weirdos, etc)

The common theme is that they all involved other people, even if I wasn't necessarily making music with them. Sitting alone in my room for too long, sure I have everything i need and no distractions, but the nihilism starts to creep in after a time. "Happiness is only real when shared" or something like that. Your mileage may vary of course.

[ROTMetro]

Was matching this and thought of you. Around 16:00 he covers how much Blue Monday takes from other songs non-genre/style songs.

[BONES]

I know it's cool to be self-sufficient and wear all the hats and do it all for yourself first and foremost

Is it? It always struck me as kinda sad that your ego might need to be propped up like that. I only ever did it out of necessity, first because I was moving around all the time with the Army and then because I couldn't find anyone whose musical taste even remotely aligned with my own. But I used to answer ads for "keyboard player wanted" but nothing ever came of any of it. It turned out I was happier playing my style of music on my own than having to compromise to be in a band.

And hey, don't underestimate the value or validity of an appropriate dose of nihilism.

[30pinsimms]

Songwriting is a technical "skill". It's not supposed to be easy. Remodeling a kitchen is hard if you're a newb but is easy after your 100th job.

[mjolnir]

Songwriting is a technical "skill". It's not supposed to be easy. Remodeling a kitchen is hard if you're a newb but is easy after your 100th job.

not after arthritis sets in LOL