I am not getting better... (songwriting)

[mellotronaut]

@Mellotron: unfortunately no, how to find please? I'm curious...

PS: IMHO a lot of farts and burps often are nice than a lot of songs...

Anyway to do\produce Music should be a pleasure

thank you very much, Turello!

so you see, a lot of farty blast from damello

[Nyrv]

WillNeighbour, maybe this'll help a bit. http://vimeo.com/85040589

In a nutshell you have finish a lot of crap to get to the good stuff but watch it.

[Nyrv]

WillNeighbour, maybe this'll help a bit. http://vimeo.com/85040589

In a nutshell you have finish a lot of crap to get to the good stuff but watch it.

Love it.

Going back a bit further. George Gershwin famously said "I write a song every day just to get the bad ones out of my system"

In either case there is a process for improvement. Some ideas you might want to consider

1) Change Keys, change instruments, change subject matter... Whatever it is that currently defines the way you write. Change it. break something and be purely creative for a piece.
2) Write all the time
3) Ask yourself "what do I have to say?" - Write what you believe. what you want others to understand. Reach inside and find your voice.
4) Ask yourself "who can I speak for?" When your voice is quite. Look around. Who do you see that has a story worth telling musically. Put yourself emotionally in that persons shoes.
5) Set a bunch of arbitrary limitations around a particular project. Practice working in those limitations.
6) Empathy
7) Anger
8 ) Triumph

Remember that in art, science serves emotion.

[ZenPunkHippy]

Musikmachine, I feel like I saw that somewhere! Very inspiring indeed, however. I don't have any problem with putting in work, part of me (and I think everyone can sort of relate when they're beginners) just wants to see glimpses of hope...

Thank you though!

That's what he's saying; if you feel that your not getting better you will eventually by finishing a lot of work; you'll close the gap on the music your making at that stage and the music you're aspiring to. Practise.

I think I can relate to what the OP is saying.

The exciting part of starting a new track is writing the initial melody, riff, soundscape etc. - the bit that people listening to the music will identify with the most.

What comes next is the arrangement, and that can be quite a mechanical process.

More that once I've heard "pro" producers say "once the initial melody is done, the song basically writes itself".

Which sounds very mechanical ... and quite dull ... intros, build-ups, breakdowns etc.

The point musikmachine makes is that this process becomes a lot easier if you just get on with it, and do it often enough that you don't have to panic about it when the times comes to get it done.

That's my take on the situation anyway ...

Peace,
Andy.

[SummerLungs]

3) Ask yourself "what do I have to say?" - Write what you believe. what you want others to understand. Reach inside and find your voice.
4) Ask yourself "who can I speak for?" When your voice is quite. Look around. Who do you see that has a story worth telling musically. Put yourself emotionally in that persons shoes.

This is the answer to the question, IMO. I'll elucidate a little further...I first started trying to write music at age 14 or 15 and didn't write a single good thing until I was 22. During those seven years I basically gave up at one point; then I got a very boring job as a janitor. I had to contend with many long hours of floor mopping; to occupy my mind, I started writing songs in my head. It still took years after this point, but this is where it began for me.

I'm sharing this because I think it contains a valuable lesson. When I was 14 I wanted to be a musician because of: sex, fame, money, validation, vindication. For me, those aren't legitimate goals for being a musician. None of those are about music. It's like becoming a cop just so you can legally beat people up; eventually, life will call you out and you will fall fast and far.

The second time, it began as a hobby; it began and ended for me. So, to go a little further with what nyrv had to say, i asked myself what I had to say *to myself*. From that genesis I've been able to think more in terms of the audience and write music gunning for certain ears, but primarily I do it for me, and I do it because I don't want to/am not able to do anything else.

so yeah, tl;dr: who are you? Why are you?

[Turello]

@Mellotronaut: WTF a Damello???

I reminds some friend of mine put this my (fart?) instrumental song, born suddenly in a strange morning after a tormented sleeples night...



not my music style (some people said me this is lounge music but i'm ignorant on the subject\genre), I've just start my daw, placed the mics and recorderd it...

[AudioPhile2]

You have to listen to great music to make great music. Then in the creative process you start unconsciously evoking your influences. This is easier to do when you're playing an instrument and singing.

When you play other people's songs you will, without realizing it, memorize things like form, rhythm, even the smallest, poignant nuances. Then they come out at the right time (if you're lucky) while you're working your own song out. This is not the same as straight up copying another song. Style means blending your influences in a way which best compliments and expresses your own ideas and emotions.

You don't get that experience in electronic music production so much. It helps if you learn how to play music organically before getting into it electronically. In my experience, anyway.

[theyareus]

Songwriting is different for everyone, tutorials I find are great for solving a specific problem rather than learning how to do everything.
Creativity is hard to find some times and for the most part over thinking it can some times lead to either a 'mental block' or over complicating your music.
Stick to some very basic principles like structure:

intro,verse,chorus,middle 8,verse,chorus

worry about bridges and what not later on when your more comfortable.

Some times it helps to leave it a week or a few days and then all of a sudden you're hit with a wave of inspiration.

[excessional]

Songwriting is mainly about being able to write melodies.

The best designed sounds in the world don't help without a catchy lead or vocal line.

My advice would be to step back from all of the sound options your DAW and VSTs give you and concentrate for a few weeks on the basics of songwriting.

Read the theory on this site and don't use any patches other than a basic Grand Piano one whilst you work through it....

http://chordmaps.com/

Then you could probably do similar for basic drum patterns and techniques.

[padillac]

How many songs have you written?

How many songs do you think Flume has written?

If you were to write the same number of songs as Flume has, what do you think would happen?

[sazb30]

You mention that you play guitar... Can you switch off the computer and just use the guitar to get your basic song structure down? I do this with the piano. I find it quite satisfying to craft a chord progression and melody in this simple way. Then, when you have your musical skeleton, move back to the computer and mark it out in your DAW (using marker track or whatever your particular DAW has). This is one way of escaping loopitis. It works better with music that has a traditional song structure, so probably not the best method for electronic styles.

[arkmabat]

You mention that you play guitar... Can you switch off the computer and just use the guitar to get your basic song structure down? I do this with the piano. I find it quite satisfying to craft a chord progression and melody in this simple way. Then, when you have your musical skeleton, move back to the computer and mark it out in your DAW (using marker track or whatever your particular DAW has). This is one way of escaping loopitis. It works better with music that has a traditional song structure, so probably not the best method for electronic styles.

Great advice. Favorite thing I've composed on my computer was first a recording of me humming the melody very badly on my phone.

[RunBeerRun]

The guy never came back? If it's any consolation, my songwriting sucks, but I can play and write when having fun it's just that I don't want to spend time on writing.

[ZiggDubstep]

Just toss notes on a MIDI envelope, and edit it until you think it sounds good. Or, use arpeggiators.

[V0RT3X]

Practice, practice, practice.

Being a computer music producer is not easy, and it will require you to actually learn the fundamentals of sound design, song structure, music theory, rhythm, etc.

That being said it won't require you to be a master in any of them. However it does help to have a basic understanding of the different synthesis types, sampler tricks, compression techniques, circle of fifths, musical scales, common chord progressions, different rhythm types, Equalization techniques, recording techniques.

I listened to a bit of Flume, and it sounds like he has a big hip hop influence to his sound. So it might help learning a sampler based workflow by maybe checking out how people use stuff like the Akai MPC. Ableton live can easily emulate the workflow of the Akai MPC if you use the slice to midi option with samples. As far as sound design goes, most of his stuff is actually very simplistic, so no you won't require a engineering degree or anything to recreate his stuff.

For song arrangement look up youtube tutorials on hip-hop song arrangement. Hopefully it will help you building a track. As for the sound design shit, well i'll help you out a bit.

One method you could try with Ableton is playing back or sequencing samples in the drum rack. If you have something like a Akai MPD18 then you can actually tap the beats out and hit record in live.

I would probably load up a black 8 bar clip in the clip mode and tap out a beat on the MPD18.

If you need help with your chords you can always cheat a bit by using something like X-fer Cthulu or another similar chord tool.

For getting samples you can load up a vinyl player with some cool old funk albums and then record the output into your computer with a wave editor or live itself and then slice it up in live.

To get a warm oldschool sampler sound you can try using saturation on your track sounds with the built in distortion and saturation effects. I would recommend considering maybe checking out Fabfilter Saturn which is super good for warming up your tracks.

Another thing he seems to have is decently mixed tracks, so it might help to touch up on your mixing skills with Equalization, sidechain compression, bus compression, saturation, panning, daw automation of effects.

For the few glitch sounds that he uses well you can find FSU tools a dime a dozen these days. However it would probably yield better results to chop stuff up by hand in the arrange mode. You can also do some pretty impressive glitching just using clip automation and the simpler.

For the analog sounds that he uses I would check out U-he Tyrell N6 which is free and more than capable of creating those drifty oldschool analog sounds.

You can use Native instruments Massive for some of the more digital sounds which you already own, but since it uses wavetable synthesis it can come across as very harsh sounding in a mix and often require some saturation to help smooth it out. For analog sounds i would check out U-he Tyrell N6.

If your not happy with the built in reverb or delays in Ableton then definitely check out the $50 valhallaDSP ValhallaVintageVerb and equally priced Ubermod. Ubermod would actually be a very useful tool in emulating tape warble on some sounds and honestly for recreating theses style sounds I would just say you should get both.

For his skrillex style vocal chops i would look into Celemony Melodyne which is basically what skrillex uses to get all those weird sounds which you can import into ableton and slice up.



This is what I listened to btw.


Also btw I found his space cadet to have what sounded like audible aliasing in one of his synth sounds which is not very pleasant.