Bjork carrying around a Yamaha QY and using it to scribble out ideas.
Ryan Adams getting his information out
Dave Grohl tricks
And these amateurs
Anyone else with an absolute fascination with the magic of how great songs (of any genre) are made - that have become over time like a solid proud, now timeless object that will last forever?
Ultimately you might call it pop - those ‘wow’ songs, could be ‘by’ Zeppelin, Marley, K&D, The Beegees, Bowie, The Who, Kate Bush or whoever … endless list up to modern times and actually I think they wrote all their own stuff.
Love to hear some thoughts on what people have on their mind when they get that bit of time to sit down with their gear
just groove with wherever the machine takes me, I won’t even save it as had my fun just messing around
have an idea in my head and I will make the machine do what I have in my mind then flesh it out, probably save it and might really polish it up for playing to other people
my goals differ from how I use my gear - I want to be focused, but end up just having fun and that’s fine
I’m a working professional making audio in a competitive market and need to make top notch tracks for my living (commercial/artistic)
I’m an artist spending most of my time making music to realise a vision (songs or audio of some description)
Not really a poll at all, just love to hear others vibes, passions, motivations and relationships with their music/production habit.
I’m a journeyman, but trying to be more focused. But if I got terrible news in the morning that instead of another 30 years to live, I only had 5 … or less … what recording(s) would I leave behind as my sound … or would I?
As David Bowie said in his interview during the final Ziggy Statdust concert, he would cut up his prose into lines and rearrange them to get new ideas. I stole that idea in the 90’s and have been exploiting it since.
I kind of apply the same thing to music when I’m being lazy, or have a good melody that’s going nowhere. I’ll either be doing it on a whiteboard, or chopping it up in the sequencer.
Remember watching the Bjork clip back in the days and thinking" i need this thing" !
About the topic, i’m in deep shifting since i’ve started to take the synthesis/hardware road.
In the old days i tried to compose “great music”, but now it’s more about sounds and textures.
The thrill i need to find is hiding in the creation of something organic, sort of a sonic biome.
Then things may happen…but i shall not control all of it.
I love using the modern generative/randomising tools to zone out to while I do other stuff - email, laundry, petting my dog.
Kind of like listening to Spotify but using my own equipment. Occasionally the technology will stumble on to something that catches my ear and I’ll grab a snippet or hit the keyboard/drum machine using it as a jumping off point.
I like a lot of your “current sounds” from the thread where you’ve been using some of the Arturia VSTs. I’ve been doing some similar things recently too. When I’m working on something I’m looking more at overall feel and evoking a place or sensation rather than going for a hook. I’ll make a ‘texture’ with some kind of drone, environmental sample or weird noises and try to build from there.
That’s a good combination knowing that a lot of good ideas tend to appears when you are not searching actively for them.
Householding is pretty known to be an efficient ideas enabler.
@tapesky thanks !
I have not really use them yet but i have a bunch of outtakes that contains good stuff to expand. It may be a simple burst or a full second of weird awesomeness.
We have so many great tools now that we can make a whole track from a single sample of a fridge.
Talking about this just reminded me i should use Izotope Iris 2 more often.
Songwriting process?
If we’re talking about song songs, with words and melodies and chord changes - I think I’ve written some good ones recently–
I sit at the keyboard and play. When there is an interesting chord change or harmony or arpeggio or combination of notes under my fingers, I record it on a field recorder, and keep going.
I write a whole bunch of lyrics.
I listen back to the keyboard recordings and try to match them to the lyrics to see if they fit rhythmically and in vibe. If so, the work begins… shaping the lyric to fit and finishing the song with more parts and structure.
There’s also another process where I make a bunch of instrumentals and improvise vocals over the top of them, the vibe is different
Hum, spit, and mumble the flow/ideas in your head into a microphone, then flesh it out with your instruments is an often used technique for starting ideas.
You can try breaking the prose/words into syllables/phonetics to get notes (what those notes are is subjective to your mood so try various modes apart from Major. Take a stab at Locrian…), and of course if it rhymes you have a rhythm…. which is also a good way to break out of 4:4
Do love the idea of nothing but a pen and paper in my pocket for a weekend away that I might otherwise have taken some all absorbing music gear with me, but instead spend some focus time creating something only in my head
Two great podcasts for hearing how musicians put their songs together:
Sodajerker on Songwriting is a conversation with a different songwriter each time, a mix of huge names and less known artists. The difference here is that the interviewers really know their stuff, and ask interesting questions.
Guests often already listen to the show. And sometimes, a grouchy guest is on there, thinking it’s yet another interview on a promo tour, then they realize what’s happening and really open up. Great podcast.
Hi,
I’m reasonably new on this forum and late to the thread. On the other hand, songwriting really is a perennial subject so I figure a revival wouldn’t be too upsetting. It’s also my first love. I came to electronic instruments after many years of playing and leading a band. My first way of writing would be on a guitar, just improvising melodies with “mumble-lyrics” recording onto voice memos.
I’ve found it a challenge to transfer my songwriting to electronic boxes. It easily becomes an engineering activity with lots of programming and “left brain” control, or I find myself improvising over repetitive loops which ends up as songs with a lot less chordal movements than I’d play on guitar. I love tweaking filters/sounds etc but you have to be really decisive and effective to get all the tweaks done in the context of a 3-4 minute song. It’s more likely to result in ten minute jams.
On-grid vs off-grid is also something I’m at the crossroads with, looking for a middle way but not having found it yet.
Here are some additions to the resources previously offered:
Jeff Tweedy of Wilco released the book “How to write one song” some years ago. Here he’s interviewed by Malcolm Gladwell:
In the book Tweedy offers some techniques that this guy put into practice in this video. They share some similarities with Ryan Adams’ method I believe:
Fascinating how different people write music in different ways!
I tend to write most of a song in my head first, then put down the words on paper, find the music on piano or guitar. Then I allow it to develop over time. I never rush it, sometimes I’ll complete songs years later, suddenly discovering the right line etc.
Chords are the one thing I have trouble with. On the guitar I just play them, the fancy jazz ones too, and see what works. With a machine, I can’t do that, and I can’t play keys to do it that way, either.
I think chords are where the emotional push of a song comes from, so it’s a bit of a problem.
The rest of it is fine. I love loops, and I love throwing in snippets of field recordings when I get to the DAW arrangement stage.
I have a record out on all the streaming. I cut it when I still lived in Nashville and I feel like some examples might belong in a songwriting thread. If anyone is interested, the record is called
July or A Love Letter To You
by Grady Nickel
Like I said, it’s on all the different streaming services (I was told YouTube links are the way to go on this forum but for some reason YouTube won’t give me a link to the complete album, Spotify and Apple will). I wrote all the songs and feel like it’s a nice cohesive, thematic collection of my “normal” country-rock-type stuff.
These days I’m just making noise with all of my weird, wonderful boxes (OT, op-1, etc.). Not really writing a ton of songs right now. But that’s the thing. If I practice for a little while every day or walk around with my guitar for 10 minutes, they will come. Inspiration finds you when you’re working.
For the most part I’ve stopped “writing” on things like computers, synths, and hardware - it’s too easy to rely on sound selection and aesthetic to drive a song in those environments and I feel it encourages a lot of bad habits like over reliance on loops and remixing of patterns. Writing the song first on another instrument ensures I have a musical and coherent main idea and provides a framework so I know where the track is heading for a bigger portion of the process. That also helps in terms of arranging, if an idea or sound doesn’t support the main idea it’s probably not necessary. I appreciate the more exploratory side of production oriented songwriting, but the results are more about the sound and textures than the music itself.
That’s the same with me. That’s why I’m just taking it slow and going back to the guitar for a few minutes every day. The rest of my time is spent learning the gear I’ve always wanted. It’s so funny, when I was 8 or 9 years old I wanted a guitar so badly, which continued until I finally got a bass when I was 15. At the same time, around 11-12 years old, I discovered Prince, and breakdancing, and RUN-DMC, and drum machines, etc. So I became obsessed with drum machines and samplers but still loved the guitar. I never had the money to buy all those machines so eventually the idea of having them fell away and I kept playing the guitar and being in bands (I did get my hands on a 4-track for a little while-I wish I had those old tapes). My point is, after all these years playing in bands and touring and writing/recording songs, I finally got back around to getting some of those boxes I coveted way back when (I think I bought my first OT in 2015 and my op-1 in 2014, I don’t remember). So right now I’m not even worried about writing a song, it will come. However, if I stop practicing or recording my voice memos and going back and listening to them, the songs will go way. I’ve also found that there are different songs in different guitars. Sometimes I’ll borrow like a Strat for example from a friend (a guitar I have never owned and have no intention of owning) for a couple of weeks and every time I do it, I get a new song or at least the skeleton of a new song. So there’s a strategy for you right there. Meanwhile, my inner 12 year old is loving having a sampler, drum machine, synth, and turntable. I love this topic by the way. Not trying to take it over, just enthusiastic. If any of my fellow songwriters want to give my record a listen and let me know what they think, I welcome it, good and bad.
For those of you who have a tough time translating your songwriting ideas to boxes, have you tried recording the idea to a click into a computer or something like an MPC and then building around the idea as opposed to trying to translate the idea directly? A lot of the times I’ll come up with a melody, chords, and structure/layout at a piano, record that idea with voice memos, then sit down at the computer and translate that by either recording my voice, plugging in the midi, or both, and then use that as a track’s map or skeleton.
Even if you end up not using that initial recording in the end result (I often don’t), I find it helps me a lot and gives me things to build around with all the studio toys, and lets me focus more on their strengths and using them as tools to solve specific needs as opposed to “stumbling” upon uses for them. At that stage, sort of like if a producer received a demo from a singer/songwriter and it was up to them to develop the sound as opposed to writing the track. A lot of the times the “boxes” aren’t good at chords for instance, so I won’t use them for that. Etc etc. In between tracks like that I’ll still do tracks where I futz around with the sound design and stuff a bit more and think less as a “song builder” though, that’s always going to be fun to me.
