Stuck in a rut!

cerebis

Hi all,

I've been stuck in a rut for ages. I've been listening back over my tunes and I've realised that they are all kinda downbeat and sad!

I'm sick of that and want to change things. I think it is the chords that I'm using..

E, Dm, Am, Bm D, C, Em F, fmaj7 G, D7 are the chords I usually mess around with..

Can anyone sugguest some 'happier' chords ??

Oink

well honestly I think you have enough chords in there for a happy song.
enough for Shiny Happy People for example. (not necessarily in the same key, but...)

Try an upbeat tempo, then add a great melody and great lyrics, and suddenly you'll realize that you didn't actually have a problem with the chords.

For example: C G Am F.
With those 4 chords you can write a song like Cold Water by Damien Rice (and shoot yourself in the head), or So Lonely by The Police, (and then you'll be jumping around and singing loudly). So...Chords don t necessarily restrict you.

peanutroad

Major keys and chords are, as a rule, going to sound 'happier' than minors. For some reason, I tend to gravitate toward the key of A for light-hearted stuff -- A, D, E(7). Maybe throw in a Bm...or add a bit of quirkiness with a major chord that steps out of the key (e.g. a G in the key of A).

Frankiestylee

Just have a jam with yourself and you'll eventually latch onto something you like. If you're in a sad mood you'll want to write sad music, so don't try and write an upbeat pop classic if you've just seen your family slaughtered by barbarians.
So much can effect the way your songs come out as Oink has already said, it really all depends on the lil nuances of what you're up to. Do you tend to strum or finger pick or go a-ca-ra-zay on the aul neck? One thing I'd say is try not to finish off your phrase etc on a minor chord. You could have written the happiest damn song in the world and then the minor chord at the end will always throw a bit of doubt into the happy mix.

Eat some haribo. Should make you smile.

Also try jamming out something like "Apeman" by the Kinks, it's only D, A, E, but get a nice rhythm going and it's just delightful for putting you in a happy song writing frame of mind

Steve_o

Minor chords are quite downbeat alright, just use the likes of C, G, F, B etc.....also i read somewhere that a study has shown the Cmajor is the happiest note, they played a load of notes to people in music and people who knew nothing about it and 8 people out of 10 said that Cmajor envoked the best feeling in them!

iconboy

Found myself in a rut when writing some years ago so I started experimenting with different tunings. Initially I used (low to high) D,G,D,G,B,D and also D,G,D,G,A,D which gave me some nice modal chord sounds.

After this I moved to C,G,D,G,G,D (along with heavier bass stings) and found it really opened up my writing. Not only did it provide a hugh amount of new chording voicing and inversions, I could also run bass motifs against chords. Playing even straight fordward I, V, IV chord progressions became a joy and also as most chords in this tuning were modal (no major/monor 3rd) it became easy to do smooth key changes.

Recenty found D,A,E,E,A,A.

When I started on the new tuning I would rearrange other songs (Smells like teen spirit, Dirty old town, etc) just to experiment with chords progressions etc, and then I found I started to write my own stuff quite easily.

conordaniel

listen to oasis track like digsys dinner and have a laugh

It wasn't me!

Don't stress yourself trying to write. Music comes to the surface itself in my mind. When I'm stuck for ideas, I don't try force them, the results have always sucked when I did. Just jam to tunes you like, maybe learn something new, do some technical exercises. Go back to what your influences are, explore what they did and figure out something new you can do yourself. That should help.