How do you write your songs?

Morzadec

Just stumbled on a practical tip that potentially might help some.

Try walking around a room while playing/singing any new song you might be coming up with. You know like when people pace round a room when they're looking for ideas? Well like this, except with a guitar!

loc5

class1comp wrote: »

I am starting to have doubts about even starting!

haha ok so not the most cleverest post of the month but hey you did ask:D

Prof.Badass

I just mess around on guitar/piano untill i come up with something i like. If it's good enough to consider building on I'll start improvising a vocal melody, playing the verse over and over again trying to improve the vocal melody. If I'm finding this especially hard i might stop and think about it coldly and clinically to work out something that should fit. It's not as fun, and i don't do it that often, but when it works and you manage to turn it into a good melody it's pretty amazing.

Then I'll record it on my phone and posisbly come back to it at a later date. Lyrics usually flesh themselves out over time. Actually sitting down and properly writing lyrics doesn't really appeal to me.

Fabo

it depends what kind of song you wanna write. 95% of modern music would be fairly easy to write, boring MOR stuff...anyone can write that. i spend my songwriting time trying to write something catchy, that grabs you by the goulies e.g. a gimme shelter, or a rain and of course that is original. I have 2 songs that seem to fit that category, the MOR stuff that comes out gets thrown in the bin and then ive about 5 songs that have something interesting going on and need a bit more work.

i find you have to be in a really relaxed mood to write good tunes. often times when you give up on trying to find one.

anotherson

Hey, enjoying this thread guys!
I think one of the most important things is trying to see through a song, like I've probably started 100's of songs, worked on a good few, really stuck it at with a dozen or so, and finished a handful. But the amount of songs that I started, got stuck on, and then never came back too....criminal! :mad:.

Now, I try to record (on my phone, laptop, on a notepad...) as many as a I can, I stash em in a basket in my room, and then i just put a yellow highlighter to the top of the page if I ve come back once and i'm making progress, which i'll add a greeen stroke to if i've had another good sesssion workin on and adding to it...weird structure and method I know, but you start to see progress and not just a pile of songs going nowhere. Hope this helps

Drodan

I dunno if anyone else is doing this but I seem to try WAY to hard to make each line perfect and mesh into eachother. It's like I'm trying to right these amazing lyrics with little thought going into the music and it's becoming really frigging difficult to get anything good.

Black Thorn

I like that highlighter method. I have them on a note on my phone which I work on, I also have bits of ideas on it and then when I am on the computer I put them together as best I can (though I still find the best results come with a pen and scrap of paper, more natural maybe) though I did have a huge mound of songs till yesterday when I went through them, took out the unused and forgotten ideas and burned the rest, yes BURNED!!!!! well it was cold...

macgyver_ninja

I find that when I write a song it generally just all comes to me at once. I sit down and sometimes I'll write two or maybe three songs in a row. Though generally only one is any good. I generally have two problems though when I write:

• Being a limited guitarist, I find I'm not very good at providing any interludes in the songs and then they always come out as too short when recorded
• My songs when put to music sometimes sound like something else which sucks because that chord progression would be perfect for the song and I can never come up with anything else. I don't purposefully plagiarize, but they always come out sounding like that

h_tynan

Morzadec wrote: »

Just stumbled on a practical tip that potentially might help some.

Try walking around a room while playing/singing any new song you might be coming up with. You know like when people pace round a room when they're looking for ideas? Well like this, except with a guitar!

Cool, I also sometimes sit upside down on an armchair and strum the guitar and find it often helps me with breakthroughs

Fabo

I tend to find banging my head against the wall gives me inspiration.

Leftyflip

For me songwriting is something that I have to feel, I can only write about what I know, doesn't matter what it is, pain, happiness, shock, etc. If I get stuck in an emotion I'll write about it. The last three songs I wrote are all about one feeling and how it's evolved. After I have the lyrics down, I listen to loads of songs over and over again looking for a sound that stands out, then when I find that sound, I turn it into something of my own and it usually has nothing similar to the original sound.

Octobrist

I find that when youre writing a song and you start to think its ****e cos youve heard it so many times, singing it in a nick cave style voice renews the confidence.
The man could sing absolute bollocks and still sound like a prophet!

lil_lisa

ha ha, must try that!

Jabel

Inspiration is an intangible thing unfortunately.
You don't know when it will visit you next, but
just hope and pray she does...


"A chance remark becomes a spark
and maybe luck has come again"
Neil Finn

lil_lisa

In my experience there are a lot of things I know to have inspired me. For example, having moved from wet Ireland to sunny California, if I sit out in the sun for 15 minutes (any longer will cause sunburn) my heart fills up with inspiration and joy and so I can write something, it may not be any good but if I'm not inspired the page stays blank. Other things like cleaning or listening to those songs which sometimes feel like they were written only for you, these things make it easier to come up with songs. This is how I've been inspired so far!

DubzSon

JohnnyQuid wrote: »

I'll start,I only recently started songwriting so I'm not very good at it yet but what I like to do is write at night,like maybe 2 or 3am in the morning.I feel,for me,it's a lot easier to write songs at these times because I have trouble sleeping with all the thoughts running through my head,so I just put pen to paper.It's more easier than writing during the day aswell because there are less distractions.

I'm exactly the same! I write them in all hours of the morning, when you'd think that would be the last time a songwriter gets inspiration. But anyways, I just get a line or two and write them down, when they come to me and take it from there. It works for me, so I just do it that way.

Vevadox

I have 212 Pink Floyd songs on my iPod... some of them live so I would probly have the some songs 2 times. I'd love to ask Gilmour how he wrote them...

cHaTbOx

From my heart and thoughts and by listening to how others have wrote from their hearts and thoughts .

JohnnyQuid

I've noticed in the last while that i'm not writing them at night anymore.Anymore when a something comes to me i write it down,it's better this way as if i had waited til night time i would have forgotten it.

I've recently started messing round with my guitar and coming up with these melodies i'd never think I could have done.Also jamming with friends or with your band really helps as you just go with the flow.