Writing Music

Everytime I sit down to write something on guitar I can never come up with anything. I just sit down and mess around and what comes out sounds more random and pointless than the improv section in Moonchild.

I know quite abit of theory but it doesn't seem to help me very much, I just can't think of anything. The few times I have come up with something Ive thought "Ive heard this before"... and it turns out to be a song Ive been listening to recently in a different key or something like that.

Anyway, for people on here who write their own stuff, have you got any tips? How do you go about writing something when you're out of ideas? How do you go about coming up with a riff or chord progression?

another thing; if you have even the slightest semblance of a singing voice then going "la-la-la" - even in a quasi-random way (no-one can be entirely random no matter hard they try!) while you improvise - can help you uncover harmonies and odd quirks which work wonderfully together and just generally help you establish your own sound. (I get the feeling that most modern rock bands don't stop to do this and by being all-riffs-all-the-time they sacrifice their own personal musical patterns for the conventional) Even by making mistakes you can glom on to patterns you could use deliberately later on - the simple sixthing of a chord you'd have played straight if your hands weren't so tired could be the key to a composition...

Snipergoat wrote: Everytime I sit down to write something on guitar I can never come up with anything. I just sit down and mess around and what comes out sounds more random and pointless than the improv section in Moonchild.

i'm the same way...and we're not alone: guitarist pat metheny in an interview said basically the same thing you just did.
got a keyboard ?
keyboards are / have been the default tool for composition for several hundred years.
sit at a piano / keyboard and start "noodling"

Yeah, I usually get all productive when I have a ready poem/lyrics in front of me. I just start singing them as they would go, and all that practise on jazz progressions really help making a whole song pretty soon. Personally my biggest problem is writing the melody since it's rather hard to play the melody while you stram chords with your guitar. Occasionally it works though, most my songs are guitar solos as with no band that's what they have to be.

Anyway, when you talk about riffs, and how to play them, wel, it depends on what kind of music you're going for. When I make rock it tends to turn into funk-ish always, I play full chords on 3-4 strings and yet make fast changes with just 2 whereas those quick bipadudaa are of course only one note at a time. Several notes give depth, and only using powerchords will be utterly boring as it's basically just rythm then. I like to play around with the guitar.

Well then you might want to consider the structure of the song first. Try and make one that's easy first, like A-A-B-A-B-B... or make it jazz and just play AABA repeatedly. Now make a melodic intro for the song to play before A. Then it's more than easy to play the A as C-Am-Dm-G7 twice and then the second time play the G7 longer. In B just change the rythm or the accents, and for the last B, do a nice modulation ;), and you've got yourself a perfectly common pop song. Most prog are just variations of that.

You've given yourself away with the phrase "more random and pointless than the improv section in Moonchild".

Edited by Certif1ed - December 07 2007 at 03:08

i usually just sit down at a piano or keyboard and clear my head and just let my  hands do all the work. like stevie ray vaughan said before that he started messing up when he started thinking about it, that's how i am. i know it's not an approach that works for everyone, but you never know, it could work for you since you know a bit of theory, which is always helpful. of course, i rarely end up writing anything that is a "song" in the terms of "verse chorus..." unless i'm with my band and we sit around and jam and then form the best parts of the jam into a song.
and i also  object to the comment about moonchild being random and pointless.
i think it's one of the best songs ever.

Snipergoat wrote: I assume you guys all have a metronome on when your writing stuff?

i don't, i just keep time (when i want time to be kept) with my head

I don't use a metronome either, I just kind know the timings when I feel like keeping track. It's weird.

I remember the first song I wrote was in 21/16 and this was years ago before I was even into prog or knew what a time signature was. I showed it to my friend one day and he was like "Dude! This makes no sense! You're song is in 21/16!!!"

I was like "Huh?" Then I realized a lot of my songs just happened to fall into weird timings. I made songs as jokes and stuff and noticed they were in 5/4, 11/8, 19/16, etc. I guess my mind just works oddly

Ok, I take back what I said about Moonchild :P

Im just listening to it and I turned the volume way up so I don't forget it's on!

nightlamp wrote: Snipergoat wrote: I suppose the sound im going for is kinda psychedelic / space rock, im not really sure how to create something in that style though... apart from using a ton of delay Delay is good! As a fellow space rock musician, here's what I suggest for coming up with material.  Set some basic parameters (meter, mode, tonal center, etc.), mark them in a notebook or something and then jam on them-- free improv (a la "Moonchild"), rhythmic riffing, soloing, with/without delay/effects/metronome, whatever-- anything goes.  Be sure to record this jamming though, even if it's just with one of those little microcassette recorders; sound quality doesn't matter much, as long as you can listen back to what you played...  Harvest stuff you like from the jams, and then cobble it together as you see fit.

Sounds good, Ill definitely give it a try