How do you guys, n gal, write songs?

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: How do you guys, n gal, write songs?

Take a scale and arpeggiate it: root, 5th, 9th, etc. Go slow enough and you get a melody. Play around with the phrasing and you get another melody. Play around with the tempo and you get yet another. Make it flow like a vocal track.

From there you can put chords to it, and from there you get the beat.


Or play a full scale (not arpeggiated) in a melodic fashion, rather than with a metronome.
You don't have to go up all the way - go back and forth around the middle.


The songs I linked to previously were done in all various ways:

Stormy Nights started with the drum pattern, which is a preset in the Alesis SR16.
The opening chord forms followed, with the melody coming from that.
Hot Rod was the same way, as was Sunday Drive.

Autumn and Blue Silk started with the drums (another SR16 preset), and the bass came second, then the rhythm guitar, then the melody.

Spanish Fever (yeah I know, crappy title) started with the drums (yet another preset) and the rhythm, then bass, then melody last.

Heart Of Fire started with the rhythm guitar. It was a song I used to play with a band, and was very loosely inspired by SRV's Lenny and some other song of his I can't recall these many moons on.
I just realized I left that one in the folder. It was actually replaced by Lovetrack on the CD. Ah well, same song, anyway.

5th of 7 also started with the rhythm guitar, but it's one I kinda lifted from another band I was in before. Their version was a bit slower and more chugging in a blues-rock fashion, and was called Mr Beam (singer's favorite booze). I sped mine up and named it after Jack Daniels :lol:

After All also came out rhythm-first, then the drums, then the melody.

Brand New Day started with the bass line.

Setting Sun was originally an all-guitar piece, but came out that way when I tabbed it in GuitarPro (cuz I didn't take the time to score it the way it was on the guitar).
As a bit of trivia: The clean plucked guitar part of Dreams Of Etherium off my 2nd CD (Road Ahead) is actually the original version I was trying to do as MIDI in Setting Sun.

Brasilia started with the rhythm guitar, then I had to find a drum preset pattern to match it (one of the Bossa Nova patterns in BFD 1.5).

 

[sosomething]

This just shows how different approaches can be and still achieve good results.

What you just described seems to me like an oppressively academic approach to writing a song. But to you, it's something else. It's the way you're comfortable with working, and totally valid. But I would go completely nuts if i had to do it that way.

Jokes aside, for me, writing music is an instinctive, intuitive process that I couldn't even explain in words. Sometimes whole songs just drop into my head and I just have to play them. Other times I toil for days over something, only to scrap it completely in favor of some random nugget that appears out of nowhere and takes over.

But for others, my approach would seem disorganized and maddening. To me it's second nature.

It's just interesting to me how people can find different paths to the same destination.