writing a song...where do I start?

[emperor_black]

ok, what comes first? I do know the lead comes after you have a good rhythm going. But is it mandatory to get the guitar parts first and the drums going before writing the lyrics and getting the song structured?

I'm trying to come up with the rhythm (followed by lead) parts for a song and I've been trying to listen closely to songs on my Ipod for quite sometime now. I just cant figure it out. I try to write a rhythm part and I wish I knew how the song would go first before I do. please help!

My bandmate has written rhythm parts for 3 songs now and is working on intricate details and I keep wondering if its a waste of time before getting all the lyrics and stuff. We dont even have a vocalist yet.

[Jayster]

ok, what comes first? I do know the lead comes after you have a good rhythm going. But is it mandatory to get the guitar parts first and the drums going before writing the lyrics and getting the song structured?

I'm trying to come up with the rhythm (followed by lead) parts for a song and I've been trying to listen closely to songs on my Ipod for quite sometime now. I just cant figure it out. I try to write a rhythm part and I wish I knew how the song would go first before I do. please help!

My bandmate has written rhythm parts for 3 songs now and is working on intricate details and I keep wondering if its a waste of time before getting all the lyrics and stuff. We dont even have a vocalist yet.

Ther's no wrong way to write a song (although it's argueable writing a song around a lead is bad)
For me a lot of ideas come from drum beats ,some of the ideas come from noodling around with a metranome (sp?) ,and rarely I'll write lyrics first.


My bandmate has written rhythm parts for 3 songs now and is working on intricate details and I keep wondering if its a waste of time before getting all the lyrics and stuff

chances are you'll make some changes with lyrics \ drums
imho ... the idea of being in a band is to make the other people in the band sound good (as well as yourself )so for me through out the process of writing a song it can change many times , especially if you change out any of your band mates

hope this helps

[emperor_black]

well, I do understand that sometimes a song can get structured around a great riff. ironman for example. I bet Tony came up with it first and then they structred the whole song later. but other songs for example, kill the king by Megadeth, just seems like he had the lyrics going first and wrote a song just for the sake of. There is no riff per se in the song. But symphony of destruction does.

[horns666]

Stick to 4 or 5 minutes. If you can't say what ya need by then.. it wasn't important. Besides people have fuggin' ADD..they have the attention span of a gnat. If you don't hook 'em in 30 seconds..you fuggin' lost 'em.

I'm predictable..a SIMPLE formula.

Intro..

Verse..the main riff

Chorus

Bridge..before or after solo, if one is required. A solo should be icing on a cake. You don't want a cake that's all icing. You'll get a bellyache.

Chorus

Verse..back to main riff

End/or outro...

The purpose of a verse is to tell the story or describe the feeling, etc. The chorus is the focal point of the song, the central theme, if you will. A bridge is a kind of fresh perspective, a small part that may consist of only music, or both lyrics and music,.. usually placed after the second chorus. These are the main parts that are used when describing the song

Keep it simple, unless your a prog or jazz band.

That was harder to explain than do.

[Trem]

Get a graps of drums, and drumming, early on, it will help immensly to 'visualize' what this or that would sound like, say you got a riff and your like ( ok cool, now wtf do i go with this) being able to hear beats and imagine different beats over the same thing really helps.
Hum melodies in your head, or sing 'outloud' to yourself words or melodies, and try to create little things out of thin air without any instruments, that really sharpens you overall musical mind.
I asked a guy i kinda looked up to when i was younger, who was a producer, guitarist, music teacher all that,.. i said i wanted to learn how to improvise better, and he handed me a Kazooo (i shit you not) and he said start practicing, lol.
Also record yourself practicing, and riffs and stuff, so you can come back to things you liked ect
cept for me that was outta hand, i have boxes of tapes full of riffs and shit all the way back to 1985, when i was multi tracking with only single cassete radio shack tape recorders, man i had that shit down, lol.
Pretty much most everything i ever recorded i still have them on tapes, hundreds of cassettes mostly only good for a laugh i imagine now, lol.

lastly, just start writing songs, even if they suck or whatever, just write them, and then write another one, and keep doing it.
It's just like anything else, repetition, and the more you do it, the more you get a grasp of it.
don't be like i was and not finish something cause it's not good enough, you'll never get anything accomplished, and you'll just get discouraged.

[horns666]

Yes..I wright alot of stuff with my son on drums.

Oh, I forgot. My singer always has carte blanche how he wants to arrange the song ..so he can sing the way it flows naturally.

Alot of times he'll cut and paste different riffs for different parts of the song. If I don't have it flowing perfectly..he always comes up with how to patch riffs together.

I always try to keep thing in sets of fours..four measures. Then he'll have me add or subtract a measure for the music.

Try to keep track of all your ideas on a tape. I'm getting too senile to remember stuff I came up with...or the timing or feel of the damn riff.

[Musician78]

I have the attention span of a gnat.. but I don't like short catchy tunes. Longass songs are awesome if they're interesting. Old Genesis, for example is one of my favorite bands... till Gabriel and Hackett left and Phil turned them all commercial.

I guess you have to figure out your objective. Is it more to please the listener? Or yourself? I write more for myself, and always have... which is why I don't seem to stay in bands very long, lol. If you are trying to please the listeners... stick to a standardized format. If you know Nickelback, then you know the format. All their tunes follow that format... but... all their tunes sound the same, lol. Chorus' in the same place, intros roughly same length, songs in general tend to be the same length, lol.... you get the picture.

I have never had any success in writing the lyrics first. I write the song... do all the necessary recording... then listen to the crap out of it until lyrics (ANY LYRICS) pop into my head. If I like them, I will write the rest of the lyrics around those.

Seriously though... play what YOU want to play; not what you think other people want to hear. You will get far more satisfaction out of it.

[emperor_black]

yeah, I've heard the 'record while you play' before. Just too lazy to do it. You guys are right about the drums though. during practice, when the drummer is warming up, I get into this improvising routine and it sounds amazing. The other guitarist will come in the garage and ask me what the heck I was playing a while ago. But I will never remember. Improvising can sometimes be a pain in the ass.

And trem, you're right about forgetting cool riffs that never went anywhere. Like, right now, I have a very cool intro. Its based off a blues scale and sounds melodious. I showed it to the other guitarist, but its not exactly his "thrash metal riff" and he dismissed it. if I dont put it into recording, I will forget all about it in a few weeks.

[Super_shredder]

when i write songs i grab my battered acoustic and mess around with chords until i find somting that sounds good , for lyrics i will just mumble until i find good rhyming schemes

when i try and write a song using scale and chord theory it just fucks up and sounds like an exercise lol

[GinSonic]

As previously mentioned, there is no right or wrong way to write songs. There is no magic formula or course that can be taught on songwriting. It's an art. Art is creative and inspiration comes up at the strangest times and will strike you at any moment.

For me, it was a progressive thing. In the beginning, I could care less about songs. I was all about the instrumental contributions. Lyrics I could give a crap about. Only that the music fit with the lyric subject matter.{Rush was great that way and I listened to them alot!}

Then I got into my first real band {Harlott} that wrote songs. I learned alot in that band. I was still all about the music and if I had it my way, we'd have sounded like Rush, Yes and Iron Maiden put together. However, the other guitar player wasn't a virtuoso, but he sure came up with some catchy riffs. I learned much about simple song structure, composition and working with others for one goal. It was a great time.

It was because of my experience in Harlott that I started to write my own songs. Lyrics and all.

A song, riff, melody, hook, or whatever, comes to you. Yes, they can be easy to forget, but I would advise you in some way, shape or form to remember them as best you can. Hum it into an old Walkman, get home and play the riff on your guitar. {Visual memory helps out loads, believe me.} Play the riff to your bandmates and next thing you know, you got a song!

To me, a great song can be interpreted into multiple genres.
Hurt{NIN/Johnny Cash}, Diamonds and Rust{Joan Baez/Judas Priest}, to name a couple.

Of course, songs like "Iron Man" pretty much can't be done C 'n W style, but go ahead and try!

In the end, it doesn't much matter if you wrote the greatest song ever written. It matters only that you write songs because you love it.
G.

[horns666]

I write METAL I want to hear, and other metalheads too.

it works..

Bill Z Bub

[emperor_black]

do you guys have youtube videos of your songs? I plan to play the song we have so far and put them on youtube.

[horns666]

No yootoobs for me..but you know where my live basement demo is. The four songs are posted in the MP3 section.

The songs are completely different..but all with very similiar structure.

[Tim]

Noodle around and see what comes out of it, once you have something to start with you can flesh it out and build it into a song, whatever you come up with first. I've had songs where I've written a riff first, some where the solo has come first and I've written something around it, once I was jamming with a drummer and I just played a whole song all the way through, making it up as I went along. The only thing that I changed about that song was the solo when I came to record it, and I only changed it from tremolo picking notes like a maniac to whammy pedal-ing the same notes like a maniac and added some harmonies.

So, er, to sum up, do whatever you want.

[emperor_black]

What about that software band-in-a-box? has anyone used it or own it? According to the ad in GW I saw today, it says, give the software the root-note/key and it will create a whole song for you with bass,drums,piano,etc. and then I could tweak it the way I want. Sounds interesting.