Well, recentely I've grown sort of tired of trying to play other people's music. As much as I appreciate it, I'm just never motivated enough to actually be determined enough to learn how to play theirs. I always would much rather make my own music.
The only thing is I just don't know where to begin with this task. Recentely my friend and I have been experimenting. He'll strum some chords, and I'll play lead and vocal over them. They always have a blues feeling to them, because that's really all I know how to create. We've covered just about every key we can think of, and we're still at a lost of how to come up with our own style of playing.
I'm starting to think that I'm just stuck in the conventional songwriting process. The only real process I know of is to get a rythym riff, some lead, and vocals. But I hear music from other bands that seem to have a unique style that just throw their music in, but it still sounds good.
I'm wondering if there's something I don't know. Possibly theory (which I still don't really know much about), or something that is system of making something good sounding that will allow us to write music in our own chosen style, but still have melody and good sound.
I hope I didn't confuse many people, 'cause I really don't know my termonology or much about songwriting at all.
Sounds to me your doing the right thing already.Just keep expermenting. And your own style will find its way out. I could never get any music to my writings so I decided to learn the guitar myself. Theres days I want to throw the thing out the window. But I keep practicing. And when I learn it I will truley have songs of my own. Keep writing and playing Nite.......
lyrics belong in songs, poems bolong in bookstores
Hi, and welcome to Guitarnoise,
You actually have more theory knowledge than you think.
Start by looking at some of the songs you play that others have written. You should notice that there are groups of chords which will come up time and time again; C-Am-F-G for example, which is a very common sequence. From that, you'll probably already have some idea of which chords will sound ok when used to put a verse together - Dm and G#sus4 probably won't. And that puts you in a good position to start developing a style of your own.
What you do need to do, though, is to think outside the three chord blues framework.
As an example, if you're in Am, then not only do you have Am, Bdim, C, Dm, Em, F and G to use from the start, but if you use A harmonic minor then you can use E major to give you the G# leading note; and if you use A melodic minor you can use chords like D major and Bm to use the F#. It's a bigger ballpark than you might think.
Once you've got accustomed to working with bigger chord collections - start using 7ths, suspensions and other extensions (9ths, 11ths, add9ths and so on). You'll be surprised how much your vocal work takes off when you've got a great sounding foundation.
We can't teach you to write great lyrics to go with your chord sequence - that one you get to figure out on your own. Check out the songwriting pages here.
Best,
A :-)
"Be good at what you can do" - Fingerbanger"
I have always felt that it is better to do what is beautiful than what is 'right'" - Eliot Fisk
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