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Old 09-19-2009, 04:33 AM   #35
With an E
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Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: In perpetual hope
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bezmotivnik View Post
I'm still blundering about.

When you, as a largely one-man act, start a song from scratch, how do you go about it?

What do you record first? How do you organize your project so that it flows smoothly and in more or less organic form?

I am a guitarist but when I pick up the guitar I always start to play solo phrases, so for compositional ideas I leave it alone.


1 I start with a good inspirational vsti keyboard patch which lets you hear chords and melodies clearly and which has a good enough attack to get a rhythmic feel going - you don't need to be a piano player

2. Try your melody, chord and rhythm ideas at different tempos - loop a number of bars and practice the piece until something good emerges

3. Then experiment with drum or percussion loops to get a specific feel

4. Stop and think about what ideas or feelings the music evokes and then work to support that with the rest of the 'writing' and arranging.

Listening to music you like and respect (either really or just in your head) at this stage is a good idea imo; thinking about what those composers were thinking about as they developed their ideas. Don't copy, but extrapolate - if they did such and such at this point in their music, how would that method translate to my music.

I find this method can create a surge of really good original ideas. The trouble for me sometimes is when the process takes me 80% of the way and I don't want to let the 'good' idea down with 20% of crap to finish......

Good luck!!
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