The songwriting/"This is how I make #1 jams thread"

[BitchPudding]

Pretty much the same as Ugly's process. I'll get inspired by a quote, story, happening or I'll come up with a melody randomly in my brain. I'm not usually a guy to let a dog sit, once I have an idea I'll spend all day on it until it's done and ether record it the same day or the day after. That's how pretty much every song I write as Smoking Roses becomes a thing.

With my other band Black Lagoon, I still sing but I play bass and I also don't have 100% control like I do in SR, so Im muchore at the mercy of the rest of the guys. Usually they'll suggest something, but the majority of our songs have come about as a result of jams. Usually, if we jam and we liked elements of that jam, we'll pick out the parts and movements we like and structure them into a song. We only have a few songs that are pre written, nd those are by me because that's how I function best as a writer. But I've Definately been enjoying the new feeling of writing with other people's input. Keeps the sound varied.

[kbit]

The daw is invaluable when impro jams yield those golden moments. Most of my favorites were the result of fucking around at practices and then going back later and figuring out what the fuck we did.

I want to do this so bad with a group of musicians. Im truly inspired most in live improv situations. I just gotta find the right people, or at least the right drummer.

I usually don't write songs otherwise. I will play an idea over and over, sometimes for a day or a week. Maybe record a snippet. I forget most of them but a few have stuck in my mind.

Recently I started recording some texture loops and in fucking arou d with them in Audacity, thinking of how to arrange them or what to add or how to process them further. Unfortunately my inspiration/willingness is super fucking sporadic and based on how I feel in the moment, so I don't get much of a finished product... the catch 22 of my love for improv I guess.

I need to work with people more often.

[D.o.S.]

D.o.S.: that first song inspired me to steal the bass line. Thanks you.

No worries. You've also discovered how I make my #1 jams at the same time!

[DarkAxel]

oh a funny thing too... when I make music on my own, I don't loop. I start with riffs, often playing unplugged, I get the idea of the song, write drums that compliment it and put it in DAW. Start by recording the first guitar and then everything happens as it goes, one part inspires other. It's a weird way, but it has always worked for me

[friendship]

I've been having a hard time writing songs for a pretty lengthy spell, so I really want to re-evaluate how I do it. These days I just hit record and play and play and play and save it for later. Then I revisit it to see if there are any cool ideas. Sometimes there are, but truthfully I have a hard time revisiting these ideas and making something out of them. Alternatively I could try writing a full song in one sitting, but that's incredibly hard to do and happens to me very rarely, as someone else in this thread said. And also, telling myself I'm going to write a song is a great way to ensure that I won't be able to.

The only thing that's been getting my results recently is to load up a synth patch and just play stream-of-consciousness style. This means that the only stuff I've really completed is a bunch of weird, short, minimal synth explorations. I guess I'll take what I can get, but I'd really like to go back to writing songs with singing and stuff. Usually the only way for me to write those is to get out an acoustic guitar but that hasn't really been working anymore.

[More_Divebombs]

Most songs I write start in my head. I'll be at work, or doing something menial, and I'll come up with a hook or a groove in my head, maybe a bit of a melody too, but melody is usually interchangeable when it comes to actually piecing it together with a guitar. It's usually about the hook that I've visualised. It may sound completely different once I've padded it out with a melody, but that's where it all starts

Sometimes I might program a whole drum sequence for the idea before even touching a guitar.

[snipelfritz]

I write random parts then over the course of multiple years slowly piece things together. I think I have 3 or 4 really solid songs now.

[neonblack]

Most of the time the initial riff or idea I come up with ends up sounding like a bridge or an intro to me, so then I just try to find things that transition well into or out of that part and slowly sort of work outward from there.

Other times, it feels like the song is already written, floating in space, and I just "found" it. If that makes sense. I've had one or two songs that just clicked from the beginning and its like my fingers just knew where to go next. That's extremely rare though.

[WayToHip]

I think I need to change or adjust how I write. I'm playing my guitar to make the chord progressions, but starting with a fleshed out, note dense bass riff and then making guitar parts seems backwards. I like the riff, but I can't play it with power chords (I am clumsy on guitar) but playing just the root and fifth on bass while guitar plays the root, fifth, sharp second, and third seems like a waste of an idea. I'm not stating my technical abilities are holding me back, I just don't want either guitar or bass to be boring.

I feel like I need a looper to play over.

[friendship]

Bumping this thread because I've never had as much access to awesome sounds as I do now, and still feel pretty creatively barren. Is this growing up?

[snipelfritz]

Last week, I woke up with a cheesy country song hook in my head and wrote a full song in an hour.

It's like bad, new country type material though.

[WayToHip]

Bumping this thread because I've never had as much access to awesome sounds as I do now, and still feel pretty creatively barren. Is this growing up?

Maybe?

I had lessons and I still go back to playing how I did when I was a kid, but now I know why I sounded so cool.

Does anyone start their writing by creating a cool tone, or do you start with no effects then build up the tone from their?

[PeteeBee]

Most songs I write start in my head. I'll be at work, or doing something menial, and I'll come up with a hook or a groove in my head, maybe a bit of a melody too, but melody is usually interchangeable when it comes to actually piecing it together with a guitar. It's usually about the hook that I've visualised. It may sound completely different once I've padded it out with a melody, but that's where it all starts

For me it's a big mix of this with a lot of other stuff mentioned. Come up with a chord or two or three or four that I like at the moment, loop it to death, play it a lot, fill in missing things. Record it. I only have my iPhone but I'm able to get it well enough that I remember what I was working on and can share it with others. I always seem to have ideas for where to take it later that day/week, often at work or a family thing. I get home and add that to the mess. After this I normally bring it to play with others, since by then I have at least a chord progression, riff, and another chord progression, so pretty much your basic verse/riff/chorus combo you can jam on for a while. The other people normally have ideas I like, then it's a song.


*The trick is bringing it to people. I think I'm pretty fortunate that I have three different groupings of people I hit up depending on what kind of music it is. Regretfully none of them are actual bands yet, but hopefully something materializes soon. Sometimes I bring my idea and everyone just goes "I'm not sure what to play to that." That makes me sad. Trying to find some people a little more shoe gaze/noise/experimental minded. That's the dream.

[Bon Hoga]

My bandmate and I record every single practice session with a Zoom H1. I edit and archive the recordings, so now I've got hundreds of hours of practice tapes on my laptop. About 30% of all that racket is improvisation and jamming, and that's where we mine for riffs. I'd come up with a riff we both like, he'd lay down the groove, then we'd go through the recordings trying to find stuff that could go well with that riff, and we just string riffs together, everything we think might work gets tossed in there. Then we practise and practise and trim things down along the way, work on transitions, rearrange the order or different parts, decide what gets repeated, how many times, etc. We have recently butchered and rearranged two pieces we had been playing live regularly for over two years, bringing them both down from about seven to about four minutes each just by getting rid of repetitions we realised we didn't need.

[D-Day]

This thread is relevant to my interests! Thanks for all the info guys. I find myself in three bands all of a sudden and this thread is going to help me be a useful member in all of them!