Ideas and Advice for Real Songwriters (formerly songwright.co.uk)
Category
improvising
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04.24.10Papercut – How I Composed Two songs (part 2)As promised, here's the second 'How I composed my song' post from Cafe Noodle. It isn't for a song, so much as a half improvised 12-note improvisation, and it inspired Papercut from the previous post. Papercut - A Sunday Soundscape by Tom Slatter What I did to make my composition By Tom Slatter aged 27 and a Half First I decided on my note row: D F# G# C D# B E A# F G C# A I deliberately started off with a few major third pairings to give hints of niceness, then quickly ended up shoving notes ...
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12.16.09Why any good Songwriter needs to be able to ImproviseWhat skills do I need to compose my own music? I would argue that any good songwriter has to be able to improvise. Improvising music, coming up with new ideas as you play, is one of the most important skills for any songwriter. Steve Lawson, solo bass player extraordinaire, wrote a blog post where he describes improvisation: "Improv resolutely is not ‘playing things you’ve never played before’, any more than a conversation is about ‘making up new words as you go along’." "Improv is playing ‘good things’ that you choose to play in the moment, based on the compendium of ideas, phrases, ...
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08.12.09Songwriting Sketches – The Exorcism of Marjorie GraceFor the 50/90 challenge I'd thought I'd try something different and write a set of lyrics before I composed any music. Usually, I write lyrics and music at the same time, starting of with melody ideas and a mixture of possible lyrics, nonsense verse and random 'la' and 'doo' sounds. This time I forced myself to write lyrics to 'The Exorcism of Marjorie Grace' before I sang a note. I haven't finished yet, I'm about halfway. However, I've recorded some sketches, so I thought I'd share the process with you. Sketch one - The chorus melody Something interesting happened as I was ...
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03.22.09How Songs Develop – MechanismImprovisation is one of the most important skills for the songwriter. It is also one of the least well taught. As a guitar teacher I've tried to teach improvisation in numerous ways, though I wouldn't claim to be an expert, I've had a little success. What I've never really done (save for the occasional post) is address improvisation from the songwriter's point of view. In this post I'm going to begin looking at songwriting improv by sharing with you some of the improvisations I recorded during the writing of 'Mechanism', one of the songs I wrote and hastily recorded for the February Album ...
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03.09.09A February in SongwritingSo how was your February? Mine was not nearly as productive as I thought it was goiong to be. I signed up to Febraury Album Writing Month, got all geared up to write, and then what did I achieve? Five songs, one of which wasn't really new at all. In fact it wasn't even a song. Seven Curses Download Seven Curses Started life as an audio sketch this one. Beyond the initial chorus I had absolutely no inspiration, so I had to rely on songwriting 'tricks' instead. These included the key change in the verse, the rather banal horro-film lyrics, and throwing in a ...
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11.22.08Five Ways To Come Up With Good Songwriting IdeasI've been thinking a lot about improvisation lately. I even put together a little ebook with some improvisation prompts in it recently. To compose a song you need to come up with musical ideas and usually you do so through improvising. Of course, you want good ideas, so logically you should look for ways to create good improvised ideas. That logic doesn't work. Even if we ignore how subjective the idea of a 'good' idea is, the fact is there is no sure fire way of always creating good ideas. However, you can learn ways to increase the volume of ideas. The more ideas ...
