What 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:
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For 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 [...]
Improvisation 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 [...]
So 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 [...]
I’ve been thinkingĀ 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 [...]
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