Purposelessness makes learning anything hard. Why are you writing songs? Where do you intend them to be played? The formatting is kinda built into these answers. Want to be played on the radio,...
Purposelessness makes learning anything hard. Why are you writing songs? Where do you intend them to be played? The formatting is kinda built into these answers.
Want to be played on the radio, make it 3 minutes. 3 minutes of the same loop too boring? Add more variations or accompanying parts. Don't know how to do that? You just found your next area of study.
Writing rap beds is a whole different animal than writing soundtracks for video games. Writing a pop song is not the same as writing an orchestral piece. Well... kinda it's all the same writing wise, but different in arrangements, but for this type of question, writing is arranging.
When I was first writing songs, I would follow a very static pattern because it felt natural to do that. Intro, verse chorus, verse chorus, bridge, solo, chorus, out. This was something you heard other songs doing, and at 100ish bpm, it made it the right length for a rock song that could be played on the radio. We needed 10 of these to play shows and make an album. I just worked backwards from that goal.
A different question I'm interested in: why make a brand new song? What's your motivation? I'm more interested in figuring out better ways to play songs I already like. (Or sometimes, just being...
A different question I'm interested in: why make a brand new song? What's your motivation?
I'm more interested in figuring out better ways to play songs I already like. (Or sometimes, just being able to play them well at all.)
It's odd, because I'm at a point now that I think I have a good grasp on how to make a song (a skeletal melding of lyrics, melody, and chords), but I don't know enough about how to make...
It's odd, because I'm at a point now that I think I have a good grasp on how to make a song (a skeletal melding of lyrics, melody, and chords), but I don't know enough about how to make good-sounding modern music on a computer. So, I'm on the opposite end of things compared to the linked OP.
Context; conflict-of-interest This post is meant to discuss music making in a way that is approachable to anyone interested in doing so. While being a musician is different than dabbling or making...
Context; conflict-of-interest
This post is meant to discuss music making in a way that is approachable to anyone interested in doing so. While being a musician is different than dabbling or making music as a hobby, a lot of videos and informative content online is directed towards an audience of musicians and... to convert watchers into customers by promoting their products, usually as the 'easiest' way to achieve success.
This is something I wrote for my band originally to promote our music, but I realised the above and decided to not do that. It undermined the true purpose of this post: Spread knowledge for the public domain, using the band as a credible vehicle to distribute such knowledge under. Ergo, I removed any trace of direct and/or intentional promotion and spent a lot of time rewriting to fulfil this purpose and make the topic approachable to as many as possible.
You can argue that me posting something under a 'brand' I am a part of is self-promotion, and you'd generally be right. However, this post was not made to exploit the engagement of others for our benefit. Reposting here ensures as many people see it as possible, personal knowledge is not locked onto one platform, and genuine discussion may even occur across platforms! We are always learning, and adopting new perspectives makes art approachable for all. I even rewrote this specifically to take as much attention away from the band as much as the message behind it.
In other words, I do not think this repost is a conflict of interest since the interest of spreading knowledge is compatible with the idea of high-quality content and discussion value on Tildes. However, I am more than willing to take punitive measures or hand-delete this post myself if it is decided that this does undermine Tildes.
Thank you for reading.
EDIT: As much as I do come on Tildes to genuinely read and comment, I do admit that I don't have the best track record of independent posts. Therefore, I am more than willing for this to be completely taken down. If we're all good, then that's cool.
what the fuck do i do when all i can make is 8 bar loops and not full songs? do you have any tips for me? why is it possible to forget such a basic songwriting thing? why is life so much hell? i guess that last question isn't fully related but if you know, please tell
I really love questions like these cause I ask myself... how do I make songs?
How you make music is 110% subjective as it is purely theoretical. In a purely scientific context, what separates theory from law is that a law is extensively proven to show it can be replicated under specific conditions. There needs to be objectivity for a law to be law — besides the natural harmonic series, there is absolutely no objectivity concerning music despite what theories may tell you. Art comes from individual expression and preference; the only truly objective fact in music is that humans and entities are consciously unique. Therefore, how you make music is personal.
When I'm downtown, one of my favourite things to do is hop on rapid transit to get to where I need to go. It's my favourite form of commuting by far. I won't get to my stop immediately, there's a couple of stops before mine. Within the time it takes — multiple people will board and depart, the train runs over a bunch of tracks and makes noise, the surrounding environment may amplify or take away noise, et cetera. Eventually, I make it to my stop and depart.
A song is like taking the metro. Creating a song is like planning the route you will take.
How you plan your route depends on what you want out of it. Do you want to go in the morning? Do you want the scenic route? Do you want to get there as quickly as possible?
Before you start making a song, you should have an idea and set rules/guidelines/limitations for yourself. Do whatever it takes to get yourself in your creative state of mind. Once you're in that flow state, you'll feel or know better what to do.
Ofc, you can also break the rules! Experiment! Some songs were born out of an accident, in some form or another.
So how do you start making a full song? It's all about getting into that flow state of creativity. Get an idea and just fuck around until you get into your flow state. Your song can be as short as a second, 30 seconds, or even a minute. It doesn't even have to be ""good""! Just create and have fun!
Self-promotion-wise, this seems fine to me. I have no idea what band you're avoiding promoting, which means you are doing a great job not promoting it. :) This... doesn't seem that useful, though....
Self-promotion-wise, this seems fine to me. I have no idea what band you're avoiding promoting, which means you are doing a great job not promoting it. :)
This... doesn't seem that useful, though. It reads a lot like "you write a song by just writing a song". That's probably great for people who already have whatever innate creativity thing makes you good at writing songs, but it's sort of meaningless for everyone else.
That may be the point, that it's different for everyone and there is no universal advice, but this kind of tries to wrap that up in the form of universal advice and it winds up reading like "draw the rest of the owl".
I figured that there was a lot of stuff about how to write a song, so I instead tried to write something from the POV of how to start approaching how to write a song. Hence, the how to "how to". I...
This... doesn't seem that useful, though. It reads a lot like "you write a song by just writing a song".
I figured that there was a lot of stuff about how to write a song, so I instead tried to write something from the POV of how to start approaching how to write a song. Hence, the how to "how to". I intended for this to be more like a pre-requisite than how to literally write a song.
That's probably great for people who already have whatever innate creativity thing makes you good at writing songs, but it's sort of meaningless for everyone else.
...this kind of tries to wrap that up in the form of universal advice and it winds up reading like "draw the rest of the owl".
Yeah, this was prob where I failed. I think I was trying to kill two birds with one stone and ended up just not scoring the audience I wanted, nor any audience.
If this helps, the point of this was more like the step 0 to the step 1 to the 'draw the rest of the owl'. The point about how to find creative flow is the key point ofc — you do need to find some sort of way to access the state where you're satisfied, focused, inspired, amorphous, and/or in-tune all at once. Aka 'the flow.'
Honestly, this all inspires me to try again. The responses I've gotten are not what I wanted, but they're more like what I need.
You are absolutely right tho. This isn't really all that useful if you do not have that spark of creativity and, in that way, I did fail to spark high-quality content and discussion. So this really isn't a good post hahaha.
I do wanna try again at some point. This time, on my own. I feel like this is outside the scope of "people who know music, or know a lil something bout music" that I wanted to target using the profile of my band (what the link posts to).
So I do wanna say thank you so much for your input! I created something quite shit, and you gave me something priceless. Literally and ironically! I am eternally grateful for this.
If you mean Elfen Lied, your hunch is correct! The band I posted this under is named after Lucy, and the username is a direct reference to the anime/manga. It was my rite of passage into...
If you mean Elfen Lied, your hunch is correct!
The band I posted this under is named after Lucy, and the username is a direct reference to the anime/manga. It was my rite of passage into adolescence, and I think the thematic content of the anime/manga truly explains the ethos of such a band.
If only more people took criticism this well. I think flow states are mostly orthogonal to how to do a thing, and I don't think they can be intentionally invoked so much as being a thing that...
If only more people took criticism this well.
I think flow states are mostly orthogonal to how to do a thing, and I don't think they can be intentionally invoked so much as being a thing that happens when conditions are right. Those conditions are things like "don't be distracted" and "be good enough at the thing to not get frustrated and give up". That second one is why I can enter a flow state much more easily when programming than when making music: I am really good at computer-touching and really mediocre at music.
In this sense, flow doesn't make sense as a step 0 in a learning context, because you don't have anything to flow into yet. (IME it doesn't make sense as a step 0 in a doing context either - I generally start doing a thing and then enter a flow state while doing it - but that one sounds likely to vary by person.)
A question for further pondering and discussion: do you think the "creative spark" itself is something that can be taught? All attempts I've seen at doing it come off as their own variations on "draw the rest of the fucking owl", as if the person trying to teach it has always had a constant stream of ideas flowing and can't comprehend not having that.
You're right, and that was what I was going for! I think this is also something I sorely missed the mark on. I wasn't necessarily trying for anyone to intentionally invoke a flow state, more like...
...I don't think they can be intentionally invoked so much as being a thing that happens when conditions are right.
You're right, and that was what I was going for! I think this is also something I sorely missed the mark on. I wasn't necessarily trying for anyone to intentionally invoke a flow state, more like to find self-awareness as to how you get into your specific flow state. To give you the mindfulness necessary to figure out what to do from there.
Even for someone as pretentious as me, I cannot invoke a flow state at will. I've tried, it's impossible. Instead, I find that the conditions you speak of are the things to look for and suggest rather than control. Your environment plays an instrumental role (pun unintended, but acknowledged) in creativity and expression — same as or adjacent to how your environment influences your personality, quality of life and health.
I'm very strict on the standard that anything you want to do should take as long as necessary, or as long as you need to.
That second one is why I can enter a flow state much more easily when programming than when making music: I am really good at computer-touching and really mediocre at music.
Yeah if you're competent or skilled at something, you will discover and enter that flow state better. As for music, it is art — thus, the stereotype of 'modern art' applies to music. Something as superficial as striking pieces sold in auction houses for tax deductions applies to music as well, not 1:1 but similar in this analogy.
Purposelessness makes learning anything hard. Why are you writing songs? Where do you intend them to be played? The formatting is kinda built into these answers.
The above says it better than I ever could when it comes to what you are making music for. How you make music, as Moseph says, will influence how you write music. That leads to the missing information necessary to draw the rest of the fucking owl.
(IME it doesn't make sense as a step 0 in a doing context either - I generally start doing a thing and then enter a flow state while doing it - but that one sounds likely to vary by person.)
This was step 0 as in this is to set you up for thinking about doing the thing, rather than doing the thing itself. In other words, the things that describe doing the things. Meta-"doing a thing". In that context, I failed spectacularly.
A question for further pondering and discussion: do you think the "creative spark" itself is something that can be taught?
If I leave it at just no, then that is misleading.
The creative spark, to me, is converting potential energy into kinetic energy. I fundamentally believe everyone has the potential for creativity and ingenuity — despite what culture will tell you, anyone can cook. It's also cardinal to note that not everyone can and will be a good cook, lest an average one; even one at the bare minimum of competency. Everyone is different. I'm no psych major also, but there is something to be said in the field of evolution and how we came to be.
However, the tools are there. If I were to point to something as evidence, I would look no further than improvisation and adaptation for those who live in the wilderness. On the other, Chris McCandles is a good example of someone who sought out to do so and, arguably, "failed".
Teaching is a requirement. So-called prodigies can teach themselves, as they have the capabilities to understand and comprehend at a super-human level. Ofc, we tend to believe in one way of teaching — public and private education in the United States is standardised, and as much as today's curriculum is aware of alternative learning methods, no significant changes have been made to change this 'assembly line' style of teaching. Consequence of 'the natural order of things'.
Anyone can be taught something in the natural way they learn about things. This mutual relationship between teacher and student teaches both the teacher and the student. The teacher, who may have been taught one way, re-evaluates and re-teaches themselves how something works. Both the teacher and the student become an active participant in education, and in communication as well.
I think I shared the content in the post to the wrong people. It was truly meant for the person I was replying to; thus, it should have been a comment instead. Posting it on Tildes was not a good idea; the best thing, ofc, is that I had this communication with you! Failure and learning from it is awesome!
So to answer your question, the idea of teaching the "creative spark" implies something like social Darwinism. Western society is very much like this — we rely on a self-serving system of competition that, in so many cases, is unfair! Even something like intelligence is a competition; if you are regarded as ""retarded"" in a silent or a direct way, you are unworthy of help and most often left to die off. I do apologise for the slur, but it really is to emphasise we are taught that aptitude is fixed whether subliminal or explicit! I find that this challenging way of showing normalised, derogatory perspective is necessary. However, if I'm wrong, I am absolutely and happily willing to edit out the slur. I will also erase it if anyone objects.
Yes and no. No, the "creative spark" cannot be necessarily taught because that capacity is innate. Yet, it's normal to stop there and call that the end of it. Because the capacity to create is innate; considering the individuality of humans and entities, how to access that potential energy will depend entirely on the person and how they learn. Thus, I don't believe something fixed like a "how to" article will help as it is fundamentally inefficient. Instead, something like private lessons are better — that is fair. My post was instead meant to jog an alternative view of how to start "how to start making a song" to that one specific person I replied to; I haphazardly changed the wording to poorly include others, as a result of wanting to share this knowledge with others from a conflicting intention.
Anyone can be taught a skill. The real talent is your plasticity to learning. Anyone can make a song, absolutely. Making a song is independent from musical profession. You can make music just because you wanna create something. Whether you wanna 'declare your major or minor' is another thing.
Purposelessness makes learning anything hard. Why are you writing songs? Where do you intend them to be played? The formatting is kinda built into these answers.
Want to be played on the radio, make it 3 minutes. 3 minutes of the same loop too boring? Add more variations or accompanying parts. Don't know how to do that? You just found your next area of study.
Writing rap beds is a whole different animal than writing soundtracks for video games. Writing a pop song is not the same as writing an orchestral piece. Well... kinda it's all the same writing wise, but different in arrangements, but for this type of question, writing is arranging.
When I was first writing songs, I would follow a very static pattern because it felt natural to do that. Intro, verse chorus, verse chorus, bridge, solo, chorus, out. This was something you heard other songs doing, and at 100ish bpm, it made it the right length for a rock song that could be played on the radio. We needed 10 of these to play shows and make an album. I just worked backwards from that goal.
A different question I'm interested in: why make a brand new song? What's your motivation?
I'm more interested in figuring out better ways to play songs I already like. (Or sometimes, just being able to play them well at all.)
It's odd, because I'm at a point now that I think I have a good grasp on how to make a song (a skeletal melding of lyrics, melody, and chords), but I don't know enough about how to make good-sounding modern music on a computer. So, I'm on the opposite end of things compared to the linked OP.
Context; conflict-of-interest
This post is meant to discuss music making in a way that is approachable to anyone interested in doing so. While being a musician is different than dabbling or making music as a hobby, a lot of videos and informative content online is directed towards an audience of musicians and... to convert watchers into customers by promoting their products, usually as the 'easiest' way to achieve success.
This is something I wrote for my band originally to promote our music, but I realised the above and decided to not do that. It undermined the true purpose of this post: Spread knowledge for the public domain, using the band as a credible vehicle to distribute such knowledge under. Ergo, I removed any trace of direct and/or intentional promotion and spent a lot of time rewriting to fulfil this purpose and make the topic approachable to as many as possible.
You can argue that me posting something under a 'brand' I am a part of is self-promotion, and you'd generally be right. However, this post was not made to exploit the engagement of others for our benefit. Reposting here ensures as many people see it as possible, personal knowledge is not locked onto one platform, and genuine discussion may even occur across platforms! We are always learning, and adopting new perspectives makes art approachable for all. I even rewrote this specifically to take as much attention away from the band as much as the message behind it.
In other words, I do not think this repost is a conflict of interest since the interest of spreading knowledge is compatible with the idea of high-quality content and discussion value on Tildes. However, I am more than willing to take punitive measures or hand-delete this post myself if it is decided that this does undermine Tildes.
Thank you for reading.
EDIT: As much as I do come on Tildes to genuinely read and comment, I do admit that I don't have the best track record of independent posts. Therefore, I am more than willing for this to be completely taken down. If we're all good, then that's cool.
How to "How to start making a song"
I really love questions like these cause I ask myself... how do I make songs?
How you make music is 110% subjective as it is purely theoretical. In a purely scientific context, what separates theory from law is that a law is extensively proven to show it can be replicated under specific conditions. There needs to be objectivity for a law to be law — besides the natural harmonic series, there is absolutely no objectivity concerning music despite what theories may tell you. Art comes from individual expression and preference; the only truly objective fact in music is that humans and entities are consciously unique. Therefore, how you make music is personal.
When I'm downtown, one of my favourite things to do is hop on rapid transit to get to where I need to go. It's my favourite form of commuting by far. I won't get to my stop immediately, there's a couple of stops before mine. Within the time it takes — multiple people will board and depart, the train runs over a bunch of tracks and makes noise, the surrounding environment may amplify or take away noise, et cetera. Eventually, I make it to my stop and depart.
A song is like taking the metro. Creating a song is like planning the route you will take.
How you plan your route depends on what you want out of it. Do you want to go in the morning? Do you want the scenic route? Do you want to get there as quickly as possible?
Before you start making a song, you should have an idea and set rules/guidelines/limitations for yourself. Do whatever it takes to get yourself in your creative state of mind. Once you're in that flow state, you'll feel or know better what to do.
Ofc, you can also break the rules! Experiment! Some songs were born out of an accident, in some form or another.
So how do you start making a full song? It's all about getting into that flow state of creativity. Get an idea and just fuck around until you get into your flow state. Your song can be as short as a second, 30 seconds, or even a minute. It doesn't even have to be ""good""! Just create and have fun!
Self-promotion-wise, this seems fine to me. I have no idea what band you're avoiding promoting, which means you are doing a great job not promoting it. :)
This... doesn't seem that useful, though. It reads a lot like "you write a song by just writing a song". That's probably great for people who already have whatever innate creativity thing makes you good at writing songs, but it's sort of meaningless for everyone else.
That may be the point, that it's different for everyone and there is no universal advice, but this kind of tries to wrap that up in the form of universal advice and it winds up reading like "draw the rest of the owl".
I figured that there was a lot of stuff about how to write a song, so I instead tried to write something from the POV of how to start approaching how to write a song. Hence, the how to "how to". I intended for this to be more like a pre-requisite than how to literally write a song.
Yeah, this was prob where I failed. I think I was trying to kill two birds with one stone and ended up just not scoring the audience I wanted, nor any audience.
If this helps, the point of this was more like the step 0 to the step 1 to the 'draw the rest of the owl'. The point about how to find creative flow is the key point ofc — you do need to find some sort of way to access the state where you're satisfied, focused, inspired, amorphous, and/or in-tune all at once. Aka 'the flow.'
Honestly, this all inspires me to try again. The responses I've gotten are not what I wanted, but they're more like what I need.
You are absolutely right tho. This isn't really all that useful if you do not have that spark of creativity and, in that way, I did fail to spark high-quality content and discussion. So this really isn't a good post hahaha.
I do wanna try again at some point. This time, on my own. I feel like this is outside the scope of "people who know music, or know a lil something bout music" that I wanted to target using the profile of my band (what the link posts to).
So I do wanna say thank you so much for your input! I created something quite shit, and you gave me something priceless. Literally and ironically! I am eternally grateful for this.
If you mean Elfen Lied, your hunch is correct!
The band I posted this under is named after Lucy, and the username is a direct reference to the anime/manga. It was my rite of passage into adolescence, and I think the thematic content of the anime/manga truly explains the ethos of such a band.
If only more people took criticism this well.
I think flow states are mostly orthogonal to how to do a thing, and I don't think they can be intentionally invoked so much as being a thing that happens when conditions are right. Those conditions are things like "don't be distracted" and "be good enough at the thing to not get frustrated and give up". That second one is why I can enter a flow state much more easily when programming than when making music: I am really good at computer-touching and really mediocre at music.
In this sense, flow doesn't make sense as a step 0 in a learning context, because you don't have anything to flow into yet. (IME it doesn't make sense as a step 0 in a doing context either - I generally start doing a thing and then enter a flow state while doing it - but that one sounds likely to vary by person.)
A question for further pondering and discussion: do you think the "creative spark" itself is something that can be taught? All attempts I've seen at doing it come off as their own variations on "draw the rest of the fucking owl", as if the person trying to teach it has always had a constant stream of ideas flowing and can't comprehend not having that.
You're right, and that was what I was going for! I think this is also something I sorely missed the mark on. I wasn't necessarily trying for anyone to intentionally invoke a flow state, more like to find self-awareness as to how you get into your specific flow state. To give you the mindfulness necessary to figure out what to do from there.
Even for someone as pretentious as me, I cannot invoke a flow state at will. I've tried, it's impossible. Instead, I find that the conditions you speak of are the things to look for and suggest rather than control. Your environment plays an instrumental role (pun unintended, but acknowledged) in creativity and expression — same as or adjacent to how your environment influences your personality, quality of life and health.
I'm very strict on the standard that anything you want to do should take as long as necessary, or as long as you need to.
Yeah if you're competent or skilled at something, you will discover and enter that flow state better. As for music, it is art — thus, the stereotype of 'modern art' applies to music. Something as superficial as striking pieces sold in auction houses for tax deductions applies to music as well, not 1:1 but similar in this analogy.
The above says it better than I ever could when it comes to what you are making music for. How you make music, as Moseph says, will influence how you write music. That leads to the missing information necessary to draw the rest of the fucking owl.
This was step 0 as in this is to set you up for thinking about doing the thing, rather than doing the thing itself. In other words, the things that describe doing the things. Meta-"doing a thing". In that context, I failed spectacularly.
If I leave it at just no, then that is misleading.
The creative spark, to me, is converting potential energy into kinetic energy. I fundamentally believe everyone has the potential for creativity and ingenuity — despite what culture will tell you, anyone can cook. It's also cardinal to note that not everyone can and will be a good cook, lest an average one; even one at the bare minimum of competency. Everyone is different. I'm no psych major also, but there is something to be said in the field of evolution and how we came to be.
However, the tools are there. If I were to point to something as evidence, I would look no further than improvisation and adaptation for those who live in the wilderness. On the other, Chris McCandles is a good example of someone who sought out to do so and, arguably, "failed".
Teaching is a requirement. So-called prodigies can teach themselves, as they have the capabilities to understand and comprehend at a super-human level. Ofc, we tend to believe in one way of teaching — public and private education in the United States is standardised, and as much as today's curriculum is aware of alternative learning methods, no significant changes have been made to change this 'assembly line' style of teaching. Consequence of 'the natural order of things'.
Anyone can be taught something in the natural way they learn about things. This mutual relationship between teacher and student teaches both the teacher and the student. The teacher, who may have been taught one way, re-evaluates and re-teaches themselves how something works. Both the teacher and the student become an active participant in education, and in communication as well.
I think I shared the content in the post to the wrong people. It was truly meant for the person I was replying to; thus, it should have been a comment instead. Posting it on Tildes was not a good idea; the best thing, ofc, is that I had this communication with you! Failure and learning from it is awesome!
So to answer your question, the idea of teaching the "creative spark" implies something like social Darwinism. Western society is very much like this — we rely on a self-serving system of competition that, in so many cases, is unfair! Even something like intelligence is a competition; if you are regarded as ""retarded"" in a silent or a direct way, you are unworthy of help and most often left to die off. I do apologise for the slur, but it really is to emphasise we are taught that aptitude is fixed whether subliminal or explicit! I find that this challenging way of showing normalised, derogatory perspective is necessary. However, if I'm wrong, I am absolutely and happily willing to edit out the slur. I will also erase it if anyone objects.
Yes and no. No, the "creative spark" cannot be necessarily taught because that capacity is innate. Yet, it's normal to stop there and call that the end of it. Because the capacity to create is innate; considering the individuality of humans and entities, how to access that potential energy will depend entirely on the person and how they learn. Thus, I don't believe something fixed like a "how to" article will help as it is fundamentally inefficient. Instead, something like private lessons are better — that is fair. My post was instead meant to jog an alternative view of how to start "how to start making a song" to that one specific person I replied to; I haphazardly changed the wording to poorly include others, as a result of wanting to share this knowledge with others from a conflicting intention.
Anyone can be taught a skill. The real talent is your plasticity to learning. Anyone can make a song, absolutely. Making a song is independent from musical profession. You can make music just because you wanna create something. Whether you wanna 'declare your major or minor' is another thing.