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When you figure it out, please let me know!
One thing every successful songwriter/composer, I’ve interviewed or whose memoirs I’ve read says the same thing: you have to write a lot … and know that most of what you write won’t be very good. You have to write a lot of crappy songs before you write good ones…and what makes the difference between people that master the craft and everyone else is being willing to keep writing, even when the writing isn’t good. It takes years.
Every once in a while someone writes a good song early…but there is almost always going to be a lot of mediocrity in those people’s work if you look at everything they did.
To begin with, forget about music theory, as it will keep you away from what truly matters when it's comes to songwriting: the intention.
Build the song/music you want to hear first in your head, then use the tools at your disposal to transcribe. At a given time, your whole body is pulsating according to your environment conditions (pressure temperature humidity) and your own condition (stress, mood). If you learn to listen to your own pulse at that very moment , a time signature, tempo and even tonality should emerge. From there a melody or a riff should develop in your head and if you're a singer and love words, maybe those will follow. Once the idea emerged, transcribe it as fast as possible to stick as close as possible to your original idea, either with your DAW of choice or use your phone audio memo to record the idea by mumbling to keep record. Accumulate those drafts and regularly listen to those and when you find one interesting, start working deeper on it. At this point, music theory can help you to develop the composition and arrangement. The more your get use to this process, the more complex your composition will get over time.
It goes without saying that all of this is possibly only if you already have developed a certain level of vocabulary in your preferred style(s): getting a grasp of common progression, rhythm figures, song structures etc... if you haven't reached that level yet, learn songs you like by ears.
My 2 cents. Probably not helpful, but that's how I am now approaching it.
Final advice: don't listen to anything people are saying in this thread, we are regurgitating our own bullshit. The key is within you, you're the only one who can find it. And eventually, if it sounds good to you, you reached your goal.
We're into sound, not words, after all
This metronome exercise by Victor Wooten might help. Try to apply what he says to whatever instruments you play, not just rush out to buy a bass
He's trying to get you to hear the space between clicks and play with the placement of your notes in relation to the clicks (a teeny tiny bit behind the click, a tiny bit behind the click, just a bit behind the click, dead on the click,e tc.).
Hi @GovernorSilver. Do you have a link to a video of Victor demonstrating/talking about this? If so, I’d appreciate you sharing. Thanks in advance.
My bad. I thought I posted the video but looks like I didn't
HUGE fan of Vic Wooten "The Groove Workshop". It is more about performance than composing, but IMO a fantastic video for learning musicianship.
Ear training is always at the top of any list of ways to improve musicianship. You don't require apps for that. Just learn songs by ear. No cheating.
The first few are very difficult, so choose easy songs to start with.
My 2 cents : buying equipment can make things more "fluid" but it won't make you a better songwriter or composer. Listening to others music is a great place to begin for form and composition as well as expressivity. Ear training can def help your singing.
One thing i would recommend is learning chord substitutions not just progressions. And learn rhythm - there's "only" eight "notes" but and infinite number of ways to space them in time. Time is important part of music, perhaps the most important IMHOP
BTW I've been kinda on the same journey as you (like most practicing musicians)
I might have misunderstood that comment but I don't believe attention to groove is only for performance, nor do I believe groove is necessarily excluded from consideration while composing music. I'm surprised that anyone who has composed beats on an MPC or other hardware groovebox or one of the many sequencers available for IOS would come to the conclusion that groove is only for performance. MPC users are known for entering drum parts and other parts manually to get the groove that they want, instead of just using a step sequencer. Elektron groovebox users are more likely to step sequence their beats, but quite a few of them then expend extra effort to use the microtiming features for getting the beats to groove more to their tastes.
If you are committed to composing music to go with lyrics, the cases in which you don't consider how the lyrics will fit in time with the music are quite rare.
While the practical application might be performance. It is also about deepening your hearing and awareness. An important aspect of composing is hearing the music in your head in a very specific way. Composing/writing whether on paper or recording demos or voice memos are about hearing things with the mind’s ear and capturing that.
Anything that deepens your specific musical awareness will improve your songwriting. Because it will make you aware of what you are hearing.
p.s. While formal theory is not a pre-requisite for writing songs, the notion that some have expressed that it could hurt is demonstrably false. It is one of many tools one might have in one’s tool chest.
Nothing is as important as refining one’s ear and being able to imagine sound in your head and be able to capture that.
Agreed, it’s a strange (and unprovable) notion that knowledge of music theory will reduce anyone’s songwriting ability.
Oftentimes people cite examples of people that “don’t know theory” and those musicians often had phenomenal ears and “knew” the theory but not the words for what they knew or those musicians collaborated with people that knew theory and leaned on them heavily .
To expand this @joegrant413 , start with Western music theory from Bach to Schoenberg, and then once you've got that baked into your cranium, study the musical traditions from around the globe. The more you know, the more fluid you'll come up with ideas.
For lyrics, try Pat Pattison's book here.
https://a.co/d/e4f88rT
And Jim Peterik's "For Dummies" book here.
https://a.co/d/0Uxh9iP
I'm rather knackered at the moment, so maybe I can give a more thoughtful reply tomorrow.
But completely unprovable that the person would have somehow lost their talent if they had learned theory.
It reminds me of the many people I have met who denigrate long-established concepts prior to extolling the virtues their own alternative to that concept.
While it might be impossible to definitely prove that some particular individual would be ruined by knowing music theory, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that knowing music theory doesn’t prevent one from making compelling music.
Given the amount of great music created by people familiar with music theory, I think it is safe to say that knowing music theory won’t prevent one from making good music. Will knowing theory without actually developing your ear make you a better musician? Probably not.
Can you make great music without formal knowledge of music theory: yes. Can you make great music without a well-developed mind’s ear: no.
I know great musicians who will talk about how bad teachers or environments hurt them … but that wasn’t music theory hurting them.
Maybe that’s where the confusion comes from - there are certainly music teachers and organizations out there that don’t have the interests of individual students at heart. How you are taught is just as important as what you are taught.
I just read back through the thread, no-one actually said that knowing music theory would be detrimental to songwriting.
Jankun said forget music theory, but didn't say that knowing music theory would be harmful.
I think the words he used imply that learning theory is counter-productive. He said: “ … forget about music theory, as ** it will keep you away from what truly matter**”’
That sounds like discouraging learning theory to me.
I don't speak for Jankun so my interpretation of his words might be wrong, but he reads and writes music fluently so I think he is saying to trust your instincts more than theory, which to me is a valid argument, and one that I personally agree with
I understand the argument, but I think it's a strawman. No-one is saying don't learn theory if you want to, or that music theory is harmful. Just that in many cases songwriters really on instinct and ear more than theory, which is absolutely and undeniably true.
Thanks so much.
I can definitely see where both @espiegel123 and @JanKun are coming from. Going by instinct is great, and I did that before learning music theory and created some of my best music during that era, but if one is bad creating music by going by instinct, theory would give one an advantage. Theory would give all musicians an advantage to be honest.
My experience - at first theory made me feel bogged down, but then I realised I could still "break the rules". I also studied "world music" in uni and learned about various cultural traditions (although I'm still learning about various musical traditions from various cultures). So, theory is more like a set of guidelines than hard and fast rules like they used to be.
Btw, nothing I said should be taken to imply that anything is more important than what one hears in the mind’s ear.
What you hear in your head is the boss.
I was not implying that theory is as important as your imagination.
My only point is that knowing theory is not at odds with instinct. It can often help you identify the sounds you are hearing. It can help give you ideas about places to go when you are stuck.
p.s. by “knowing” I mean having internalized the sounds that go with the names. For instance, i don’t think you “know” a scale or a chord till you can hear them in your head. You might “know” the scale without knowing the names.
OK, waaaaayyyy out there. But I consumed this tome called "The Matter with Things" by Iain McGilchrist. One of the major themes of the book is that propositional knowledge - words, logic, writing, rules, is important, but dangerously inappropriate when it has the gall to usurp holistic, embodied knowledge.
So, yeah, learn and know all the rules and grammare and theory and techniques and tools. Become skilled in them with your work. But "forget" them in the moments that matter with your creativity, inspiration, and especially if you're in flow with your instrument as you manifest sound inside your head and body into the environment around you.
That's pretty much it in a nutshell.
Thank you @richardyot. As usual you understand my point even when my English fails me
@espiegel123 @jwmmakerofmusic, I didn't want to imply that music theory is counter productive, I didn't express myself well, sorry for the confusion.
If both of you take the time to listen to some of the orchestral pieces I shared on this forum, you'll probably understand that I have spent a decent amount of time in my life studying musical theory, harmony and composition...
What I truly meant is what many other said in this thread, music theory, devices are only tools. One should "do" and "feel" first and trust their own instinct instead of trusting tools.
I now believe that at the heart of songwriting, there must be an intuitive and clear intention FIRST. After close to 30 years of songwriting I realized that the best songs I created are the ones I first clearly envisioned in my head before even touching any instrument or gear. It doesn't mean that one cannot create great things by noodling with the tools at their disposal, I still do it and still love it. But I truly believe that everyone should try develop this internal creative process.
Another thing I was trying to imply between the lines in my previous post is that "understanding" a musical theory concept and "feeling" it are two very distinctive things. One need to put into practice the musical concepts in order to own/ internalise / feel those, otherwise it is just accumulation of knowledge without purpose or use.
It is so easy to procrastinate and hide behind our tools. Maybe that's one of the reasons why there are so many active members interested in music creation on this forum but only very few of them actually sharing their finished work.
Sorry I wrote a long answer, but this post of yours is exactly what I meant from the beginning.
And @joegrant413 , please join @richardyot 's monthly thread the Song Of The Month Club, lots of creative people interested in sharing constructive feedback on creations there!
About clearly envisioning music in one's head, sometimes it just flows out of me into the app I'm currently using, and sometimes (like with "The Collector's Heart" trance piece) I notate out the melody and chords first on my Boox tablet on staff paper. Sometimes I just do "sound effects" into AudioShare to save a groove, melody, etc for later production. (Yeah, it's as embarrassing as it sounds. 😂 ) Really all depends on how I want to go about it.
When writing lyrics, I figure out what it is I want to say. Sometimes I use imagery, allegory, allusion, etc in the words. Sometimes I just make my lyrics direct and frank. Sometimes a mixture of the two.
For instance, "Night Sky" was me writing about unrequited love and longing, and I used a lot of imagery in those lyrics. The same for my anti-religion song "Va Te", although the chorus was very direct and frank.
These days, I don't really have any real topics to write lyrics about, but that's okay. The instrumentals I'm making are fun and fascinating.
Also yes, speaking of your orchestral works, it could be fun to create an orchestral Trance piece together. I will soon create a collaboration thread to see who I can collaborate with. Maybe make an EP or Album based on that.