Songwriting - anyone writing (besides me)?

[TravisW]

At the beginning of the year, I set two musical goals for myself for the year. One was to finally finish the Rule 17 band recording. The other was to write and release one new piece of music. I had a few musical ideas that I put together and liked pretty well as a song...at least musically. I had it mostly arranged, and was ready to do a proper recording of it once I got the lyrics done. But the lyrics were tough. I started one set, got partway in and they didn't fit the music. So I wrote new music for them. But that song needs a little more work on the musical/arrangement side, so I went back to "Song 1", started a few more sets of lyrics, and hated them. 

One day, I thought about a song I wrote back in 1999 - I've been kicking around doing an E.P. with a bunch of reworked old band songs that were "done", but maybe had a lame chorus, stupid lyrics, were too long, or just had the wrong energy live so we dropped them. I'd call it "Reheated Leftovers", and the cover would be a plate of casserole in the microwave. Anyway, I thought about an old song I wrote in 1999 that had a good "feature" riff and the rest was pretty much garbage. I thought the riff had kind of neat, kind of epic, "Eastern" feel that got me thinking about it being Gates of Babylon, Stargazer, Kashmir, or Egypt's goofy younger cousin. So I thought of a chorus that fit over the riff - "Beneath a never-setting sun, we move another stone", figured out what the rest of the song was about, and wrote the lyrics in one sitting. Then from there, I rewrote everything aside from the main riff and a little bass guitar opening that I changed into a middle section.

So that will be my new song to release for 2023. "Song 1" still sits there waiting to be about something so it can get a set of lyrics. Maybe it did its job. It caused the creation of two other complete songs. Maybe that's what it's about. 

[Dinosaur David B]

At the beginning of the year, I set two musical goals for myself for the year. One was to finally finish the Rule 17 band recording. The other was to write and release one new piece of music. I had a few musical ideas that I put together and liked pretty well as a song...at least musically. I had it mostly arranged, and was ready to do a proper recording of it once I got the lyrics done. But the lyrics were tough. I started one set, got partway in and they didn't fit the music. So I wrote new music for them. But that song needs a little more work on the musical/arrangement side, so I went back to "Song 1", started a few more sets of lyrics, and hated them. 

One day, I thought about a song I wrote back in 1999 - I've been kicking around doing an E.P. with a bunch of reworked old band songs that were "done", but maybe had a lame chorus, stupid lyrics, were too long, or just had the wrong energy live so we dropped them. I'd call it "Reheated Leftovers", and the cover would be a plate of casserole in the microwave. Anyway, I thought about an old song I wrote in 1999 that had a good "feature" riff and the rest was pretty much garbage. I thought the riff had kind of neat, kind of epic, "Eastern" feel that got me thinking about it being Gates of Babylon, Stargazer, Kashmir, or Egypt's goofy younger cousin. So I thought of a chorus that fit over the riff - "Beneath a never-setting sun, we move another stone", figured out what the rest of the song was about, and wrote the lyrics in one sitting. Then from there, I rewrote everything aside from the main riff and a little bass guitar opening that I changed into a middle section.

So that will be my new song to release for 2023. "Song 1" still sits there waiting to be about something so it can get a set of lyrics. Maybe it did its job. It caused the creation of two other complete songs. Maybe that's what it's about. 

 

Glad to hear you're doing this. Great idea, too.

I've often felt I should go back and take some of my early instrumental songs and maybe re-work them as songs with vocals. I  haven't had to do that yet, but there's no reason I couldn't or shouldn't. 

As for the Eastern-flavored song thing, I've got one of them on the upcoming album. It's got an Achilles Last Stand meets Iron Maiden flavor, and the sickest groove Brian Tichey ever played. 
 

[TravisW]

That sounds awesome. You hired Tichey for recording? That's the sort of thing I've been considering for a while since I hate programming, I'm not a real drummer, and seems like a cool way to get great groove ideas. How was the experience? 

[Dinosaur David B]

Been documenting it here:

viewtopic.php?t=246853

[TravisW]

I'm looking forward to hearing it! One thing I've taken to doing more of from the songwriting side is either getting the seed of a lyric or musical idea, and fleshing it into something resembling a song. The music is almost never more than maybe a riff and some chords to fill in the rest so I can get a sense of where I want the progression to go - I can come up with more ways to make those progressions interesting later. I'm fleshing out at least one rough verse, chorus, and maybe a prechorus or bridge. Again, it's all changeable, but when I'm done I'm working from something. If I know the song is going from an F chord to a D minor, there are dozens of ways to make that more interesting, but I have something to work from. If I hate a lyric, at least I know how the words sound over the music, or I know what they mean and I have something to change from. At least I know where I don't want it to go. I'll throw together a crappy demo with lame vocals and see what I think of the song as a listener. In the past, I would invest a lot of time and effort on a musical arrangement long before I had considered vocal melodies, much less lyrics. But over the past 10-15 years, I've increasingly moved toward investing less energy into the musical arrangement until I have an idea of the song as a whole. It doesn't always work, like the "Song 1" that I noted upstream, where I've had lyrics but hated every one of them. But overall, I think it's a better way for me to catalog ideas and leave myself something useful to work with.