Music and the Jump Start
I’ve been getting started with music again. The main issue I’m facing is the creative process. So here’s what I’m working on:
I started monogrey with the idea of doing something slow. I threw on a drum loop, then did the guitar 1st guitar part. Towards the end, I added a open riff that’s been stuck in my head. When I did the second quitar, I had the idea of running a some dense root-fifth-octave stuff for the ending.
All in all, it seems like I over-did the slow bit – at 70 BPM, it’s kind of crawls. So. I thought I’d try it again, only faster:
This time, I ran it at 110 BPM, with my acoustic/electric as the rhythm part, and changed the open riffy thing a bit,
then added a distorted electric kind of wandering around. I think this ends up sounding a bit too soft. Maybe I should try it again at 90 BPM or so, and shoot for the darker first version.
Overall, I’m trying to keep it simple and leave room for other things, primarily vocals. That said, I’ve never had much luck adding melody and vocals after-the-fact. We’ll have to see what I can manage with this.
Next, I thought I might try starting with some sort of melody or lead-line. The result is this one:
The cheesy synth-horns are were I started. I pecked out the lead-line in my head, then picked up the guitar and searched for some changes that worked with it. The result is pretty un-challenging, though I did have fun doing the bass part. It’s pretty easy to sync up with the kick in a 4-measure drum loop. I’m not sure where “drive with horns” goes from here. I suspect it’s probably a dead end.
After all that, the open question is: can I write songs like this – layering parts, or, is do I have to buckle down and write lyrics against my guitar all at once? Past experience is that I can’t retro-fit lyrics and melody to fully-formed backing tracks. The results is usually monotone rambling.
As for the tools, this is the first time I’ve tried writing with any sort of DAW set-up, having done tape-based multi-tracking in the past. I Have to say that it’s pretty nice being about to hack stuff up so easily.