Tips for song-writing!

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This topic contains 3 replies, has 2 voices, and was last updated by Profile photo of louis-music louis-music 9 years ago.

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  • #20637
    Profile photo of louis-music
    louis-music
    Participant

    Hi everyone, I wanted to give you some of my own tips on how to compose a song!

    To do so, I will just explaiin you how I recorded this song: (you can download it here by clicking on slow download http://www.fileswap.com/dl/O3ExI0cjF4/ )

    So well Actually, I was playing “Georgia on My Mind” (this famous jazz masterpiece covered by many awesome musician such as Ray Charles) on my piano, when I did an awful mistakes while playing the chords. Well admiteddly, awful is not the word, because I had done one of the most beautiful mistakes of my life! Yes, I just found out an awesome and original chord progression! It goes like this:
    ||:Bb6 | Bbm7b5 |Fmaj7 | % :||

    Once you got your chord progression right, you can go to the following step, I called it “Finding the Guide Tones”. Basically, when you play a chord you play several notes, here you just play four notes per chord. Now, You will have to try to sing the chord! What happens is that you sing a single note instead of 4 notes at the same time! This single note you will sing is the guide tone! With a chord progression, it will give you a melody! In this case, this is how I decided to make those guidetones go:
    ||: A | G | F | % :||
    So now, you just have some beginner melody going down, that’s some pretty cool stuff, but we’re not finished, we gotta work further with our friends the guidetones!

    What you gotta do now is finding a full melody, and this is how it works: You got your guidetones, and your chord progression, so now, on the first note of each bar, you will sing your guide tone, and then sing some other notes in between, it can give you a melody like mine.

    We’re nearly finished now, but let’s add some cool stuff now: You record your piano and the drums, you put your vocals down with some cool lyrics, and now, you can add some violins/cellos playing… The GUIDETONES! That will really shape your song, and make those guidetones goes deep down into the ears and the head of the listener, this is what will remain to him of the instrumental part! Now, you can just play with your song, for example, I added a jazz guitar playing the chords, and a clean lead guitar polaying some cool riff, and you’re done!

    So let me remain you the four steps from the beginning:
    1 – Find cool chords
    2 – Find cool guide tones that will give you a logical progression, do not choose guidetones that doesn’t follow at all like for example: ||:A | D | B | F | C# :|| …
    3 – Find a unique, original and cool melody!
    4 – Add some more instruments!

    Done!

    I hope you enjoyed those few tips!

    #21081
    Profile photo of dayzd
    dayzd
    Participant

    So cool!! Thanks @louis-music! I listened to your song Un Autre Endorit and I am going to download your full EP too.

    Your idea of guidetones and basing your melody on the chords is a really really good one. I was just watching @sarahpopejoy‘s video about song writing and she said something like this too.

    I’m going to try you “Finding the Guide Tones” exercise with my songs now!

    #21097
    Profile photo of louis-music
    louis-music
    Participant

    Thanks! @dayzd I’m really glad you enjoyed this little advice, and my track! The full EP download is here: http://www.fileswap.com/dl/Fcy9awX5tv/ (It is not the final version, I still need to re-record the vocals and the drums, and it needs to be mixed and mastered by an audio enginner).
    I must admit I didn’t invented this method myself :p Actually, my guitar teacher just taught me this method for my guitar solos :) Well just something I forget to mention, for better results, the guidetones must be part of the notes in the chord you’re playing, but If you try to find the guidetones with the vocal method, you should find naturally notes that are part of the chord.

    #21101
    Profile photo of louis-music
    louis-music
    Participant

    Oh and well just a little detail, I just realized I wrote some little mistake:
    the guidetones I used here are not
    ||: A | G | F | % :||
    but
    ||: F | G | A | % :|| :)

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