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Songwriting


JamesBass
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[quote name='RhysP' timestamp='1360005991' post='1963475']
Moniack Mhor creative writing centre in the Scottish Highlands, three miles from Loch Ness. I did a five day residential song writing course run by Boo Hewerdine.
[/quote]

Just had a look at their website. Looks great.

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Yup. Songwriting is a lot of fun.

I'm signed up to FAWM - February Album Writing Month - which involves writing 14 songs in 28 days/February. lots of fun! www.fawm.org

I've also got a few blog articles on songwriting on my website, which are practical and easy to implement ways I've found that help to write better songs and become a more skilled songwriter - www.markjwgraham.co.uk/blog/articles

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I do, but I'm not as prolific as I'd like to be. I have a bunch of ideas that I've put down but haven't got round to actually concentrating on doing them.

It's always useful to have something to scribble ideas down on. That's something I don't seem to have these days - a smartphone is OK for some things but I can't type on one as quickly as I can scribble. I do have more chance of reading it later though.

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[quote name='tauzero' timestamp='1360067258' post='1964207']
I do, but I'm not as prolific as I'd like to be. I have a bunch of ideas that I've put down but haven't got round to actually concentrating on doing them.

It's always useful to have something to scribble ideas down on. That's something I don't seem to have these days - a smartphone is OK for some things but I can't type on one as quickly as I can scribble. I do have more chance of reading it later though.
[/quote]

I thought that, and then realised that my phone has a voice notes recorder.
I now spend a lot of time humming and singing into my phone when i am out walking the dog.
I look mental, but I no longer forget good ideas.
:)

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[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1360069089' post='1964261']
I've always worked on the principal that if I can't still remember an idea the following day, it wasn't worth remembering.
[/quote]

I did when I was 15, but now I can barely remember my own name :)

Seriously though, while many of the ideas turn out to be crap, there are the odd little gems in there that I wuold never have remembered.

I also found a crappy old 4 track tape a year or so ago, which I had sketched out some ideas on back in about 97, I had forgotten every bloody note of it, and if it hadn't been my voice on there I would have assumed it was somebody else's tape. From the quality of the playing I had definitely done this at about 3 in the morning after a major nights drinking, but the guts of it were really good.
Reworked the whole thing and got a really great track out of it.
:)

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[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1360069089' post='1964261']
I've always worked on the principal that if I can't still remember an idea the following day, it wasn't worth remembering.
[/quote]

I once wrote an entire song in my head when walking down to the pub and wrote it down on a brown paper bag as soon as I got there (this was about 25 years ago). Five verses, chorus, and all the chords. I think I'd have had trouble remembering that the next day.

I know I've got a voice recorder on the phone but I'm more at home with the sight of words than their sound. I also suspect that if Wayne County had used a voice recorder in the middle of the office for the lyrics to "If you don't want to" [1], he might have had Words said to him.

[1] The song title is a little different but that's the start of the chorus

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  • 3 months later...

Just started dabbling in it, of course I do it the "wrong way round" and often start with something on the bass, the rest of the guys then build around it. Then none of us come up with any melodies/vocals. I'm trying really hard to break out of that and have started to try retrofitting some ideas with melodies. I don't know if I'm doing any good or not though - I suspect that I'm making it too complicated, particularly as I'm not the one who's going to be singing it. Just recruited a singer so I hope he'll bring some ideas to the table.

Absolutely +1 to the idea of shared credit with the whole band - without the band, the songs simply wouldn't evolve and exist as they do. It might have been someone's idea originally, but once everyone brings their contribution to the table, it's usually far removed from where we started. Our sax player sent a recording of him humming along to some piano chords. He was late to rehearsal so the rest of us started mucking about with it. He came in later and said "that sounded good, what is that?" and was rather surprised and amused to learn it was "his" song ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I was writing songs before I could play an instrument. Wanted be a singer but kept coming into contact with people who were naturally gifted vocally so stuck with my chosen instrument bass as my main creative outlet withing music but always wrote songs to be performed and recorded within whichever band I played.
I found early on that people are not very patient or have a lot of imagination when a new idea is put across on the bass alone so I learned pretty quickly to also play guitar, mainly strumming and picking. This greatly improved being able to get across any new song ideas.
My vocal talent is ok so I often sing and play bass in projects etc. never found it difficult. I also do a lot of home recording where I will write, arrange, record and play all the instruments on a composition although with drums its samples and loops or drum machine.

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[quote name='Low End Bee' timestamp='1369390608' post='2088612']
Very chuffed to have two new songs arranged and completed at rehearsal last night. One of them clocks in at an epic 1minute and 25 seconds!
[/quote]

play it twice ( with no gaps ) ;)

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