The way I make colorful chord progressions is to choose two chords. I find a path that leads from one to the other. Using suspensions, extensions and borrowed chords to make it happen. Then I invert the chords that need inversions to smooth things out. So it becomes a nice flowing thing. This is nothing special, I know. But what I run into is that it often sounds kind of dull. Just too polished, or something. It’s kind of frustrating at times. Like I’m afraid to be crass, make a mess or draw outside the lines.
I can read music, just not fluently. It’s too cluttered for me to discern at a glance what line the little dot is on exactly. But sometimes I look at sheet music nonetheless. The great thing that it offers is that you can see the shapes of the melodies. That’s the only thing I sometimes miss about piano roll work flows.
I did some self-study once on counterpoint sitting with a piece of paper and writing out the different melodies on paper. No piano. Just pen & paper. Trying to hear in my head how they interacted. I found it very hard but not impossible. I should do that again sometime.
In general I think it’s good to step away from the computer more when it comes to composing. I know I definitely should.
My most common difficulty is extending beyond 2-3 minutes. Very often, I hit a dead end, not understanding where to move the composition. Nevertheless, I’ve found a solution for myself: I turn all these snippets into one large mixtape instead of producing what I dislike.
my strengths are melodys and lyrics and chord progressions ,
my weakness are beats and basslines , actually i’m ok with beats basslines always interfere with the vocal so i just root bass everything , unless it follows the vocal
Wow, awesome thread. I’m not sure how I missed it all this time
The thing that has really held me back in my 20+ years of making music as a hobby is not knowing anything related to music theory or composition (aside from what you can learn on drums, which is obviously a little bit in the rhythm department, but skips over pretty much everything else). I started playing guitar and bass around the time when I started recording stuff into my computer (RIP, old reliable) and apparently thought I was too cool for school because I just blatantly ignored theory altogether and went straight into shreddin’.
(14-year-old me had a very bloated ego in terms of musical ability)
20 years later, I’m kind of digging that one back out and realizing that I’ve been holding myself back. I went really hard into the design end of things over the past few years, but since I’ve really reached my skill cap in that department and probably explored it deeper than most people care to, theory is still lingering over there in the mist. It’s like the final boss or something.
I’ve been flipping through Michael Hewitt’s books (that’s the “…For Computer Musicians” series) over the past few weeks, because they seem to be a gentle introduction for people who are already DAW-minded and ready for business. If anything is going to come of this it’s going to be a gradual process, but I like the idea of actually looking at things in an entirely new light again – and with something that I honestly know nothing about.
When you want to create something similar to the original, but come to a dead end because there are no similar instruments that produce the same sound. Example. Groups KOTO or LASERDANCE. Still can’t get similar sounds anywhere.
Or when there is a good audio sample. There is a good idea to add to this sample, but none of the selected instruments match your needs and the selected sample.
Writers block during some seasons (it happens)
Little knowledge of music theory
Putting compressors/distortion on everything
Overly analytical on own (we are our worst critic)
Usually loop arrangements a bit much
Along with little to no variation
Tracks are usually 5~7 minutes
Average 5 min.
Ideas in head don’t translate well in real world (everyone has this).
That is a terrible phase to be in,I used to suffer from this big time,managed to purge myself of this (for the most part).Completely psychological.I treat any loop/measure/couple of bars/song as completely disposable and put my trust in my ability to just keep making more and more music.
A lot of times i found myself stuck only because i don’t want to disrupt a nice piece of music that i have spent hours on,and can not manage to fit it in nicely within a structure.Now if i come across that same problem i will just copy the whole section and tear it apart.
None of your loops or songs are precious.They are there for you to play with and to smash up however you want.Get in to the habit of carefully sculpting a loop or a section and then completely obliterating it.I found this moves me forward a lot of the time.
That is exactly what happens most of the time. I think I’ve been getting better recently. When I catch myself(rarely), I copy it and I start muting tracks or adding something.
Working with a pattern length of 256 with 16 lpb has helped. My patterns are too short for me to objectively say “sure this is done” which forces me to continue.
Yes. On a tangent:
Confusing the tool with the task. Eg : the music making process starts to merge too much with whatever software (behavior) that is currently used. Is making music primarily about placing notes in a software, or mentalizing a vision?
I think a good and sometimes forgotten strategy here - again - entails breaks. Using more time mentalizing your music away from the screen, and then checking if the idealized version in your head is matching what happens the next time you press play. This seems like a good approach to strengthening the ability to fantasize music in general = being/becoming creative.
It’s easy for me to become too engulfed in the short feedback loop, instead of putting more effort into assessments and crafting a vision.
I do a lot of sound designing and like to spend time with that. The problem for me is I tend to wander far from the original idea. Happens to me a lot.
