Mark

Even though my instrumentals have no words, they are still trying to "say" something. I have an image in my head, and I keep it in mind when I am writing the song. It's almost as though the song is a soundtrack for the image. The music seems to have more emotion when I write this way. For one of my songs, I used the image of a leaf falling in the mountains in autumn, though the image is far more detailed than that. I can actually explain how different parts of the song relate to this leaf, but I don't because um people would look at me strangely.

What I Got - Sublime

Thank you. It's the only lyric I've written that has any worth by itself.

My favorite is They've sold their emotions To buy a new ipod And they turn up the volume 'til their dreams fade away

Thats exactly what happened when I got it back. The playing felt so awkward for what seemed like forever.

Yes they have been, particularly the one about writing the melody first. Thank you. Though I have found that writing music just for guitar comes much easier than trying to integrate a vocal melody. (sorry I've been out of town and haven't had a computer)

One of the many difficulties I've had with guitar is making the music feel original to me. Oh I'm sure the typical chord progressions were creative and origianl, but I want to write soemthing more complex. I'm not really sure how to go about doing that. Some of the issues I've had with this include: I have trouble writing songs that don't repeat the same progression over and over. If it doesn't sound familiar, I don't enjoy it. Maybe I'm just not creative enough, or perhaps I'm being held captive by the limits of my instrument and my playing ability. Either way, does anyone have any tips on how to improve it?

Usually I spend a day every couple weeks learning a new song. ThenI spend most of my other practice time composing original stuff. I've found scales to be awfully and always do them in conjuction with something else

Video killed the radio star...heh... Well... quite frankly I listen to music, instead of "watching it. I mean I can't see video becoming any more essential to music than it already is. Right now a song needs a video so that the song will be played on MTV. Play on MTV generates buzz. It gets people talking; making the song familiar which will inevitably make its way to radio and then to people's ipods. Thats about the extent of it. And honestly the videos at this point aren't really worth my time or my attention. Very few videos seem "artistic" because there's so many of the same video.

I have had the same problem since I've begun writing. I've found that the best thing to do in that situation is keep writing regardless of whether not I like it. Then I wate a week or two and then read it again and I usually end up making a few changes, but I don't think anyone else can tell anyway.

Well I just focused on the lyrical aspect and my studies. I have it back now though

I play songs by other artists and try to mimic their style of playing it. I haven't been playing as long as you though . Only 2 years. I'll work on that

Lately I've been having songs randomly spring out of my head out nowhere while I'm sitting in the kitchen listening to the TV. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that I've had my music playing in a nearby room every time this has happened. I can't really explain it, but I've just been sitting there, eating my breakfast/lunch/dinner and listening to the news/football game/car commercial/sound of my parents/sister complaining when suddenly a short soundbyte of vocal melody and maybe a bass note or a root note of a chord floats into the room over the sound of the chatter that I have tuned out. Somehow my brain takes that note asnd says "What if I went to this note, over this chord. This can develop into a semi-complete song in my head with hardly any effort, and that sounds nothing like what the actually song I heard. Unfortunately I'm not usually in a position to run and get my guitar and write the song, but its still pretty cool. Does anyone know why this might happen? My theory is that my brain, which until this point has not been paying any attention to the music, does not know what beat the song is on and therefore automatically assumes that this is the first beat of a measure. Thus it cannot recognize what its hearing. This combined with the fact that I'm hearing one or two notes, hardly enough enough to identify what key the song is in gives my brain a lot of musical freedom. It then extrapolates so that the song emphasizes that beat. Regardless, could be an interesting songwriting approach. Playing a brief clip of a song that isn't the first beat while you're watching tv so that you only hear one or two notes and then writing as if what you heard was beat one.

If you had to go without guitar for a month, what would you do?