Threndor

For me, principally the style of Green Day, Blink 182, and Three Days Grace, in that order. I am also very impressed by the dual guitar line harmony of Breaking Benjamin, but it's hard to mimic that without a band. Lyrically, I don't have any real influences. For vocal style... eh, a combination of Billie Joe Armstrong and Adam Gontier, although I have been told my voice sounds a lot like Chester Bennington.

One thing that is extremely clichéd and should be avoided is ANY REFERENCE TO BURNING LOVE LETTERS/PHOTOGRAPHS/MEMORIES. It seems to be the most overused metaphor in the music industry. In fact, almost any reference to fire has to be carefully thought out because it can very easily sound cliché.

I've been browsing here a while, but I couldn't find much on specific brands/types of recording equipment. I've been feeling rather glum over my attempts thus far; I've been trying to record songs using Audacity as my program, a Radioshack $20 microphone, and a musciciansfriend.com $80 pre-amp. I think Audacity might be a little screwed up in itself, since recording channel-by-channel gives me a slight time lag towards the beginning of the layers. Plus, the mike is fairly unreliable and fluctuates the sound like you wouldn't believe. I am able, through multiple amplifications and then normalizations, get a fairly uniform volume, but then the sound quality is scratchy and there's a perpetual buzzing in the background. Now that I'm finished complaining, I would like to get some recomendations for good equipment, particularly a mike and recording program.

It's surprising to me how many people here are professionals.

I'll have to check it out at the library. I'm not just going to buy it...

That's a darn long verse. I'd like to see those lyrics posted here for review.

I don't think there's any hard-and-fast rule about them. Like they said, just do what feels best.

What patterns do you use most often for rhyming in your songs? I personally use A B C B most often, but I've had songs where I've done A B A B, A B C B D D E E, or even one time where the last line of every verse and chorus all rhymed with each other but nothing else. What's your favorite?

I'd say about 60% of my songs make it to completion. I try to finish my songs quickly, but it usually takes a couple weeks for lyrics, and then probably half an hour for music. Of course, being pretty new to songwriting, it should change within a few months, but how, I don't know.