ITT: Talk about your songwriting\musical process

[redbreegull]

He likes all sorts of music but he was looking to mainly practice his chops for a band he wants to join, which is heavy music. He is apparently pretty new to drums but he pulled out Geek USA and Cherub Rock and some others and did em pretty accurately. I would have guessed he was a long time player. I felt like I would be limiting him if I asked him to come up with something to an americana/folk song vs. the insane fills and crazy time signatures he is capable of

[Elphenor]

I can't really play any SP songs all the way through except 1979 and Disarm just because they are so obvious

I get bored trying to learn someone else's songs

[redbreegull]

I think I can play most of every song on SD minus some of the harder solos. I just felt totally unpracticed and out of my element trying to play with someone so much better. Even the way the guitar responded in my hands at such high volumes seemed weird and disconcerting. I need some fucking lessons but there's no way I can justify the cost. I went from being the best I have ever been to worse than any point since high school in like a year which is kind of discouraging

[teh b0lly!!1]

you usually play acoustic guitar though, no?

acoustic and electric require very, very different touches

[Elphenor]

I can tear through scales and "let it rip" so to speak but I was never that interested in playing guitar as an athlete
It's all about wanting to write songs

I didn't learn guitar to impress people like "Mommy look what I can do!"

[Elphenor]

I miss my old band when I played a blues solo once they looked at me as if I had done something disgusting

"Don't ever play through a full scale like that again"

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by teh b0lly!!1

you usually play acoustic guitar though, no?

acoustic and electric require very, very different touches

yep. I started on electric but it was totally weird at this point to hold one and just have it feel so strange under my fingers. what kind of practice regimen do you guys employ to keep your chops sharp? For many years I just "played" a lot every day so I never felt like I had to practice in a structured way, but now I am mad out of practice and maybe need to send my chops to boot camp

[soniclovenoize]

Didn't we just have a songwriting thread a few weeks ago?

I guess I write one of two ways:
1) start with a melody and lyric in my head, and go back and find the right chord sequence to go underneath it.
2) Just fool around with chord sequences until I come up with something I like. Then build a song on top of it.

I've also started a process to construct as much as I can of it in my mind before writing it down at all. If it's good, I'll remember it. If it was not a good idea to begin with, I'll just forget it and move on to something better.

[Disco King]

Originally Posted by slunken

You have to ask yourself if you want to be a musical artist or a lyrical artist. Is your music just a front for your lyrics or are you much more interested in the actual music?

I would considere Aztec, regardless of good or bad connotations, a lyrical artist. The chord changes are just a vehicle for his lyrics.

I suppose I want to be both. I don't want to just have bullshit lyrics thrown over the music, and I want them to have some sort of poetic or meaningful quality. I also don't want to just throw chord progressions under verses, I want the music to be cool.

As it stands right now, I spend way more time on music than lyrics, though. I rarely even get to the lyric-writing stage, and when I do, I'm so bad at it that I get discouraged.

Originally Posted by reprise85

aztec posts on here sometimes. i'm friends with him on facebook, i think

I think I have him on Facebook, as well.

Originally Posted by slunken

what was radder to you: all of the self loathing about hygiene or showing off his scrotum for cheap group laughs? or was it both, just the constant need for attention?

Yeah, he seemed to have serious self-esteem issues. Then again, a fucktonne of us here do, as well, so like, join the club.

Also, he was always talking about being self-conscious about the size of his genitals. I don't intend to ever inspect them for myself, but I suspect that this was some sort of dysmorphia that stemmed from self-esteem issues, rather than there actually being anything statistically abnormal about his dick. Maybe the micropenis meme got to him. I warned you all about memes.

Originally Posted by Elphenor

I just liked that he worked at a gas station and wrote funny songs man idk anything about scrotums

It really depressed me how he lived in squalor. Sometimes he wouldn't even have hot running water. This shit shouldn't be happening in a developed country like the U.S.

Originally Posted by Elphenor

I miss my old band when I played a blues solo once they looked at me as if I had done something disgusting

"Don't ever play through a full scale like that again"

What do you mean by "full scale?" Was your solo literally just a scale? Like, a linear scale? Was it just, "E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D#, E" in quarter notes over some chord progression? Or, do you mean that they don't want you to use all the notes of a scale in a given solo? If so, what was the maximum amount of notes you were allowed to play in this band?

Because the minor pentatonic and blues scales are ingrained in my mind, I kind of mindlessly default to the first box position of those when noodling around or improvising. It's gotten to the point that I just hate the sound of it, especially because not stretching across the fretboard and only using one box kind of makes me do the same old boring licks, and I rely too much on string bends, I think.

But it's weird, because there are still plenty of solos I like based on the "blues twang" of those scales. Like, "The Aeroplane Flies High" sounds pretty minor-pentatonic, and yet, instead of sounding like some someone covering Blue Cheer at a high-school talent show, it really evokes this feeling of defeated disillusionment and resentment. I think the "Tarantula" solo also sounds like that pentatonic-type thing going on, but sounds cool. It's not really the scale that's bad, it's just that I don't have the creativity to do anything other than the same bullshit with it.

[slunken]

elph can't play scales he's just mouthing off

[Elphenor]

well they didn't know any scales and so everything they played was on a "does it sound good" basis music based entirely around listening to music. This basically rules out consistent scales, obviously bits of a scale are unknowingly played but you'd never hear a full scale torn through or even the same scale repeated twice

Mostly the others guitarist would play Johnny Marr style picking apart open chords in sporadic ways


So if I noodled up and down a blues scale it sounded jarring as all hell and this challenged me to move away from my comfort zone

Basically I see the scales I know as a crutch that's keeping me from really reaching with my playing

[Elphenor]

Originally Posted by slunken

elph can't play scales he's just mouthing off

I almost want to post myself just playing scales now

Who wants to hear me play the Flamenco scale

[slunken]

is this an example of "ripping it"

[Elphenor]

That was an example of me testing soundcloud and then I was gonna delete it but then I was like nah

It's terrible but punk rock

[slunken]

im just trying to get an idea of your prowess

[slunken]

[Elphenor]

I mean I am clearly playing the major and minor blues scales there

So there you go

[slunken]

you're not ripping it

[slunken]

Originally Posted by Elphenor

I can tear through scales and "let it rip" so to speak but I was never that interested in playing guitar as an athlete
It's all about wanting to write songs

I didn't learn guitar to impress people like "Mommy look what I can do!"

i just haven't heard any of this

the worst thing a guitarist can do is pat themselves on the back

[Elphenor]

Originally Posted by slunken

you're not ripping it

Not even close but you just said I didn't know any scales

[Elphenor]

Just for you I'll turn my gain up from "2"

[redbreegull]

lol classic phoria

–you don't know any scales

–yes I do actually, see?

–god it sounds like SHIT when you play scales

[Elphenor]

To be fair it does and I do suck at guitar even on a good take with the gain up in proper let it rip fashion but what I meant was that a lot guitarists in the genres I enjoy can not play a scale all the way through at all and wouldn't dream of learning one

But it should also not be taken as shitting on playing by scales either before we go down that route

[slunken]

more gain does not equal better scale prowess

[slunken]

i'm not trying to be a hardass but you make it seem like youre a phenom and choose not to be

[slunken]

you're a bad guitar player - embrace it

[slunken]

this whole thread is just an excuse for couch-noodlers to wax philosophically about being the rockers/songwriters they won't ever be

giant fap thread

not excluding myself here but you all should be disgusted with yourselves. this is vixnix level shit.

[redbreegull]

everyone feel bad about your art, art is only for famous people you fucking cretins.

[Elphenor]

Originally Posted by slunken

more gain does not equal better scale prowess

I do wonder if a technical god could make a blues scale sound good on my post punk set ups

[Elphenor]

Originally Posted by slunken

this whole thread is just an excuse for couch-noodlers to wax philosophically about being the rockers/songwriters they won't ever be

giant fap thread

not excluding myself here but you all should be disgusted with yourselves. this is vixnix level shit.

This is true but who cares