Agree and love it. Well well done.
Have you been listening to Lynch/Badalamenti @Tokyo_Rat ?
Nope but maybe I need to…I really need to start listening to something other than whats in my head. I got invited to an open mic thats happening in a few weeks…got invited to play drums and guitar…kinda disappointed they didn’t say anything about bringing the four string, when was there ever too many bass players
Greetings
John Layne here…i see all are having fun…
Well done…
My newest video…Heaven Bound…
Prog rock…acid jazz…i played all instruments at my studio…
Its free…no pics of me playing…but i hope you enjoy the sound of my new Jazz ultra…very nice
John
Bolsheviks of Madrid is collaboration with Bret Hamilton and myself.
Vaporama is a track from our album Shopping Mall. The cover art is by Todd Alcott.
Bret just made this video. He generated some pretty trippy images for it.
So really dumb question here…but how do you folks come up with new, original stuff? I feel that part of my brain must have never developed. Anytime I try and write something it sounds like something else or at most I get just a piece of an idea.
Do you folks approach writing more analytically–like, I am going for X mood, so I know I am going to use a, b, and c chord and Y mode. Or are you just jamming and ideas spring forth?
Good question! And I don’t have any overly satisfying answer…
I guess it depends a bit on whether or not some kind of inspiration comes to you - this could be a fragment of a riff or part(s) of a melody. There is a better chance (I find) to get inspired when you already are at the instrument and play (noodle). However, not everyone composes on the bass.
Some people start with a drum loop; some people start with a melody. You could “borrow” a chord progression from a song you like and make it your own, but giving it a new rhythmic frame and adding your own (new) melody to it. Borrowing chord progression is pretty “legit”; after all, a lot of pop songs are based on very similar chord progressions to begin with (e.g., I-V-vi-IV). In jazz, composing new songs that use the “rhythm changes” (a 32 bar chord progression) is quite common as well.
Or, start with a blues
I agree with starting with a blues…every time I touch the guitar or bass I’m thinking that I’m here to create. Doing a I-IV-V lets you start simple with the bass line, and the rhythm guitar. Lyrics wise its one line, repeat, tag it with a resolving line…the last blues I wrote, My Lady Sadie was this way. My Lady Sadie mean as she can be over the I, then again over the IV, resolve it with why or how she is so mean…That woman fires up like a match in gasoline over the V and the turn around. Since I only play guitar and bass, I take traditional I-IV-V progressions and play partial chords leaving strings open to create new sounds over traditional progressions. Lyrics…story telling is a long tradition in the south…now make it rhyme. Bad poetry over cool sounding chords is a lot of what I do. This last song was inspired because I watched a video talking about giving your bass lines more space. then watched a guitar video talking about skipping pentatonic patterns, not going from pattern 1 to 2…this song’s bass line is pattern 1->2->5…tie everything together with some chromatic climbs. That being said I’m working this out with a sense of melody in mind…there’s your skeleton of a new song. This ended up a lot longer than I wanted I should have just went with, do what @joergkutter said.
Another winner Larry!
Thanks brother, I still wish I could knock out the covers like you do…if I didn’t make it up, I can’t play it…LOL
Inspiration can be anything. A sound I hear, a texture of some synth, rhythm, sample, guitar or bass preset, image or video I see. And it somehow brings a whole song into my head and then I spend the rest of my time in the studio trying to transfer it from my head to actual sound. I tried to write music “as a process” in the past, but no, I simply cannot do it like that at all, if I try to go “off the script” my “musical brain” just glitches out. It’s either take it as it is or forget it. It’s frustrating as hell at times.