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Post by bellyshere on Apr 19, 2021 17:32:39 GMT
For the last year I have written constantly and have about 80 completed songs. I’ve released quite a few of these and for the most part are quite happy with them. Does anyone else write all the time and is it actually better to wait until you have a bang on idea? Monkeys, typewriters and Shakespeare spring to mind. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve written something only to find it sounds like something I’ve written before. I’ve even started writing bits on the piano to get some new sounds. Don’t judge me on that.
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Post by martinrowe on Apr 19, 2021 20:12:06 GMT
I just remember an interview with John Prine where he said he treated the process as if he was a writer i.e. he sits down and writes so many words a day, once you've done that then you've done that your day's work . I think Richard Thompson does the same thing. There's a story about Townes Van Zandt saying something like 'he doesn't stop until he finishes a song'. I try to write sometimes but don't like the idea of treating it like work - perhaps they're right because I don't get very far.
Eighty completed, some going that. There are stories of Dylan touring in the early years and carrying a typewriter with him - perhaps that says something about how he viewed himself. Wasn't Like a Rolling Stone supposed to be whittled down from about 50 pages.
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Post by bellyshere on Apr 19, 2021 20:46:05 GMT
I often start new songs before I finish another one and I have lots of recordings of bits of songs. I write words all the time which helps when you find a nice melody. Just imagine how many songs people like Townes and Dylan wrote in their prime? Lots of my tunes are fairly short as I am often using words I’ve written before. I’ve got songs with less than 50 words let alone 50 verses!!
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Post by andyhowell on Apr 20, 2021 7:26:46 GMT
I'm always writing though a song might be finished quickly or take a long time. I've found my output is slower during lockdown mainly because there are no (real) audiences to play for. Playing a song live is, for me, part of hte finishing process. In effect, playing somewhere is my deadline and without it things amble a long a little.
I've got a song at the moment. I know that it is a good one as I sing, hum and play it to myself a lot. But it isn't finished. It two verses finished, a chorus and a final verse which needs a coule of extra and tweaked lines. And there will be a middle 8 which I will leave to fill in the gaps to the story. I'm mainly now refining hte guitar accompaniment.
There are two other ideas bubbling up in my head and so I won't be songless. I'm just increasingly slow!
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Post by delb0y on Apr 20, 2021 7:36:43 GMT
I've not written any songs in a long while, mainly because I became less than enamoured with my melodies (they were always the same) and because if I wrote anything that wasn't the same, I couldn't sing it anyway.
But when I was writing I always adhered to the maxim: write to produce inspiration, rather than waiting for inspiration before writing. It worked for me. It sometimes took an hour or two before I found my way "into" an idea, but once there the words started to come. That said, there were a few songs in which I had to wait over a year before the final verse came together, and writing a song - once I had that initial idea - was pretty much always a multi-day affair.
The key thing for me was always the idea - what is this song about? Even a love song still has to have some kind of narrative. Unless you're the Beatles.
Derek
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Post by bellyshere on Apr 20, 2021 7:41:40 GMT
I’ve always found the longer I take to write something the worse it gets. I have revisited old abandoned songs but only to rip off the words or progression.
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Post by delb0y on Apr 20, 2021 7:49:45 GMT
I've never been averse to changing a song over the years. I don't think I have enough critical vision to know whether the changes are good or bad, they're probably driven by familiarity of a song more than anything.
Going back to numbers. I've probably written a hundred and fifty songs in 40 years, of which I'd say a dozen are pretty good, another dozen okay, and the rest are chaff. So I guess for me, less is indeed more. Or I'm just not really a song-writer - which is more likely.
Derek
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Post by Matt Milton on Apr 20, 2021 8:44:28 GMT
I used to write loads of songs when I was in my teens, 20s and early 30s. I was always terrible at writing lyrics though. I was happy with all the music I came up with, so if I had been able to finish them off with lyrics I'd have regarded them as 'finished' songs which I would have been very happy with.
It's a bit of an impossible question though: nobody can tell you whether you've written 80 really good songs unless they listen to all 80 of those songs! Is less more? Not if all of your songs are totally amazing. I would say though that it totally depends what you want from your music. I once played with a moderately successful singer-songwriter: the only band I've been in that ever got anywhere. It was a very instructive experience, in that he basically had 10 songs and we played pretty much nothing but those 10 ten songs for about 3 years. He had other songs I'm sure, but he was a very sharp, focussed musician who wanted a record deal and got one. We were a very well-drilled tight band. Any time we recorded for a radio session or whatever, those songs were perfect. They remained fun to play, we only really needed to rehearse if we had a rare new song to learn. When he got to the second album, then there was a further 10 songs to play. I often thought at the time 'Ah, so this is how you do it'.
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Post by bellyshere on Apr 20, 2021 10:20:15 GMT
I used to write loads of songs when I was in my teens, 20s and early 30s. I was always terrible at writing lyrics though. I was happy with all the music I came up with, so if I had been able to finish them off with lyrics I'd have regarded them as 'finished' songs which I would have been very happy with. It's a bit of an impossible question though: nobody can tell you whether you've written 80 really good songs unless they listen to all 80 of those songs! Is less more? Not if all of your songs are totally amazing. I would say though that it totally depends what you want from your music. I once played with a moderately successful singer-songwriter: the only band I've been in that ever got anywhere. It was a very instructive experience, in that he basically had 10 songs and we played pretty much nothing but those 10 ten songs for about 3 years. He had other songs I'm sure, but he was a very sharp, focussed musician who wanted a record deal and got one. We were a very well-drilled tight band. Any time we recorded for a radio session or whatever, those songs were perfect. They remained fun to play, we only really needed to rehearse if we had a rare new song to learn. When he got to the second album, then there was a further 10 songs to play. I often thought at the time 'Ah, so this is how you do it'. Yeah, out of all the stuff I’ve written this year it’s not all good for sure. Occasionally I hear one and think that’s actually not that bad. That’s about as much praise as I can give myself though. I was just sat wondering the other day when I’d written 3 new tunes in a day, should I just keep knocking them out like this in the hope one day one will be fab or should I take time over them.
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Post by stringdriventhing on Apr 20, 2021 23:24:10 GMT
If you're churning out songs at that rate you should be happy. The more you write the more likely you're going to come up with good stuff, so if you're on a roll keep going. And spare a thought for those of us who struggle to come up with a couple of semi-duff songs a year
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Post by papadon on Apr 25, 2021 21:04:18 GMT
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve written something only to find it sounds like something I’ve written before. I’ve even started writing bits on the piano to get some new sounds. Don’t judge me on that. Everything comes from somewhere. We don't invent it we just steal it and then change it just enough to make it sound like we didn't. It's like this guy said.
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Post by bellyshere on Apr 26, 2021 5:24:11 GMT
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve written something only to find it sounds like something I’ve written before. I’ve even started writing bits on the piano to get some new sounds. Don’t judge me on that. Everything comes from somewhere. We don't invent it we just steal it and then change it just enough to make it sound like we didn't. It's like this guy said.
It’s subliminal stealing though. I’d never consciously rip a track off.
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Post by dreadnought28 on Apr 26, 2021 9:37:12 GMT
There are stories of Dylan touring in the early years and carrying a typewriter with him More than stories, watch the Don’t Look Back documentary of his 65 British tour. He’s typing a lot of the time.
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Post by papadon on Apr 26, 2021 15:18:04 GMT
Everything comes from somewhere. We don't invent it we just steal it and then change it just enough to make it sound like we didn't. It's like this guy said.
It’s subliminal stealing though. I’d never consciously rip a track off.
When it comes to the lyrics I wouldn't either. But even at that the stories have all been told and all we can do is retell them in our own way. I console myself with the thought that I didn't create this place I'm just a small part of how it's evolving.
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