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What to bring to songwriting sessions?


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Back to my progressive metal band (think dream theater, sons of Apollo). Background: came in late and really only had influence on a couple songs of the last CD. Working on our second. Songwriter wants lots of keys and to have me much more involved, but current practice is for him to show up to practice, play stuff on his guitar, and verbally communicate what his thoughts are....including blah blah, Blum ba tah! To the drummer. At time on the keys I know what he's after, but I'm forced to say "I can have that ready next week, or you can all wait 20 minutes while I program the sound for that one little part".

 

I have everything we would need set up at my house but he is allergic to cats. So I volunteered to come to his house. The core of my rig is the Kronos with a 76 key controller and an analog lead synth with a Line6Pod anything can go through. I don't want to drag all that to his house and I want better sound than what's in the basement where we rehearse. Sometimes I record multitrack through our mixer and send out to the group. He mentioned that my keys don't sound as good in the basement as they do on the recordings. Im IEM's. With 2 guitar amps, bass amp, acoustic drum set, etc. of course they don't.

 

So I'm tempted to just bring the Kronos and my pair of JBL 305p studio monitors. Drummer doesn't want to play to a click or anything, but I could feasibly put audio tracks from practice to play along with. The idea is just to figure out part s and sounds that I would the next play live. But it's easier to coordinate 2 schedules than 6.

 

Any similar experiences and/or advice for making the most with a minimum of effort?

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Collaborations can be very fruitful.

By far, the times I collaborated with 2 other creatives have yielded the best results, Just me is fine, 2 is good, 3 good.

 

I've been in situations where a band tries to write together. Unless somebody is appointed Supreme Ruler and takes control it has felt like a huge waste of time to me.

Exception being a 3 piece band I was in.

 

It's not always bad to have somebody who's not in the band collaborate on writing. That is just coincidental information.

 

As for gear, if you get the team down to the essentials, play low enough that you don't need to sing through microphones then everything should be easy and sound great.

Drummer needs a cajon or bongos or something. Take it all WAY down, relax and be creative!!!!!

 

 

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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We accomplish a lot with all 6 of us together. But a lot of the details of the synth programming and performance in the past have happened in the studio after too much was written to do anything meaningful. There is one band leader and songwriter. I'm specifically talking about meeting with JUST him to get these parts written in well prior to the studio.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Hey JDan, it"s nice to be wanted, so that"s cool. I think you"re asking what kind of gear to bring? If that"s right â no one size that fits all, but in general, bring what you need to help contribute to and elevate the songwriting process. That might be a lot of gear, might be minimal. If the songwriter is not giving you any direction on the songwriting / rehearsal gear, use your judgment, that will get you by and you can always iterate on that in subsequent sessions.

 

Equally if not more important, bring ideas⦠think about parts that will make the songs better, try to get a handle on what the songwriter is looking for. They want you there, so what you"ve done in the past worked for them, so you can build on that.

 

Sometimes the songwriting process is super easy, it just happens, quickly and with inspiration. Other times it is a long and painful struggle, with nothing to show for it at the end. The struggles make the wins sweeter.

Some music I've recorded and played over the years with a few different bands

Tommy Rude Soundcloud

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Ah, you want more information on how to serve the song.

 

2 is good.

 

If you speak the same language it could go quickly. I still think keeping it down could be very helpful, it creates a calming atmosphere.

I am not always sure what tones I am creating when others are also playing, certainly a factor.

 

It has been most helpful to establish collaboation (if it is collaboration?) with "Yes and..." and allowing feedback and creative flow to exist.

If it's cut and dried already that could be another story.

 

You are in the band because of how you play (and who you are). You know the dynamic, I have no idea! Cheers, Kuru

 

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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Quick question, what's your DEFAULT keyboard patch? Is it piano, is it organ? What comes most immediately to you. Because that should probably be your default. For me I started on piano, and see it as the jack of all trades, so I always start there. It can lead, it can riff, it can provide rhythm, so without switching patches, I can start composing material. From there, I develop a very small library of patches that can perform fundamental rolls, maybe 4-9 at most. Some examples:

- Piano, Organ, synth lead, pads, strings, mallet percussion, etc.

 

For song-writing sessions, don't worry about the exact patch as choosing a generic sound that can represent the material. Just broad-strokes, what can cover your bases. Once you have that, it frees you up for content creation, and not nerding-out on programming. Later, on your own time, go back and fine-tune the exact patch. Patch creation/selection is pretty unique to keyboardists. Your bandmates are likely accustomed to putting most of their energy towards "what notes should I play?". Therefor, it's helpful if you can be right there in sync with how they're thinking.

 

This is probably obvious, but when listening to content a bandmate brings in, immediately jump into the mode of, "what would compliment this material?". If it's a lead, start thinking rhythm and chords. If it's a riff, throw out some melodic ideas or counter-melodies.

 

Finally, record EVERYTHING. It could be a small Zoom recorder or an app on your phone, doesn't really matter, as long as you can hear what you did and listen back later.

 

Every band creates differently. The most common workflow, is for each song to be the brain-child of a single member, with artistic ideas from other members laid on top. It means that the bulk of the initial "creative toil" is done behind-the-scenes, and it also lays out a more clear roll between band members (with one person as the leader, per song). But working together is fantastically rewarding, and when it happens, it's amazing. But don't feel obligated to do it all the time, it can be creatively exhausting too. My favorite band I worked with, probably 80% of our originals were spearheaded by a single member, with a few being wild group collaborations. That felt right to me. Most of the time, it's a lot of "passing the baton" between multiple leaders, and there's a lot to that.

 

EDIT: You clarified the nature of your process after I had started posting. I'll leave it here, though, as some of it is relevant

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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I guess to clarify, there are a few approaches: my whole rig to nail down what I'll actually do, focus on the Kronos because of the songwriting aspect and clean up the patches later, or I guess bring out a whole DAW. But I want to focus one on one on the writing.

 

I guess I'm struggling because I always did covers, and while I can write, I always laid down what I wanted in the studio and then figured out how to do it live as if I was learning a cover, even if I wrote it. In this case we're figuring it all out live first before we record.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Eric, nothing is Default. That's the problem. I'm doing synth, samples, mono lead synth, strings, piano, organ, you name it. And on this cd they really are leaning on me to take it to the next level.

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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Dan - it seems like you're asking "what equipment to bring". Lots of replies on this thread relate to "what mindset to bring" to songwriting rehearsals, and there's plenty of good advice there.

 

On equipment specifically: I'm not clear whether you want to be able to focus on the actual writing ("music+lyrics" or these days "beats+hooks"), or more on the sound design ("yeah, but more distorted - and can you throw a delay on it?"). If the latter, your Kronos covers a lot of bases, but I don't know how quickly you can throw together a new patch on it. Something like the new Jupiter XM might fit well as an alternative, as it has strong knobby-synth capabilities alongside ROMpler. If the former, then I would have thought Kronos on its own would be sufficient.

 

Finally, it can't be convenient to bring two JBL studio monitors surely. Mono would do, and from memory you have a QSC? If that's too heavy, bring one JBL, or preferably something with a handle/carrying strap.

 

Cheers, Mike.

 

 

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I'd bring a workstation (Kronos) with a "songwriting combi". The following basic parts available to be switched in and out or (or for sustained sounds, swelled in with a pedal).

 

- Piano or wurli or ... (percussive sound)

- Strings or B3 or ... (sustained sound)

- Some sort of LH bass (I prefer a simple synth bass without much character. Allows bass player to do different things.)

- Drum loops to keep time with tap tempo control (kick only, and kick/snare. Allows drummer to do different things.)

- Make sure you are loud enough to contribute, if it becomes a jam session.

 

The idea is to have uniquely integrated instrumental arrangements to get to"the next level" and not hang keyboard ornaments off existing standard arrangements. Not sure if you want to make this case and whether the rest of the band will agree, but it's often worth the try.

 

As well stated above, record everything. :2thu:

 

 

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