Stuck in a rut progression-wise

[dohhhhh6]

Hey, I'm the main music writer in my pop/rock band "The Baldwin Incident." We're a 3 piece with the guitarist and I switching on lead vocals duty. We also play NO distortion.

 

Anyways, I'm stuck writing music right now (and since about ahhh a month or so).

 

The way I write the music, is I play with chords for awhile (I'm slowly moving away from the limiting open string chords) and get progressions that sound good eventually. Very hit and miss.

 

The problem is that I hate using anything below the low G and I try not to use anything above the octave E. C and A major are the 2 keys that to be feel the most lively, so I use a lot of them. I'm a big fan of major chords though my progression can sound a bit "sterile" with so many majors.

 

The 2 problems are this:

 

Everything (no matter where I play it) seems so similiar since I'm working within a scale. I don't see how I can make anything creative out of 7 freakin' notes!

 

I'm a very picky person. Besides the small list of forget me nots (lotsa major chords, hate playing a low E chord or low F, etc), I come up with lots of really rocky progression, and I throw them out because I don't want an alt rock feel to my music.

 

The basic premise of the band is to take old school, Herman and the Hermits/happy Beatles type progression, and give them a modern sound. It's so hard for me to find these progression though. It takes about a month for me to find a simple verse progression that gives the right feel.

 

How can I get out of this rut? Is there an easier way to find those progressions?

 

Please give me any help/tips to help expand my songwriting and effectively get me out of this rut!

 

Thanks.

[Sean Eldon]

Believe me, there is so much more you can do with chords than just what is in the scale. For instance, let's say you're playing in G. You can stay within the basic chords for a verse and chorus (should you choose to use them) and then switch it up and find a way to go to Gm for the second verse, and then bring it back to major for the chorus. Or, if you feel a song might be a little boring, let it build to something in the bridge that blows everything else away, and makes it worth while. For instance, If you're in G again, and you spend the whole song playing chords like G, Bm, C, D, Em, etc...when you get the the bridge, throw the listener for a loop by throwing in that F MAJOR, and then going to the Bb MAJOR, or some kind of diminished chord or climb. These are just a couple of effective tricks. I've got tons more. God only knows how long I've been writing. I forgot.

[Sean Eldon]

Ah, forgot one of my favorites:

 

Wanna stick to basic chords and don't like the last bits of advice? Pull a Brian Wilson/Beach Boys bit and have your standard chords, and frequently have the Bass playing something other than the root. Listen to "God Only Knows". Lots of relative chords in that song too.

[Tedster]

Great tune, BTW.

[Cozmicslop]

Hey Da Lady,

Fellow LDLDer here. I used to write with just my bass and a drum machine. Change beats and grooves, play them each for about a minute and move on. Just to come up with grooves and feelings. Then i'd listen back and if I liked something, i might build a song around it. After a while My keyboard player began to complain that all the songs were in the same key. As a bassist E and A were my favorite keys to riff in so it just came naturally.

So I started writing on guitar. The songs I wrote on guitar were a lot different than what I wrote on bass. I'll describe how later.

Finally I got a keyboard workstation and it opened up a totally different area of creativity for me. On Bass the songs I wrote tended to be more funk/beat driven dance type songs. On Guitar I wrote more poppy, rock, Neil Youngish/John Hiatt influenced type songs. What I write on keys has a more gospel/jazz type flavor.

The most important thing about keyboards is that i don't think about what i'm doing. I just play and when I like what I came up with, then i figure out what i've done. I don't limit myself with trying to follow this progression or that one. Since I don't play the instument , I'm not always aware of what I'm doing until I've done it. (I hope that makes sense).

I would recommend that you write without an instrument in your hands. Sing your ideas into a portable tape recorder. Figure out later how to play it on an instrument. You'll free your mind from the restrictions of trying to start and work within a progression.

I went from not writing at all to being the most prolific writer in both bands I play with. My mates are constantly amazed with the stuff i come up with. I learned from my keyboard player who is a ball buster for hooks and structure and creative phrasing of lyrics. The basics.

Lately we've come up with the theory that songs write themselves. All we do is organize them and set them in stone.

One of my favorite techniques comes from Paul McCartney. His big hit "Yesterday" was built around the hook "Scrambled eggs" and built with meaningless throw away lyrics which he wrote the music around and later the real words were written. So I take a meaningless phrase like..

"Two Monkeys stuffed a chicken in a jeep and drove away."

Or some other totally nonsensical line. I'll take that cadence and drop it over one of dozens of riffs I have floating around in my head and off i go. By the time the music starts to develope lyrics that seem to fit it start to come to me. I have notebooks and scratch paper all over the house with song ideas, titles, lyrics and sometimes i can just plug the subject in and BOOM the thing starts writing itself. Then I concern my self with structure, key, progression.

I find that no matter what instrument I do the demo in, or what style the song might have had when it came to me, If I bring it to the pop band, its gonna sound like pop or R&B. If I play the same song with my funk band, it's gonna sound like funk, rock or jazz. Thats the beauty of it all. A good song will translate well to almost any genre.

 

Hope this helps.

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

If you folow this idea, it is hard to start with, but killer after you get used to doing it.

 

Stop writing with a guitar in your hand.

 

Write the song in your head, then force yourself to learn how to play it. And be sure not to compromise and cheat... really make yourself hunt around until you find those changes that you hear in your head.

 

You'll be a better writer, and you'll stop repeating that same handful of changes that you instinctively go to when you pick up your guitar.

 

An alternative idea is to move to piano, but in general I find that keyboards slow a band down and make them whimp out. (Either that, or the keyboard player is trying to fill every empty space with noise.... ) I like the odd slow song well enough, but give me wailing guitars over keys any day.

 

Bill

[Lee Flier]

Yeah, what Bill and Cozmic said. Best way to write is with no instrument. Just sing melodies in your head or into a recorder and get those down, and then figure out later what chords go behind them. Not only will this make you a better writer but a better player too, as you will probably force yourself to learn new chords/progressions/etc. in order to back up what you just wrote.

[I I mjrn]

You must get away from the approach of looking for progressions, although that's a very common way for beginning writers, so I agree with the idea of developing a melody first but I think this can be easily done with an instrument as well as without.

In fact it may be necessary to use an instrument since depending on memory can be deceptive---the same tendencies toward certain progressions can shape our memory of a tune you were thinking of.

All you need to do is forget about chords & stick to single notes as you play around...& don't play riffs or licks or scales, play a tune.

These will be simple at first, of course, but the more you do it the more facility you will get.

Also, whether working with an instrument or with a recorder to catch your sung/hummed tunes, you will find that you'll want to modify them---all writers do, & it's a good thing!---& the same thing applies there: stay with the melodic approach rather than trying to think of what chords "need" to be used.

All music theory is to be used to analyze what

happens in music; it's not meant to dictate what can be done!

[Strangerbytheminute]

Write the song in your head, then force yourself to learn how to play it. And be sure not to compromise and cheat... really make yourself hunt around until you find those changes that you hear in your head.

[Lee Flier]

Originally posted by Michael Jackson's real nose:

You must get away from the approach of looking for progressions, although that's a very common way for beginning writers, so I agree with the idea of developing a melody first but I think this can be easily done with an instrument as well as without.

It can, but most people have their "prejudices" on an instrument, little licks or scales or other things they do when they're not playing a specific song. That can influence melody writing as well as "progressions" which results in continuing to be stuck in ruts. Whereas if you're not limited at all by the "muscle memory" of your instrument, you tend to think of fresher things, and then worry later about figuring out how to play them.

 

Sometimes it DOES help to noodle around on an instrument you're not familiar with or on which you have limited ability, because it stimulates fresh ideas and you aren't as likely to have developed playing "ruts." John Lennon said he liked writing on the piano a lot as opposed to guitar because it forced him to stick to a more limited palette/write more concisely. Whatever will knock you out of your usual method of doing things is good if you're stuck.

[coyote]

Whenever you're stuck for progressions, just think of the Rolling Stones and how many songs they cobbled together from a couple Chuck Berry riffs

[freelance]

I have to agree with the method of writing with no instrument in your hand (although I've composed several songs by playing riffs/progressions).

 

I think Lee hit it on the head - when you write on a given instrument, you tend to play in certain keys (that you like or that you know more riffs in, etc) and you "think to use the "logica" chord, or your hands simply form the chords that they normally use (like going from the I to the IV, etc) - in essence, you play to your limitations on the instrument.

 

I know when I write without an instrument (and then have to "learn" the chords) I often end up with progressions I would not normally depend on. I also have to learn different chords or positions, which in turn leads to different passing chords, etc. (as Lee said, this make sme both a better writer & a better player).

 

I also agree with the person who mentioned that writing on a given instrument takes me in a given direction. If I'm on guitar it's often more rock & riff driven, on bass it's more funky riff driven and on keys it tends to be more pop or jazz and melodic driven. When I write in my head with no instrument, I don't force the composition in any particular style - I simply accept whatever the Song Gods offer to me.

[Dave Morehouse]

I carry one of those lillte microcassette dictation machines in each of my vehicles. I also have one at work and at home in the studio. They cost about $25 at Radio Shack and the sound quality is horrid. It does let me sing whatever runs through my head wherever I am at the time. Then, when I have the time, I listen to what I have and add to the hooks, verses, etc. I also figure out what chords to play at that time. I too think my best stuff has been written without an instrument and going back to the keyboard or guitar after the song has already taken shape. Just my $.02 worth. Hope it helps, Dave.

[BillWelcome Home Studios]

Originally posted by Dave Morehouse:

I carry one of those lillte microcassette dictation machines in each of my vehicles. I also have one at work and at home in the studio. They cost about $25 at Radio Shack ...

I have a little dictation machine from Radio Shack. It was $39, but holds 122 minutes, and is capable of saving the info as seperate files (I think the limit is four.)and has a USB output. So if little recorders is the idea, this is a pretty nice way to go and won't suffer the destruction that sometimes happenens with microcassettes and the heat of a car in the summer.

 

Bill

[Dave Morehouse]

have a little dictation machine from Radio Shack. It was $39, but holds 122 minutes, and is capable of saving the info as seperate files (I think the limit is four.)and has a USB output

Thanks for the comment. I have wondered how they worked and will use them to replace the microcassettes as I break them (usually by thrashing the play/record buttons). Dave Morehouse

[Ernest Buckley]

If you play piano and guitar, switch instruments. Its funny how the way a chord feels actually affects how we write. I find certain chords uncomfortable on the guitar and avoid them where on a piano, they are fine. So depending on where I write, the song will have certain influences.

Peace.

[Fulc]

As long as you're still finding your way around progressions...

 

Don't forget that any given chord more than likely appears in more than one scale. For example that F major chord you were thinking about using appears not only in the F major tonality, but in B-flat major and C major (and for that matter G minor). You could therefore use the chord as an entrance to a different tonality or modality.

 

It's easy to go wild with this too, so you should probably overuse it till you determine for yourself how much is too much and scale back till it's just right and you're comfortable with it.

 

Cor blimey, is that my first post? Jeebus.

[Ernest Buckley]

I`m reminded of KISS. (Keep it Simple Stupid)

 

Many of the best songs have been written with just 4 chords. As songwriters, we tend to forget this at times. Focus on the melody and rhythm, then chords come naturally out of that.

[theblue1]

Originally posted by Da LadY In Tha Pink Dress:

Hey, I'm the main music writer in my pop/rock band "The Baldwin Incident." We're a 3 piece with the guitarist and I switching on lead vocals duty. We also play NO distortion.

 

Anyways, I'm stuck writing music right now (and since about ahhh a month or so).

 

The way I write the music, is I play with chords for awhile (I'm slowly moving away from the limiting open string chords) and get progressions that sound good eventually. Very hit and miss.

 

The problem is that I hate using anything below the low G and I try not to use anything above the octave E. C and A major are the 2 keys that to be feel the most lively, so I use a lot of them. I'm a big fan of major chords though my progression can sound a bit "sterile" with so many majors.

 

The 2 problems are this:

 

Everything (no matter where I play it) seems so similiar since I'm working within a scale. I don't see how I can make anything creative out of 7 freakin' notes!

 

I'm a very picky person. Besides the small list of forget me nots (lotsa major chords, hate playing a low E chord or low F, etc), I come up with lots of really rocky progression, and I throw them out because I don't want an alt rock feel to my music.

 

The basic premise of the band is to take old school, Herman and the Hermits/happy Beatles type progression, and give them a modern sound. It's so hard for me to find these progression though. It takes about a month for me to find a simple verse progression that gives the right feel.

 

How can I get out of this rut? Is there an easier way to find those progressions?

 

Please give me any help/tips to help expand my songwriting and effectively get me out of this rut!

 

Thanks.

Something you might find helpful might be to take some of the songs you like in the style you want to write in, write the chords down and then translate them into either roman numeral or Nashville notation -- so you can see in abstraction what the progression is doing. Take a look at movement within sections and through the song as a whole.

 

One thing you'll quickly notice, particularly with the Beatles, are some pretty quirky modulations. That's what tends to give them their flavor and why Beatles songs are not only distinct from most other folks songs, but also from each other.

 

[i'm sitting here watching myself write this and thinking, yeah, man, that's why my songs have become so boring... ]

[Dave Morehouse]

I have to agree with Ernest. Try switching instruments or learning a new one. It breaks the mold for me every time. Give it a try, Dave.