hello artic, this has potential to be a nice thread.
premise: i'm a hobbyist, i like music and i like making music in my free time.

before anything, we should ask ourselves: when does a "new song" start? and what's considered a "new song"? a lot of what we are talking about here is subjective and down to tastes, genres, experience, etc. but i want to focus a little bit on "when a new song is started". since i'm very bad at explaining what i want to say, i'll mostly refer to ideas with examples.

yesterday night i opened my daw while i was having a cigarette and started putting down some random notes on a piano patch. hey this is a very simple melody, let's put it in the bass. mmh ok, let's add a kick (grabbed a kick and i stick with it for the whole track, just put some saturation). cigarette after cigarette i started humming new melodies, adding new elements, etc. eventually spending hours and hours finishing the project. now, when did the song "start"? when i put random bass notes? when i opened the daw? when the main body of the song was created? i think i DO have an answer that satisfies me, let's rewind a little bit. when i was making the track, usually at the start, i wanted to name it "dancemia" (mix of pandemia and dance), and thus a "CONCEPT" was created. i didn't like it though, i wanted some robotic voices and i tried using mine and modify it but "dancemia" sounded wrong in here. so i went around looking for samples and found a "disco electro" one, with a robotic voice: put a vocoder on it and i think HERE the song was born. to summarize: i think a "new" song is created when you have a CLEAR CONCEPT in mind, and here i had it: an uplifting, upbeat, happy track, at 128bpm, with a robotic voice saying "disco electro", picturing androids dancing in a disco.

following this definition of "new song", you can create "new songs" even when you are in bed. you need a CONCEPT. the rest is just EXECUTION. and the concept could be as easy as "a strong kick and a hat" (Jan Pravda - Roll the drums (

), it literally has only a kick and a hat, and it was played by Carl Cox..) or "a song in the style of x, with lyrics of y, with a bass that goes like this and this".

of course, coming up with new concepts (and careful, i'm not saying "new ideas") is not always easy. in fact, i think the song mentioned above came out simply because i made the bass melody in a major scale, and soon after i started to concretize the concept in my head, and thus i had a direction, i knew where i wanted the song to go. this is why multifx vst or creative effects are always useful to have around. you can throw a loop, a voice, a synth, see if you like the outcome, change it around, etc. that's why a lot of people say to listen to different genres of music, even the ones you don't like, because you might get creative and have new stuff, and it's always nice to learn something new.

usually, you start with an idea in mind but then the instruments, the melodies, the song itself wants to go into another direction... in such cases, i simply create a copy of the project and modify everything to fit the new "path" the song wants to go towards.

now, it happened to me, a lot of times... you start making sounds, you spend hours making a very nice kick, fixing a bass patch, but... total void... this happens because you (well, i'm talking for myself) have NO DIRECTION, NO CLEAR INTENTION for the track you want to make. you are just making sounds (which is FINE, in fact when i do this i always save the patches, the sounds, or if i don't at least i learnt something new!). this is why i always make sure to have a concept in mind before going too deep into a track. an example, i have a very nice track i like, kind of new-age electronic, with a nice flute and stuff, technically it's finished, arranged and everything, but i have no idea for it... what is this track? it doesn't inspire me. there is no direction. it just floats there, it doesn't go anywhere. do i throw it away? no, it has warm company with other hundreds of tracks, one day i might check it again, remove the dust and maybe with fresh mind and ears i will have new ideas for it.

- -

now, how do you ACTUALLY start? this is subjective of course, it depends on the style. for example you artic said that you start with the drums. i prefer to start with melodic elements, or at least sounds. some tracks i made (life forms) i actually started with an fx loop, and little by little i started having the concept of the song (a techno piece with some whispers/garble, etc) and the rest comes by itself. see, when you have a concept in mind, the song writes itself. it has its own soul, which you have created, and that soul wants to go somewhere. i believe this is true for any form of art.

a lot of times before arranging, usually what we do is make the "MAIN LOOP", the CHORUS of the song, since that's the one that contains the most elements: once you have that, you build around the rest. if the track is melodic, it might be a good idea to start with the main melody, BUT NOT ALWAYS. a hands up track i made in fact, the melody was the last thing i wrote: first the kick and bass, then the intro, build up, etc. and i was like "fuck i need a better melody, mmh ok let's do it later"

another important thing that loops back with the CONCEPT/IDEA thing, is inspiration... you really can't force yourself to have inspiration, to be inspired. but when you are, MAKE SURE TO USE IT, don't make it go to waste. and don't say "i'm not inspired!" when you ALREADY have a concept... if you have the idea done, 100%, then it's not an inspiration problem. i don't remember who said this (and im probably butchering the quote): inspiration is the key to ignite the car engine, motivation is you smashing the pedal to make it go. well i don't remember the exact quote, but anyway: don't confuse inspiration with other things. inspiration only comes in short quantities and for very little time: the rest is HARD WORK. imagine you spend 10 hours in bed coming up with ideas for a song: once you get in front of your daw, there is no "inspiration" needed, you just need to put the stuff that's into your brain into actual work. you have to morph the ideas from the aether into the physical world. there was a book about ideas and the creative process that touched about this subject connecting ideas with the four elements, it was good.

anyway, i hope i didn't waste your time if you read all of this. cheers

 

 

Last edited: Feb 10, 2022

God, how to start a song is so trivially easy for me! It's how to finish a song I get stuck on!

Seriously though, the way I start songs varies. What works for me won't work for everyone either. I work with electronic music genres, typically, and all "in the box" with virtual instruments.

The most common way I tend to start out writing a song is to just throw a VSTi in my DAW, and whip through some presets and "noodle" around on my keyboard until I get ideas in my head. Other times, ideas just pop in my head throughout the day.. I might get some random rhythm or sequence in my head, and I'll then later sit down and recreate it. It's almost always a rhythm or plucky arp/sequence that I start things with, in my case. Sometimes it might be some pad presets I'm flipping through, and I'll come up with a chord progression. Othertimes, I might just load up Riffer (by AudioModern) and generate some random sequence based on scales I like to work with. On the rare occasion, I'll get some drum beat down first, then work from there. Drums aren't a big part of my music though (IMO).

I think I generally have no problems coming up with good ideas, but I can struggle (like anyone) with fleshing them out into fuller songs.

I'll say that I start a LOT of songs and abandon them for a while. Never be afraid to do just drop a small idea in a new project, save it off and come back to it later after doing some other music work. Sometimes I'll get really far into a song and just stop working on it for a long time because my creativity on the song has completely stalled. Then I'll just try and go back to it.. often more than once... maybe adding a little bit more to it or changing it each time.. maybe nothing at all. Frequently, after several attempts at returning to a song, I'll finally manage to finish it off.

But yah, I stress, don't be afraid to just create many short projects of ideas. I like to organize these ideas by a rating too as to how good the idea is, so I know which ones are best to come back to.

 

Whatever comes to my mind first (drums, bass, synth, guitar). The difficulty for me is to make a complete song.

 

First i start by writing a story 'cause i'm an a**hole who doesn't like ideas that end after the 3 minute mark (though i respect it, even enjoy it when it's somebody else's ). Then it goes something like this:

-Craft themes for relevant characters, places, events. Good time to make yourself a rough idea of what the instrumentation will look like for the entire song/project, make sure it makes sense for the story but also that the different instruments play nice with each other (even before actually putting stuff together, and specially if you're using stuff that has it's own reverb).
-if it's an album, take a bunch of themes and put them into one song as some sort of "overture" (not always necessary but it could serve as arough sketch for you of what's to come, also to commit yourself to the idea)
-rythm, harmony, placing of the themes and everything in between will follow the story, (which is also pretty good to make sure you don't add unnecessary stuff). If you know some music theory, this is probably where you want to put all tricks you know to practice. If you don't, keep things simple, otherwise you may start making problems that will add on down the line. (You'd be surprised how simple can you go and still get good results)

It's a slow process, probably not suitable for a lot of genres, and certainly not suitable for anything other than hobbyists (i imagine pro composers have way better methods), but idk, i just feel music has more meaning this way.

 

One emote alone for that post just isn't enough.. I wanted to agree, like, love it and call you a winner !

 

In the past it was called a band consisting of 4 musicians. The drummer plays the drums, the bassist played
the bass, the guitarist plays his solo or the rhythm guitar and the singer sang into the microphone.

Today you sit alone in front of the PC and are the whole band...! Theoretically you can conduct a whole orchestra and play yourself.

 

wenever you are stuck and need inspiration just go to Vimeo and
get yourself a video and make a soundtrack.
There are mood pieces, modelshots, shorts.

you could surprise yourself

 

.

 

I make sketches. Sometimes I develop around a drum/percussion loop, sometimes I browse synths presets. Especially for presets - depending on the length of the sound - it may determine me to use sparser notes (for a sound that has a nice tail) or a certain type of groove depending on how the macros are assigned. At this stage I never question the validity of the idea. I just make them, forget them and listen them later on. Some sketches seem crap next week and golden nuggets next month so I re-listen everything from time to time.
And from here (a basic 4 bars idea or a more complex sketch) the song basically writes itself - if the core idea is solid enough.

They key imho is to make this kind of sketches at least on a weekly basis (if not possible daily). This way the brain will always generate new ideas from anything due to our brain's reticular activating system (what we constantly do and are insterested in, brain perceives as priority and allocates a lot of background energy - what we do from time to time is regarded as occasional and treated by the brain with extreme conscious thinking and therefore any creative process done with the thinking brain is perceived as a chore).

The reason we have so much talk so many tutorials is because many of us here and other forums will do anything but actually make music because if we don't do it daily, we perceive it as a pain. So we're looking for shortcuts & whatnot when the simple thing to do is to just make something every day

 

I second the studio secret of rippin nugs and playing what I feel, could be a pad, could be a jazz sample, could be a drum loop i hear in my head, but the first thing I do, and how i start a song.. is by ripping my Saturn V beezer and visiting space for a minute or two and let whatever sounds leave my mind to my fingers. so this begs the question, does matter derive from thought or does thought derive from matter...

 

I do this with blue planet on silent sometimes...

 

I start Reaper and press new project (Magic)

Then I roll my face over the keyboard . If it's good than it's good (which most of the time not the case )

(Sorry if my Humor is too dry for someone )


Ok, a bit more serious.

Drums . Bassline . Keys .
But the biggest part is "trial and error" and experimenting.

 

Damn, love this technique.. are you looking to collaborate? lol

 

Maybe sometime

The good about this technic is that I sometimes hit a major chord (Thanks to my bit flatter nose and my high cheeks )

 

Not sure if this is much of a contribution, but one of the most important things for me is to actually notate or record ideas when I have them, and do so instantly. Because for some reason I tend to forget ideas very quickly and then they're gone, and only rarely come back on their own. So if you ever think of a melody or a beat or chords, drop everything you're doing and fixate it somehow immediately

 

I have my own way of composing, but the best part is I don't have time for that