Songwriting Workshop

[nat whilk II]

I've been commenting/suggesting for a while now, so I figure I should post some real material and not just be a critic of other people's stuff.  I even opened a new Soundcloud account just for the purpose.  Not that it's any achievement for normal people...

I come up with endless little instrumental bits like this one - most die an unremarked death through neglect or memory loss...some turn into songs with words.  But almost never do I flesh out full length instrumental tunes.  So maybe with some help on the forum, I'll find the sticktoitness to do so.

This one is so fresh off the brain-press that it has no name (pobrecito!) so the acronym tied to it's little tune-toe is HCSWW01-1.  That's pretty self-explanatory, no??

http://snd.sc/Z5IsPn 

I really don't enjoy recording very much, it's so tedious and time-consuming and incremental - I enjoy songwriting and playing.  So that's part of my problem.  

So where should this little intro go next?  (I hear the distortion - I think it's the sequenced rhythm stuff - I'll fix that in the next version.)

nat whilk ii

[LCK]

It's a really nice start. I don't know what else to tell you. It catches the ear immediately.

[blue2blue]

I listened to both versions. I really like how it's shaping up. 

Put a few bits like that together and you could have a nice foundation for a song or a little mini-suite thing.

One thing I like is that you have the discipline in your filligree guitar parts to work up a motif. Whenever I have a guitar in my hands in an accompaniment role, it seems like I just can't get myself to stay disciplined, I seem to have this perverse need to wander all over the place. (I drive myself nuts.)

Anyhow, a promising effort! 

[nat whilk II]

Ok, I messed with dash-1 a bit and here's dash-2.

http://snd.sc/Z6aoTo

Whut I done:

> doubled one of the guitar parts (you can hear the watery thing)

> added a couple more guitar tracks with some compression and reverb - the high 16th notes that give it a lot more atmosphere to my ear...

> started a fingerpicked progression at the end as one way I might go next...min7 that moves up a half step and back down, it'll get to an eventual turnaround back to the tonic A - or is is Amin?  It keeps going back and forth between major and minor.

or I could stick in a big slamming couple of pickup beat snares and turn the thing into a heavy electric guitar thing, too....

nat whilk ii

[Lee Knight]

Cool. A million places to go. You have A 2 bar pre intro, then an 8 bar intro proper... At which point you add an octave guitar on the 5th. A million places to go, here's one.

Have a vocal verse start there, but in place of your guitar answers at every 2nd bar. So the main guitar plays its main riff but does not answer it. And instead of the vocal singing from the octave tonic like the guitar answers, it dances around the 3rd 4th 3rd 4th 5th 1 1

Of course there are 9,999,999 other places you could go. Sounds great

[nat whilk II]

Okeedokey...

thanks for the encouraging words.  

Yeah, to vox or not to vox?  That's an issue I'm avoiding for now, but I feel some lyrics coming on...I even have a title now and here's the latest:

Starting To Suspect

http://snd.sc/XMguvf

What's new on this version:

> maing thaing is I fleshed out the chords to the next whole section.  The new section eventually turns around to the beginning.  Turned out to be a lot longer section than I originally envisioned, and it was a lot of work late into the wee hours.

> switched to electric guitar direct recorded for the new section.  

> the drums on the new section I play on my Roland HPD-10 - even got a real Tama kick pedal.  So hey I'm almost a facsimile of an imitation of a drummer!

The big issues I'm pondering now (still avoiding the vox issue, mind)

> how to keep the acoustic guitar feel and the drive of the 16th notes into the new section.  I might track some acoustic strumming behind the electric...

> for each 2-bar subsection of the new long section, I've yet to decide on the dynamic level of each section.  

> the first two sections clock in at about 1:45.  I could repeat the whole thing and end on a fade which would be all told about 3.5 minutes, maybe a big longer.  Or I could go three times 1:45 with maybe the middle being a big noisy treatment and the last bringing it back down.   

Snatches of old tunes that ran through my mind fleetingly while putting this together so far - 

Reach Out by the Four Tops.  In the new section near the turnaround it's got that vibe a bit.

That little line "I got a new complaint" from Cobain/Heart Shaped Box.  It's echoed in the doubled ac guitar line.  Not a conscious borrow, but hey, yeah, it's kinda the same.

And the beginning riff just has a slight scent of the Smoke On The Water riff.  No coincidence  I just watched a rather boring DVD about the making of Machine Head.  

The new section is very skeletal at this point...and yeah there's some timing to clean up and so on and so forth...thanks for listening and commenting as you will...

nat whilk ii

[Oswlek]

Feel free to delve deep into all the areas you want, but what this piece needs more than anything else is a melody.  The opening guitar is engrossing on its own, but once the jazzy stuff comes in, it loses some of its continuity.  If there were something on top tying it together. it would sound much tighter, IMO.

I'm intrigued.

[Lee Knight]

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Oswlek wrote:

Feel free to delve deep into all the areas you want, but what this piece needs more than anything else is a melody.  The opening guitar is engrossing on its own, but once the jazzy stuff comes in, it loses some of its continuity.  If there were something on top tying it together. it would sound much tighter, IMO.

I'm intrigued.

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Right, I agree. The new bit, those chords, they might be brilliant, or lame. It's sort of like playing a drum beat and saying, check out my song. Those chords do not hold interest so it implies there is more to come on top. If not...then the chord rhythm should be much more interesting. As it stands now, there is no featured element there.

[nat whilk II]

Yes, granted.  I've got a lot of work to do.  Pretty early in the sausage making process.  

Maybe I'm posting up to the forum here in too-small steps of the incremental way I write stuff like this.   (wow bad grammer, bad bad nat)   So it's very hard for anyone to see where I'm going so far.  And that's how it is for me, too - I have only a vague notion of where I'm going to take an embryonic piece like this.  That's a lot of the fun for me, actually.  I lay something down and if it feels like it works simply as it goes, then I leave it to rest a bit, run it through my head all day long and then block some time to sit and play and record to see if any ideas for the next move have legs. Over and over, write and overwrite and re-write.

I'll upload after I get a bit more solid thing going - 

No question, I'm an "enjoy the journey" sort, I like things kept open and fluid, and I get pretty bad marks in Finishing Any Damn Thing.  Just ask the wife

nat whilk ii

[Oswlek]

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nat whilk II wrote:

Yes, granted.  I've got a lot of work to do.  Pretty early in the sausage making process.  

Maybe I'm posting up to the forum here in too-small steps of the incremental way I write stuff like this.   (wow bad grammer, bad bad nat)   So it's very hard for anyone to see where I'm going so far.  And that's how it is for me, too - I have only a vague notion of where I'm going to take an embryonic piece like this.  That's a lot of the fun for me, actually.  I lay something down and if it feels like it works simply as it goes, then I leave it to rest a bit, run it through my head all day long and then block some time to sit and play and record to see if any ideas for the next move have legs. Over and over, write and overwrite and re-write.

I'll upload after I get a bit more solid thing going - 

No question, I'm an "enjoy the journey" sort, I like things kept open and fluid, and I get pretty bad marks in Finishing Any Damn Thing.  Just ask the wife

nat whilk ii

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It's never too early.  Just be aware that some feedback might be unnecessary because we don't see the whole picture.  If you had typed something like "I'm going to add a melody" I probably wouldn't have said anything.

[rsadasiv]

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nat whilk II wrote:

So it's very hard for anyone to see where I'm going so far.

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That's kind of the rub ... I think what you've got so far is nice, but I don't have any suggestions about how to take it where it needs to go.