How do I write psychedelic rock?

[VanillaFudge]

Whats up guys first post. So heres my background. I have been playing metal and prog {censored} since I first started playing, but I have grownout of it. Lately I have been listening to much psychedelic rock ala Vanilla Fudge, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Hendrix etc. I want to write this type of music and add a modern feel, with some metal elements and also fusion influences. My only problem is, I really dont know how to write this type of music. What type of theory, chord progressions, etc do i use to write psychedelic rock? Im in the dark here.

 

TL;DR: I want to write psychedelic rock. how do i write this type of music? lyrics and guitar theory.

[1001gear]

Play your material through as many cheap pedals as you can get your hands on?

[bogey_j]

drop acid. everything will become clear then. if you can't find any acid, smoke a joint to yourself. the sounds will come to you

[DL2]

Lrn2Jimi

[3shiftgtr]

You are listening to it, and you want to play it, so why aren't you learning it, so you can learn what theory, chords and progressions they are using?

 

Not to be a dick but here's the short answer to your question:

 

The major scale and all of its modes and the attendant harmony thereof.

 

Lyrically, read a lot of great literature and Strunk and White's The Elements of Style to learn about the useage of language, then write about what you think is deep. And it is psych rock, so it doesn't have to rhyme or mean anything to anyone but you.....as long as it is deep, man....

[JonR]

Yes, you need to identify just what it is that makes "psychedelic" rock different from "prog" - which is pretty damn close.

Historically, psychedelia preceded prog, in fact prog developed directly out of it.

There are perhaps two main defining aspects of psych:

(1) use of disorienting effects, generally studio-based, such as phasing *, backwards tracking, exteme EQ effects, extreme pitch shifts, unusual noises or samples, etc.

(2) use of unexpected chord moves. It might be the use of a minor chord where you expect major, or a chromatic chord where it doesn't make a lot of tonal sense.

 

Hendrix's "Burning of the Midnight Lamp" is a great psych classic. First, it opens with a simple guitar motif, but with some quite extreme wah-wah (that counted as a psych effect in those days).

The verse sequence goes as follows:

|F - - - |Dm - - - |B - - - |E - - - |

|Cmaj7 - - - |Gmaj7 - - - |D7 - - -|F - - G|G - - - |...

 

That change from Dm to B major is a real lurch out of key, to the V of E major - and then there's another one to C, whch turns out to be IV of G; lastly the F, which - as bVII of G - is a little more orthodox for rock - except the F-G move makes it sound like a IV-V in C major. It does resolve to C as it returns to the intro, but then the intro chords are V-I-IV-V in F.

(IMO, this is Jimi's masterpiece, more than things like Little Wing, which are pretty run of the mill rock progressions.)

 

The Beatles "Strawberry Fields" is perhaps the best psych track of all, and includes pretty much all the tricks you need: wobbly mellotron intro, unexpected chord changes, disorienting metre shifts, various studio effects (vocal processing, backwards tapes, bizarre noises), clever orchestration (the brilliant way George Martin's strings underline the drop from the opening A major to Em, and then to the following diminished chord). The whole makes for a dream/nightmare evocation, esp the spooky way the track fades back in after you think it's finished.

 

Floyd, meanwhile, had two distinct approaches: the Syd Barrett era, which was very much along the above lines: tightly-written songs, faily short, but with plenty of studio trickery; and the post-Syd era, which was more about long jams or vamps, using spacey effects, and just the odd surprising chord change.

 

What prog did, essentially, was to lose all these gimmicky effects, and just follow the more classically based complexity of chord progressions and metrical changes. (IOW, you can argue prog wasn't "progressive" at all, it was "regressive", as it abandoned the new sonic areas of electronics that rock had been moving into.)

 

* True phasing is difficult to emulate digitally (AFAIK). It was done by superimposing two analogue tape tracks, one moving slghtly slower than the other. The faster one woud start behind and then overtake the slower one. As it did so you got this amazing impression of the sound "turning inside out". You can hear it on the Small Faces' "Itchycoo Park" and the Supremes' "The Happening".

[jeremy_green]

Two words man : Uni Vibe!

Get a pedal that emulates that sucker (Deja Vibe2 is awesome).

 

Take a folk message type lyric, add lots of echos and sparse sections. Lots of jamming out on vamps. Just listen to lots of it. Its' pretty clear what to do.

 

Sadly you likely need to be in that altered state of mind to do it effectively. Although I would NEVER recommend anyone doing that. Drugs are about the quickest way to throw all your hard earned gains in the garbage. Over time many players I know have severely regressed due to their use. It's a train to nowhere.

[mugwump]

Check out Lateralus by Tool and some Zappa along with the above mentioned bands.

 

I personally love psych flavored stuff. I try to throw it in all the time when I'm jamming. Mostly grabbing for 'outside' notes/sounds (harmonics and other things).

 

JonR's write up is great.

[mugwump]

No drugs? No prob!

 

John and Paul do the drugs for you (with a lot of production help).

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_the_Walrus

[Jasco]

 

TL;DR: I want to write psychedelic rock. how do i write this type of music?

 

 

Answer 1: "Good composers borrow. Great composers steal."

 

 

Answer 2: LSD

 

 

Answer 3: You can't write that type of music, you're not from that era.

 

 

 

All three answers are humorous, but also true.

[Tubefox]

Play country/blues stuff and bill yourself as "psychedelic" in the hopes it will lead to everyone being on so much acid they won't notice you suck.

 

Worked for the Dead.

[JonR]

Answer 3: You can't write that type of music, you're not from that era.

"Can't" - not necessarily true. That would mean nobody today could write classical music, or bebop jazz, or doo-wop, or any other vintage style. Clearly not true.

 

However - "Shouldn't" - arguably true.

[JonR]

Play country/blues stuff and bill yourself as "psychedelic" in the hopes it will lead to everyone being on so much acid they won't notice you suck. Worked for the Dead.

Oooh, bitchy! :poke:

 

More like (in the case of the Dead) the distinction between "country/blues" and "psychedelia" is that the latter just means you keep doing the former for about five times as long as is strictly necessary.

 

That also worked for the Floyd, except for them it was doing their old Syd Barrett stuff for 5 times as long, and about half the speed.

 

A light show helps too of course. Stops people noticing that the music is actually getting quite boring.

 

John Cage had a saying which is apt here (and comes from Zen originally):

 

"If you think something is boring for 2 minutes, try it for 4. If it's still boring, try it for 8. And so on. Eventually you find it isn't boring at all, but extremely interesting."

 

Unfortunately, as far as we know, he didn't add "m-a-a-a-a-an".

[~GOD~]

learn to play the blues.

[Tubefox]

"If you think something is boring for 2 minutes, try it for 4. If it's still boring, try it for 8. And so on. Eventually you find it isn't boring at all, but extremely interesting." Unfortunately, as far as we know, he didn't add " m-a-a-a-a-an ".

 

It's implied, though.

 

Also I really don't understand what is "psychedelic" about most "psychedelic" music. I mean, I get Pink Floyd and (some) Jimi Hendrix, but a lot of the stuff from that period just sounds like folk music.

[TrickyBoy]

 

Just listen to lots of it. Its' pretty clear what to do.

 

 

That's the answer. Everything else is BS. Listen to it and ANALYZE it until you internalize it's nuance. You can't wake up one morning and think "I wanna write XXXX style of music" and just do it and have it be an honest composition. You just write and what comes out, comes out. The more of XXXX that you listen to, the more your writing will be influenced by it.

 

But if you've been listening to Dream Theater for 20 years and Pink Floyd for 6 weeks, it's going to take a while to get to where you honestly writing music in a style more like Floyd. There's no shortcuts there IMO.

[TrickyBoy]

 

how do i write this type of music?

 

 

The other answer is in the nude

[Takawho]

Step 1:

You can start out with either 10g of mushrooms or maybe 8 hits of premium acid from your local drug dealer. Ingest the substance. Relax. Open your mind and feel the ebb and flow..feel the void close as you get deeper and deeper into the godhead. Feel the forces around you envelop your soul and open your heart to the beauty of the universe before you.

 

Step 2: Pick up your guitar and write a psychedelic rock song.

 

Best advice I can give.

[1001gear]

Occurs to me, psychedelic music has to be a lie. There's no way to do it in the first place never mind remember it and write it down.

[3shiftgtr]

 

Occurs to me, psychedelic music has to be a lie. There's no way to do it in the first place never mind remember it and write it down.

 

 

You don't like sneeches without stars, do you?

 

"Some sneeches have stars on thars."

[GreenAsJade]

Friggin awesome answer, JonR.

 

Such an easy question to give a smart-arse answer to... yet you went for a serious answer and nailed it!

 

GaJ

[jeremy_green]

 

You don't like sneeches without stars, do you? "Some sneeches have stars on thars."

 

 

Until Sylvester McMonkey McBean comes along : )

[JonR]

 

Occurs to me, psychedelic music has to be a lie. There's no way to do it in the first place never mind remember it and write it down.

That's right. It's the music you thought you heard when you were on that trip. It doesn't exist in real life.

But then - hey, man - maybe we don't exist either?... The music is real, we're just a figment of its imagination... pass that bong....

[1001gear]

 

You don't like sneeches without stars, do you? "Some sneeches have stars on thars."

 

 

Totally befuddled. DR. Seuss?

[JonR]

It's implied, though. Also I really don't understand what is "psychedelic" about most "psychedelic" music. I mean, I get Pink Floyd and (some) Jimi Hendrix, but a lot of the stuff from that period just sounds like folk music.

A lot of the stuff from that period IS folk music. That's probably what you're thinking of.

 

Examples of archetypal psychedelia (IMO):

 

Beatles: Tomorrow Never Knows (perhaps the epitome of the genre), Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Strawberry Fields Forever, Blue Jay Way, Rain.

Pink Floyd: almost anything with Syd Barrett in it. Almost nothing after Syd Barrett. IOW, the debut "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" practically defines the genre (certainly its UK incarnation). The follow-up "Saucerful of Secrets" is also good, but suffers (in this respect) from decreasing Syd input.

Jimi Hendrix: Burning of the Midnight Lamp.

Mothers of Invention: Freak Out! (esp tracks like Who Are the Brain Police)

Rolling Stones: In Another Land, 2000 Light Years from home, and some other stuff from Satanic Majesties. (Psych wasn't really their thing, of course, but they had a reasonable stab at it.)

Beach Boys: Good Vibrations. Pop with a psychedelic flavour.

Donovan: Sunshine Superman. Ditto.

Move: I Can Hear the Grass Grow. Ditto.

Jefferson Airplane: White Rabbit (arguably the manifesto of psychedelia, tho hardly psychedelic at all in its production).

Byrds: Eight Miles High. Country rock catches a psychedelic cold.

Traffic: Hole in My Shoe.

Who: I Can See for Miles.

Small Faces: Itchycoo Park.

13th Floor Elevators: famously claimed their album was "psychedelic", but was mostly 60s punk-rock with too much reverb.

Captain Beefheart's Safe as Milk album was arguably a kind of left-field psychedelia, but is better seen as totally screwed-up blues (and none the worse for that ).

 

There was a genre known (at least much later on) as psychedelic folk, or folkedelia, or some such neologism. Basically it wasn't really "folk" at all (no more than rock was "blues"), but an unplugged version of true rock psychedelia, acoustic musicians getting into the druggy vibe of the time. I would agree with your implication that it's hard to be psychedelic with acoustic guitars (without electronic effects), but the following had a good go at it:

Incredible String Band: 5000 Spirits album (definitely a psychedelic sleeve, and some psych-ish chord changes, lyrics and song structures).

(yes, OK, easy to laugh now... but this was "deep" in 1967. And their influence was mostly responsible for Stairway to Heaven...)

In place of studio effects, they could employ that other psych signifier, the sitar, as well as a few other ethnic instruments to maximise the strangeness. "Strangeness" was really the point of the whole thing - that's why psychedelia loses most of its impact over time.

 

 

Psychedelia was really an extremely limited genre in terms of duration. Began in 1966 (arguably some harbingers of it in 1965, even 64), moribund by 1968, well over by 1969.