Am I doing this right?

I have been writing lyrics to songs for a long time, and sorta jumped in head first to songwriting today. I have no idea how the right way to go about it is and I don't really understand Music Theory :s So I just chose 3 Power Chords (E5, G5, C5) to see what I could come up with. Bear in mind that trumpet is meant to be where vocals are but hasn't been harmonised yet. Hence it sounding out of place.

Sounds better when played on the guitar with distortion but yeah (Need Guitar Pro)

http://www.loudears.com/crap2minsong.gp5

I didn't listen to it, because I have no idea what a gp5 file is!

However, there's no theory necessary for a simple song. There are some very famous songs that have 3 or 4 chords repeating throughout.

There is no right way to write lyrics or melody to them. Does it sound good? That's all that matters.

It's a guitar pro file

And ok. thanks for that tip

And the last one

Thanks for commenting!

Yeah baby! you're doing music theory and you don't even know it. I think that's a III-V-I chord progression in the key of C Major your working with.

From what I understand, chord theory is pretty much just calling chords by numbers instead of names, so you have a pattern for what tends to work in whatever key you're working in. In your case your working in:

C = I

D = ii

E = iii

F = IV

G = V

A = vi

If you flip it up a bit and start in Dm you'll be in the famous II V I progression, which is among the most hated or most revered chord progession in western Music, depending on how you look at it, given how many jazz and pop songs its used in. Another famous one is I, IV, V, or C, F, G, which is the basis of blues.

But you don't really need to know any of this {censored} to write songs. You're ear should be trained from years of listening to music so that you innately understand what sounds good together or not. This stuff is kind of interesting to learn after the fact.

If you really want to understand theory, I'd suggest you learn your favorite songs and then rip-off the chord progressions for your own material. At least that's what I do.

Hi, Ryan!

In answer to your question...

The overwhelming majority of folks here or elswhere are not going to have Guitar Pro (I'm not even sure precisely what it is and I've been doing the desktop music thing since the bad old days of the mid 90s).

If you want folks to be able to hear your music, it's best to put it in Mp3 format, or possibly WMA, AAC, or Ogg Vorbis. But Mp3 is the lingua franca of online music, the common language, as it were.

If Guitar Pro doesn't have an Mp3 export function, perhaps it has a WAV file export and you can use one of the many mp3 player/encoders to turn that into a data-compressed file format small enough to make it practical to upload.

Cheers!

Thanks Blue

But its a software program used to write songs. So all I can do is .midi file but you cant tell much from it. Would it be better to post the tab?

http://www.loudears.com/2minsong.mid

Feel free to post the MIDI, I guess. I think both Windows and Mac have default .MID players now. Even if it doesn't sound good, folks will get the idea. Plus, many of us use MIDI ourselves so if someone was interested they could just drop your file into their sequencer and both look at it and play it. (Or throw it into standard notation, I suppose.)

Tab might be fine for some folks but, though I've been playing guitar for over 25 years, I've spent precious little time reading tab, myself. I'm equally bad or worse with standard notation, too, I'm afraid. I'm more an ear kind of guy. (Though it's tin. So, you know, mixed bag. )

Do what feels right and we'll all work from there.

Feel free to post the MIDI, I guess. I think both Windows and Mac have default .MID players now. Even if it doesn't sound good, folks will get the idea. Plus, many of us use MIDI ourselves so if someone was interested they could just drop your file into their sequencer and both look at it and play it. (Or throw it into standard notation, I suppose.) Tab might be fine for some folks but, though I've been playing guitar for over 25 years, I've spent precious little time reading tab, myself. I'm equally bad or worse with standard notation, too, I'm afraid. I'm more an ear kind of guy. (Though it's tin. So, you know, mixed bag. ) Do what feels right and we'll all work from there.

The Midi was posted in my previous post

Thanks for your help!

The Midi was posted in my previous post Thanks for your help!

Boy, you're fast!

Sorry about that.

Yeah, I was able to play it and I got an idea of what you're going for. At least on the guitar track. The vocal track is almost all monotone after the first two notes. Which seem kind of odd but maybe would make sense if we heard it sung as intended.

But it sounds like you're headed in the right general direction. Fill this out with the rest of a verse, add a chorus, maybe a bridge, probably a solo section, get some bass under it and lock it up with some nice tight drums and you're rockin'!

Boy, you're fast ! Sorry about that. Yeah, I was able to play it and I got an idea of what you're going for. At least on the guitar track. The vocal track is almost all monotone after the first two notes. Which seem kind of odd but maybe would make sense if we heard it sung as intended. But it sounds like you're headed in the right general direction. Fill this out with the rest of a verse, add a chorus, maybe a bridge, probably a solo section, get some bass under it and lock it up with some nice tight drums and you're rockin' !

The Monotone vocals at the moment is just to indicate to me where vocals will eventually go. Haven't worked on the harmony yet!

Thanks for the comments. Much appreciated