Any writers here? How the fuck do I songwrite without feeling like a massive sperg and scrapping my shit?
>>64259035
Cut off your hands.
Quit music.
>>64259035
Say I love you randomly in your songs to convey trust to your listeners. It doesn't even have to make sense.. just say I love you.
>>64259035
Just stop thinking. Don't think about structure don't plan anything. Just try to make something beautiful. Try to make what you enjoy and what you'd like to hear. And if you use theory as a tool you should use it more as intuition than calculation. Don't even think about trying to play from your soul, just try to make something beautiful that you'd like to hear. Be free.
>>64259148
Don't listen to this hippy! you need structure. I've written songs for the Beatles, Tupac, Notorious, Death Grips and even Micheal Jackson... the secret is to say I LOVE YOU for no apparent reason consistently in your song even if it makes no sense.
>>64259035
I have the same problems all the time. I just decided that even if I don't like it for the moment, as long as I come up with something, I'm just gonna record it and keep it as something to forget about and come back to.
Then when I come back to it, I usually try and tweak it or some up with something else that can work with it and even if the idea doesn't correspond with the album that I want to release, I keep it aside for something later.
I couldn't tell you how many shoegaze ideas I have but can never finish because I suck at songwriting. But one day I'll have a shoegaze album.
>>64259035
just feel it bro
Just bee yourself
>>64259035
just don't scrap stuff. record some form of it and maybe later you'll revisit it and have a new idea for it that will make you like it more. take mistakes as they come; they're part of the process of writing. don't try so hard to omit them. bob dylan's guitar playing yielded so many bum strings but he never gave a shit. he recorded a whole album drunk and in one night and it came out great in spite of its technical errors.
just let it happen
Are we talking of writing lyrics or writing music?
Or both?
>>64259035
edit instead of scrap, save instead of scrap, catalog instead of scrap.
sometimes you'll feel inspired and proud of something you smash out in one sitting, other times you'll gather ideas and small bits you've written before into a coherent song. writing is an art, and art isn't always easy. just don't delete - you're the only person who'll see it so don't feel self-conscious.
(easier said than done but affect that mindset)
>>64259035
accept that your self-consciousness exists. put the feeling in a mental jar, observe it, let it yammer away while you get back to work. eventually you come to a place where you start to find your voice and feel comfortable with your work.
write stuff that's actually good
Copy other peoples songs and change stuff around. Keep doing this until you've come up with something you feel can be shared.
>>64259142
ilu
>>64259494
This. I've kept a lot of shit over the years I liked at the time but recognize now as incredibly flawed and lacking, or at least very simplistic in its approach.
Also, most great writers edit and edit and edit until something works. Like marble. Michelangelo didn't just shit out his representation of David overnight.
Hey OP, semi-professional poet and journalist here. I've worked with a lot of local bands and other fellow writers so maybe my two cents might be useful for you, but either way:
Don't try to write. Sounds silly, but let me explain. My favorite sentences/lines/strings of words have come to me when writing was the last thing on my mind. Such as driving home while listening to the radio, brushing my teeth before bed, going for a run in the morning, even while at my day job of waiting tables at Olive Garden. You can't sit down and expect to wax lyrical in perfect prose for a song. You've got to let it come to you.
>>64260160
thanks for the faggot explanation of your life and generic advice. it gave me stage 16 cancer. please buy my mixtape and support me on gofundme.com to help pay for my hospital bills
I used to always think to myself "what the fuck is this trash" whenever I wrote lyrics, but after looking over the lyrics of artists I like and imagining I wrote them I realised I'd think the exact same thing. I think my problem is that using words to convey emotion just seems too cringey to me.
I have learned exactly two things from writing lyrics for music
1 - you arne't a novelist, don't try and sun kill moon it, it will end badly
2 - try and use the emotional theme of the song to "freestyle" the lyrics, you might hit some gems
other than that, there isn't really much to sya other than the chorus should be the anchor gfor the theme of the song if you have one
>>64262696
>using words to convey emotion just seems too cringey to me.
I've found my biggest issue in this regard is lyrics. It's so hard to write lyrics that mean something to you or that have any kind of meaning or nuance to them without feeling like you've just written some dumb middle school bullshit.
For me the trick is usually to just keep the shit lyrics but obscure them in reverb-laden, dream-heavy production. That usually let's me release it without feeling like I'll be judged too harshly.
>>64262925
>1 - you arne't a novelist, don't try and sun kill moon it, it will end badly
What does this mean? I don't know Sun Kil Moon that well.
>>64259035
Just make drone ambient kouhai
>>64263148
very detailed, to rediculous degrees, with tangents where the singer goes and expands on more detail revolving around something that may not even be related to the story being told, such as the colour of the fences around the house where his grandma once lived but next door was this piece of shit who he didn't like
etc etc
Just accept that most of your early songs are going to be shit. You need to write lots of terrible songs before you get good. If you accept it, it'll be easier to look at your songs objectively without feeling like garbage.
>>64263576
Forgot to mention: If you're writing songs to perform yourself, they don't actually need to be as great as songs you would try to sell to someone else.
get your instrument and fuck around with it until you hear something cool then try to expand on that. if you cannot do this learn music theory. then use your knowledge of music theory to compose music.
if you work hard you will be able to write songs.
>>64262952
for context, music can convey an emotion without being preachy/cheesy/quasi-pseudo--intellectual but most lyrics fail to do that.
