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-- Writer's block....again...

Posted by DJREMIDI on May-24-2007 04:43:

Writer's block....again...

Hi all!

So I'm working on a new project and I'm stuck. I have the Main part of the song pretty much finished, but now I have to create the Body of the song and all I have is a bass and some drums. I'm completely drawing blank when I try to write some synth lines.

I always have this problem. I can write a pretty cool main melody with bass and some support melodies fairly quickly, but when it comes to writing the rest of the song it takes me ages.

I guess one issue is not knowing what kind of sound(s) to use. Designing sounds for the body of the song is just such an open-ended task that I easily get lost in all the ideas in my head. Is it common to write melodic content using just a basic sound (INIT patch), like a saw or a square wave with some delay (so it doesn't sound so dry), with proper Volume Envelope settings (to determine whether it's going to be a pad or a plucked type sound) and once you're happy with that replace that sound with something that you feel fits that particular track? The reason I'm asking is because if I listen to a well composed song in midi format it still sounds good playing back using General MIDI sounds, so this leads me to believe that composition comes slightly before sound design... Slightly because I know how a well designed sound can affect a song

Do you have any other suggestions? I am very open to pretty much everything at this point, so please, feel free to share your ideas/techniques.

Thanks guys! (and girls)

-Russ

Posted by B_man on May-24-2007 04:54:

Easy solution: stop writing in the genres that you normally write in.

Grab a symphonic library and experiment with orchestrations...

WRite some ambient crud...

Write your girl a ballad...

Make some EDM that is beyond your normal listening experience (melodic trance-head writing a punchy DnB tune)...

It's amazing how the creative juices get primed when they are immersed in something new.

Posted by echosystm on May-24-2007 05:05:

i just basically hit random keys and shuffle through presets until i get somethng that sounds good

Posted by mdk on May-24-2007 06:08:

There's no real remedy against this kind of things except the one nike already used as their slogan:

Just Do It.

Sounds easy right?

Posted by Jmanch on May-24-2007 07:49:

quote:
Originally posted by B_man
Easy solution: stop writing in the genres that you normally write in.

Grab a symphonic library and experiment with orchestrations...

WRite some ambient crud...

Write your girl a ballad...

Make some EDM that is beyond your normal listening experience (melodic trance-head writing a punchy DnB tune)...

It's amazing how the creative juices get primed when they are immersed in something new.

oh ive been doing that when i feel emo ;(

Posted by djms on May-24-2007 10:29:

put a fat off beat sub in with your kick and perc, that would be a good start

Put some random synth stabs and sound effects in as well to help the mix flow

Put delay on some of your sounds to fill the mix as well

Posted by Storyteller on May-24-2007 11:00:

Same here.. again

Doing other things is awesome, but it is a pain in the ass when certain people expect you to do a remix in the style you normally do... sometimes actually forcing your way through a song actually works.

Posted by thecYrus on May-24-2007 12:37:

Posted by DJREMIDI on May-25-2007 16:50: