What pisses me off....

Aaron Cheney

Aaron Cheney

Favorite Chord: C 6/9
What pisses me off...

I remember hearing Paul Simon say once that he hated the kind of songs he wrote, but that that was the way he wrote and there was nothing he could do about it. Sometimes I can really relate.
It pisses me off when I start writing a song and I envision it sounding a certain way, and then as I begin arranging and listening for what should go where, the song takes on a life of it's own and goes in it's own direction. Soon it sounds like one of my songs, which is exactly what I was trying to get away from. Crap!
Aaron Cheney
http://www.aaroncheney.com
 
It's your style Aaron - be proud of it like Paul...shit at least you are writing songs, that's more than some around here are doing. :)
cheers
john
 
I read someplace that George Gershwin (one of my musical heros) went to Paris where he met Ravel. Apparently he wanted to study with Ravel who refused to teach him. Ravel told him that he would end up sounding like a bad imitation of Ravel rather than a good George Gershwin.
 
This happens to might quite often as well. The hardest thing is letting it go, you are really excited about putting music to it; then you go and fuck it up. I find that once you have messed it up there is no going back, you have killed it and sentenced it to death, trying to start it again is a non-starter.

If I have great expections for a song I will take it slowly. I have the idea of the sound/the feeling and the tempo, through the lyrics I have written. The best thing can sometimes be to get a drummer to give you the desired beat you want, then do a recording of the basic melody/by recording a vocal line. You now have the basis of the song that you can then embellish at your own speed. Using other musicians as an aid can give you the foresight to step back and watch it come together how you expected it to.
 
Re: I'm not joking

tdukex said:
Try pretending you're someone else.
Click to expand...

Right, this actually workks. To make it easier, find a picture of some random person in a magazine or someplace and have it in front of you while writing. Try to imagine what kind of song that person would write/sing/play.
 
Another comment, I mainly play keyboards. Sometimes I hear a song or have an idea and can't seem to exactly translate it into the music... that comes out differently. At other times, I wind up with what I think are 8 cool bars, but can't figure out how to make the rest of the song to go with it. This will probably be an unpopular suggestion, but I have found that study helps. I like to sit and noodle, but I have learned a lot by lessons, books and analysis of music I like. Rather than limit my creativity, it has done the opposite and given me more to work with. That is in regards to the technical side of music. As I said in my earlier post, regarding who you are... Good Gershwin or Bad Ravel?
 
Crossing the bridge

I'll tell you where I often get stuck: the bridge. I'll have a nice chorus and verse, but finding a third theme just seems to elude me. A bridge has to be something completely new, and yet not too far from the mood of the rest of the song to be distracting. I have so many songs sitting around that are still waiting for a bridge. Ugh!
I also struggle w/ verse lyrics. I write and rewrite, trying to express some grand idea in 10 words that rhyme. Perhaps I'm overthinking things. One of my all time fav's is Sting. He writes some of the greatest metaphors, and it seems so natural to him. "Fussing and flapping in priestly black like a murder of crow," for example. Wow.
Back to my thesaurus.
Aaron
http://www.aaroncheney.com
 
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