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Frustrated

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2019 11:56 pm
by Barretoproducer
I'm very frustrated, I can not make good music, it sounds horrible and boring, the melody is horrible even though everything is on the scale, I do not know what to do, does anyone have any tips or any trick? :(

Re: Frustrated

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2019 2:04 am
by Failte200
Try it with a different instrument. You can just pick an synth or sample and drop it on top of the current one in Song Editor.

Try speeding up/slowing down the tempo. Hover over the tempo indicator and use your mouse wheel. I'm finding that 160 seems to work for me most of the time. Kind of depends you. Like everything Music-y, it's all about what YOU like.

Add percussion. Even if it's just BOOM-crash-BOOM-crash. Makes an amazing difference. Use the BB editor OR NOT. I'm a NOT person, myself, but that's just me. There are songs in the Sharing Section that are made ENTIRELY in the BB editor. And there are songs that don't use it at all.

Try using some chords. Several ways to do that: if you're using a synth, one of the standard "effects" is to play each note as a chord. Experiment with what sounds best to you. Also, in the Piano Roll, you can just "turn on" your choice of chord. Place a note and it places a chord instead. Or do what I do, use ctrl-c to copy everything in the Piano Roll, then shift-drag a note up or down (while it's playing) until you like it. Hint: LEAVE ALL THE NOTES SELECTED (blue) UNTIL YOU'RE SURE - so you can delete your added chord all at once. Else you'd have to delete each individeual added note... Even safer, copy your blocks in Song Editor further over so you can always just delete it entirely if you mess it up.

Play your melody on a loop, and change the notes (drag them up/down/around) you don't like while listening to it. I'm often surprised what "works" that I wasn't expecting.

Try to copy someone else's music that you like. Just what you like about it, not note-for-note. See what happens. Even if what you end up with sounds like an obvious cover, so what?

And lastly, something I read but haven't tried yet, just write your melody all in middle-C, then commence dragging the notes up/down until you like it.

Making a melody takes me a while - I'm not musician enough to know ahead of time what will and won't work. I often get sick of listening to it looping while I'm working on it. Which is a good excuse to stop, save, and do something else for awhile.

I never thought I could write an original piece of music... Working on my fifth song now. :) I call it "The Fifth One". :) And *I* really like all of them. A lot. Well, the First One isn't ENTIRELY original... but it's pretty different from the real original ("If I had a Heart" - Fever Ray).

Re: Frustrated

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2019 3:49 am
by Barretoproducer
Failte200 wrote:
Tue Jun 18, 2019 2:04 am
Try it with a different instrument. You can just pick an synth or sample and drop it on top of the current one in Song Editor.

Try speeding up/slowing down the tempo. Hover over the tempo indicator and use your mouse wheel. I'm finding that 160 seems to work for me most of the time. Kind of depends you. Like everything Music-y, it's all about what YOU like.

Add percussion. Even if it's just BOOM-crash-BOOM-crash. Makes an amazing difference. Use the BB editor OR NOT. I'm a NOT person, myself, but that's just me. There are songs in the Sharing Section that are made ENTIRELY in the BB editor. And there are songs that don't use it at all.

Try using some chords. Several ways to do that: if you're using a synth, one of the standard "effects" is to play each note as a chord. Experiment with what sounds best to you. Also, in the Piano Roll, you can just "turn on" your choice of chord. Place a note and it places a chord instead. Or do what I do, use ctrl-c to copy everything in the Piano Roll, then shift-drag a note up or down (while it's playing) until you like it. Hint: LEAVE ALL THE NOTES SELECTED (blue) UNTIL YOU'RE SURE - so you can delete your added chord all at once. Else you'd have to delete each individeual added note... Even safer, copy your blocks in Song Editor further over so you can always just delete it entirely if you mess it up.

Play your melody on a loop, and change the notes (drag them up/down/around) you don't like while listening to it. I'm often surprised what "works" that I wasn't expecting.

Try to copy someone else's music that you like. Just what you like about it, not note-for-note. See what happens. Even if what you end up with sounds like an obvious cover, so what?

And lastly, something I read but haven't tried yet, just write your melody all in middle-C, then commence dragging the notes up/down until you like it.

Making a melody takes me a while - I'm not musician enough to know ahead of time what will and won't work. I often get sick of listening to it looping while I'm working on it. Which is a good excuse to stop, save, and do something else for awhile.

I never thought I could write an original piece of music... Working on my fifth song now. :) I call it "The Fifth One". :) And *I* really like all of them. A lot. Well, the First One isn't ENTIRELY original... but it's pretty different from the real original ("If I had a Heart" - Fever Ray).
Thank you very much man !

Re: Frustrated

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2019 11:20 am
by musikbear
Barretoproducer wrote:
Tue Jun 18, 2019 3:49 am
..
Adding to all the fine tips you got there, is to listen to a lot of the songs like what you like to make.
Understand the song-structure!
Count the bars in each typical structure-part
Understand how the bass plays over the beats!
Count numbers of notes in sole instruments and emulate structure of bass and lead in lmms

Structure is very important!

Re: Frustrated

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2019 11:59 am
by Rndm Dud
Adding to all the previous ideas, I recomend you get yourself a cheap 25 key midi keyboard. You can get ones with a few assignable controllers and knobs for under 70€. It really helps when composing because you can try ideas out FAST. Also you can record with it your melodies or chord progressions and play with effects/eq parameters on the fly.

You don't need it, but it helps a bunch.

Another thing you could do with synths is play arround with the arpegiator, You can come up with sick lead lines by accident using the arpegiator.

Don't give up, you'll get the hang of it eventually. Happy composing! :)

Re: Frustrated

Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 6:55 am
by kond1beats
Barretoproducer wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 11:56 pm
I'm very frustrated, I can not make good music, it sounds horrible and boring, the melody is horrible even though everything is on the scale, I do not know what to do, does anyone have any tips or any trick? :(
Out of curiosity how long have you been making music? In many cases so long as you keep consistently making music, listening to other people's work, READING A LOT on production and mixing techniques, etc you will improve.

Re: Frustrated

Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2019 1:02 am
by Barretoproducer
kond1beats wrote:
Mon Jun 24, 2019 6:55 am
Barretoproducer wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 11:56 pm
I'm very frustrated, I can not make good music, it sounds horrible and boring, the melody is horrible even though everything is on the scale, I do not know what to do, does anyone have any tips or any trick? :(
Out of curiosity how long have you been making music? In many cases so long as you keep consistently making music, listening to other people's work, READING A LOT on production and mixing techniques, etc you will improve.
I've been trying to make a good song for 8 years! I know only the basics of theory but my songs still sound annoying

Re: Frustrated

Posted: Sun Jul 07, 2019 11:56 am
by musikbear
Barretoproducer wrote:
Sun Jul 07, 2019 1:02 am
I've been trying to make a good song for 8 years! I know only the basics of theory but my songs still sound annoying
Now we need to listen to something, so any uploads on any channel?

Re: Frustrated

Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2019 9:35 pm
by Failte200
I don't understand how you can compose a song that you don't like...

'S like saying "I believe that my opinion is wrong." No one says that. Ever. Unless they've just changed it, i.e., "I believe now that my PREVIOUS opinion WAS wrong, but now it's right."

Re: Frustrated

Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2019 1:35 am
by Barretoproducer
I posted here: https://soundcloud.com/user-279548802/boring , see how annoying it sounds