How do YOU compose your music?

[simple_impulse]

How do you "sketch" YOUR compositions?

I understand what intro, verse, chorus, middle 8 etc. mean, but the theory is quite useless when you begin to make things that should fit together...

I have found several synth sounds I like and made some progress with drums also. Now I'm trying to "glue" them together, but these are no Lego blocks; they fit quite poorly.

I feel that they should be "sketched" together, to get them to function as a whole... But how do you do that? (Btw, writing notes is useless for me, I need to really hear the sound. No symphonies in my brain...)

It's easy to fill Song-Editor with unholy mess; but somehow some people fill it effortlessly with good stuff. How?

[diiz]

I honestly think it's just something that comes with experience.

What I personally do is, I make some kind of sound that's interesting, then I start building a song based on it. I do a part with that sound, then I try to think of something that fits after that, then do that. I don't do very much planning or things in advance, I just do things, play around, find stuff that works by accident.

[theguitarplayer]

Hey,

Good question! TBH, I feel as though one fourth of the songs I make are worthy of the trash basket. I guess sometimes it works for me and sometimes it doesn't. I think the most important thing is to have a good beginning, a good idea of what I want. I can't just let notes fly onto the page, it's got to be deliberate for me otherwise i'm not satisfied.

[simple_impulse]

Somehow I feel that I sometimes find out a way to make progression from one part to another. It seems that often in popular music there is two or three instruments having a "conversation": when one is dominant, others follow, but the situation changes rapidly. But I'm not capable of mentally forming these changes. I need to find them by trying different combinations.

What I would like to do is to make short clips with some synth, render them to wav and then just play with the arrangement in Song-Editor. But often they seem to need more clips in between to make them sound right, but then the whole doesn't sound good.

Of course nobody said that this is (or even should be) easy...

[ultimaaudio]

When I compose music, I lay down everything that I want in the chorus, and then start arranging from the beginning to the final bits.

[Sti-Jay]

When I first started I too thought that I needed to find a cool bass melody, groovy lead melody and mind blowing drums and then glue them all together. It never worked out because I created them independent from each other not thinking about measures, chords or sounds. I managed to match the beat and key signature most times, but it didn't sound as good as I hoped after I was finished with the gluing.

So now I do it simple. I start with an interesting sounding (for example) lead melody, then the bass melody must fit with the lead and fill out its silences and make the song more interesting. Often I write simple long notes for the bass at first to see if they fit with the chord progression, then I make it more interesting by cutting it up in different lengths with and without silences and with other notes. I usually write 4 measures of melody and loop them X times. After a first part is finished (by that i mean two melodies are finished: lead and bass) I have the key signature in mind and compose another melody with another corresponding bass melody. This new part should after my opinion be somewhat similar to the old part of the song or else it won't sound as a part of that song (it will sound as a mix of other songs). One could introduce new instrument sounds or completely different chords however one must remember this is still the same song so it should be somewhat similar to the first part. Many times I can mix the lead melody from part 1 and bass melody from part 2 without having any troubles because these parts are made to fit with each other.

Now I have two parts. I usually start with one of them in the intro and add drums and other melodies/sounds building up towards part 2 which will work as refrain. If part 2 is very similar to part 1 I sometimes need to create a part 3 which is more different from the other parts. One will get tired of hearing almost the same melodies looped over and over. The song would could then go like this: part1 (buildup), part1 (full), part2, part3, part1, part2, part3, part1, part2, part2. In the last repetitions of part 1 and 2 I add a lot of variation and maximises with all instruments I got to keep the audience interested and make the grand finale.

Often I produce following the recipe I have just written; I have an idea in my head, which often is a melody together with bass, and works out from that. Other times I have more complex ideas (near finished parts of a song in my head) or just try to achieve a specific sound, feeling or musical genre. I tend to follow the same build up though.

[simple_impulse]

I really like playing with LMMS's very flexible Song-Editor, Beat+Bassline Editor and Piano-Roll. I'm doing short loops with same key and tempo with several ways and them just trying them together -- it's so fast that it doesn't matter that very few combinations sound good. I think I'm misusing LMMS with this "eJay-workflow" but it's fun, for beginner like me... And I'm learning a lot when I'm producing those loops.

It is going to be awesome when we get those 1.0 version improvements to Automation.

[diiz]

I think I'm misusing LMMS

Of course you aren't. There's no rules on how to use LMMS.

[diiz]

I've also recently noticed that most of my songs tend to follow a pattern. It's something like:

Intro, part1, variation on part1, lull/low-energy part, build-up, high-energy part2, variation on part2, which then builds up to a finish.

[simple_impulse]

I've also recently noticed that most of my songs tend to follow a pattern. It's something like:

Intro, part1, variation on part1, lull/low-energy part, build-up, high-energy part2, variation on part2, which then builds up to a finish.

Are there verse-chorus pairs inside those parts?

I think your structure is very good. Actually, that low-energy part adds punch to what comes next; I think it might be something I need to learn. My songs tend to be too level, too bland.