Where do you get your inspirations? How do you write your songs? How important are things like originality and skill? Maybe I shouldn't ask that question. Oh well, just curious. I'm not a songwriter, but I wish I was. Maybe someday.

hey i have been writing songs for the band im in for a while now i get my insperation form being angry some times just saying stuff that makes no sense

For sure, good thievery lends to great writing! ~T Rockin Rod Strychnine said:

I'm trying to get back into writing cuz I haven't done it in quite a while (I finally have some new bits I'm finally piecing together) and I can thank Erik for that. What I do is listen to Back from the Grave and then write my own lyrics. Well, not realy, but I do tend to write songs like the way Poison Ivy, Billy Childish, Paula Pierce and Rudi Protrudi do (and I was doing it like that before I even knew who they were. I thought swiping chords and riffs was MY idea. Was I ever wrong.

Keepa Rockin' Rod! Stick the best bits and pieces together, then demo them up and see what sounds good. Some stuff may work and some stuff may not. I have so many scraps of songs on bits of paper lying around. Some are gems and some are shit. I don't know what is what until I actually record it. I had a few demo versions of things make it on my CDs because I liked them better than the finished band versions. You have all the TOOLs for good songs, use them as best you can and I think you will do fine. Everyone else out there, some songs fall out of the sky, and others take time to get right. I honestly don't know if there are any hard and fast rules for this stuff. Good Luck! Rockin Rod Strychnine said:

I'm trying to get back into writing cuz I haven't done it in quite a while (I finally have some new bits I'm finally piecing together) and I can thank Erik for that. What I do is listen to Back from the Grave and then write my own lyrics. Well, not realy, but I do tend to write songs like the way Poison Ivy, Billy Childish, Paula Pierce and Rudi Protrudi do (and I was doing it like that before I even knew who they were. I thought swiping chords and riffs was MY idea. Was I ever wrong.

I'm trying to get back into writing cuz I haven't done it in quite a while (I finally have some new bits I'm finally piecing together) and I can thank Erik for that. What I do is listen to Back from the Grave and then write my own lyrics. Well, not realy, but I do tend to write songs like the way Poison Ivy, Billy Childish, Paula Pierce and Rudi Protrudi do (and I was doing it like that before I even knew who they were. I thought swiping chords and riffs was MY idea. Was I ever wrong.

I'm working on song writing, and never have finished something I'd share with somebody, but I've found Garage Rock to be a musical godsend. I used to listen to a lot of Bob Dylan and such, and always was really intimidated by the number of ideas they crammed into a song-- both as lyrical ingredients and structural ideas. The Stooges and Standells kinda made me say, "oh yeah, Rock n' Roll can be kinda dumb."
I usually start off with a line or two that seems kinda clever (insults have been pretty fertile). Then I just sing a melody that sort of matches.
I heard an interview on NPR with singer/songwriter Andrew Bird, he said he just sings melodies and the works lyrics into his nonsense vocals. It kinda works.

haha...I've done that...dreamed a whole song. Woke up thinking its f*ing great then I sat down and played it and it was just a generic country tune with rambling lyrics and it kinda sucked...sounded way better in my sleep! Hidden_Punk said:

umm... sometimes i have really crazy dreams and i write about them... actually one time i woke up and the whole song was already in my head words melody and the guitar part.... it was kinda scary... too bad it was about medieval dragons and stuff hahahahahahaha

but yeh originality is really important with me, im trying to stop listen to so much Nirvana at the moment actually... i find myself writing stuff that would sound good for cobain not me... i think wats best is to write stuff when ur not listening to anything overwhelmingly good

OK I was off by year on the first performance of Igor Stravinski's "Rite of Spring" it was 1913 instead of 1914 (so my memory ain't as good as it used to be!) Here is a quote I found on-line about the opening night; "Backstage at the premiere, Nijinsky shouted at the dancers while Diaghilev tried to suppress a possible riot by flashing the house lights. Stravinsky himself fumed at the audience's response to his music. If nothing else, the ballet's premiere managed to instill in the audience the true spirit of the music. As Thomas Kelly states, "The pagans on-stage made pagans of the audience." Despite its inauspicious debut, Stravinsky's score for “The Rite of Spring” today stands as a magnificent musical masterpiece of the twentieth century." and from the same (yeah I know) NPR site; http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88490677 and here is the Wikipedia version; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring Like Jazz and later Rock 'n' Roll, folks just weren't ready for stuff like this and they just freaked out about it. It may be tame by our viewpoint, but it was shocking and scandalous at the time. The horror of WWI made all that stuff kinda pase. As far as writing influences go, try to find stuff you like within the stuff you like and incorporate those things you like into what you are already writing. It takes some time, but the end result can be really cool. You won't know until you try.

"Even chaos has some (anti-)order to it" - that's genius! You know your stuff man.

I throw on a Rites of Spring LP every now and then. I wish I knew what made them riot over it?

I like a lot of stuff, but sometimes I wish I could just narrow it down to a few things. I might be able to make something within a set style. I'm not pretentious enough to think I can take bits of everything and make something great. Maybe if I was pretentious I could actually do it? Haha who knows.
What do you think about the difference between being inspired by the huge amount of past music and just being weighted down by it all?

Do listen to Free/Out Jazz or Shronk? How about John Cage's music? Einsturtzen de Nuebatten or The Residents? How about those Butthole Surfers too. All unconventional stuff by schooled musicians who learned the rules then broke them. Even the great Igor Stravinsky caused a riot in Paris with his "Rites of Spring" when he first performed it in 1914.

Hell, You are right though, if you wanna play Electric Kazoo through a wah-wah and warble like Yoko Ono, that is perfectly all right too. Even chaos has some (anti-)order to it. If you like what you do then cool. Hopefully others will clue into it too. (wink)

I only offered what a simple song structure looks like in a rudamentary way boiled down to easily posted info. But hey, as they say, "Ignorance is Bliss!"

Vive l'Anarchie!

Give society the finger and write what you wanna write. This is music man, there are no rules no preconseptions and no set pieces. You want to put ten choruses and one verse then do it.
To start, you've got to love what ya doing, others will listen. My advise is take no advise and do your own thing. If your after writing fame, then go get an English degree!
- from your friendly short fiesty garage freak -

Heres the MP3 for ode' to Leroy

Here's a tune "Ode' to Leory" it's about our dog leroy when he was a puppy. We were messing around one night kinda laughing about how crazy he was when he was a puppy, one lyric went out then another and then the end result was this song

Check out a band called M.O.T.O. on myspace. Paul also has an extensive collection of his music on garageband. Everytime I hear (Masters of the obvious) I want to write!

My new stuff that I'm recording is catcher then anything I've ever written and the new stuff is a bit more polished then Earl Clifton and The Pin-Ups basic stuff. I read somewhere on the blog someone was telling you to just write down whatever comes to mind no matter how stupid it might seem and he is right on the money with that advice. I try to get a hook more so now then I ever did. Most of my older stuff is too slow and I want to play alittle faster tempo like M.O.T.O. or the ramones etc. I've also been working on the groove thing too. My songs (to me) don't have enough groove, and I think if the tempo is a little faster my new songs will be more exciting

I don't think skill is all to important as people may think. Just a good idea to know a little about song struture and how the dynamics in a song should relatively go

The greatist advice I can give to you, is to try and make your songs connect with people. If people feel a connection to your tune or your character in the song, you will have the keys to their heart. It's almost how movies are written

I got a hell of a lot of inspiration from my ex-girlfriend. Hate and anger, those are the best fuels for a great punk song. Of course, the opposite is true, but for me, I vent all the shit trough the band. Check us out www.myspace.com/3dkids

I think a lot of it depends on what kind of music you like and what kind of music you want to play.

I like things VERY simple: I look for a 1 chord, then a 4 chord then a 5 chord and I play that. I generally like to have it go verse chorus verse chorus solo (which is just played over another verse and chorus) and then a final verse chorus.

It's not original at all, but I find that by using this structure you can really let you personality shine through in the way you actually play and sing your songs.

I think it's really easy to write lyrics about women, so I usually start with that then take what I like from the lyrics and alter the rest a bit so it isn't really about a woman anymore. I think it's okay to have about 98% of your songs be about love intrests and broken hearts and all that, but it's good to have one or two songs that aren't.

usually, i just don't think, i must be in a good mood or in veery bad mood.. then it works, i catch the guitar began to play nothing, and in 10 minutes or so i got a song. other times i'm totally sick over a band or song and i really want to do something like that, but still.. i do the same, i always do the same because i don't know nothing about composing techniques or play lots of covers.. so if i rip off, it's without bad intentions, i hate to play songs of others, i like to write songs, not to play other songs.
my principal problem is that i must be excited with the music i'm listening at the time, music that makes me want to do something as good as that..if not, bad problem.. i don't care a lot, always the same, and write bad songs that i will throw to the garbage.
play in your own way.. i like to use chords from everywhere, they help me lot better to write songs since i use an acoustic guitar (i play in my band bass and sing, but compose near everything on acoustic guitar)

As long as you can remember the structure and the words and be able teach them to other folks to play the way you want it sound, then you are doing what most Musicians do. There are no hard and fast rules.
Pretty simple when you think about it.
Keepa Rockin'!

That's interesting. I'm gonna try it out.

How about D-D-D-D-A-B-D? Sound good?

Songwriting (Algebra) 101 (I tried to post this yesterday, but the site was "undergoing maintenance")

Your Structural Key:

A=verse
B=chourus
C=bridge
D=other fucked up shit you wanna put in to your song!

Mosta your basic music is Verse-Chourus-Verse stuff so that is

A-B-A-B

Then you have a bit more advanced structure when you want to link the first half of the song with the second that is called a Bridge, so that goes;

A-B-A-B-C-A-B

Then when you really wanna get advanced you can have a D section or Coda at the end (if you wanna fuck your head all up remembering all that structure)

A-B-A-B-C-A-B-D

You can use any permutation of this equasion and it should work as long as you keep your sections a uniform length (so be sure you have mastered counting the length of measures first!) It all becomes pretty formulaic after that.

Good Luck!

Wow that's quite a story. I'd be pretty pissed if I sat on a needle. I think that's some good advice about the lyric book. I remember hearing or reading somewhere that you should write and then put the song in a jar for a few weeks or however long. That way you can evaluate what you've written with a fresh perspective. Of course I have no idea if that's really the way to go cause I haven't tried it. :)

Hey Jamie,

My first song I made was kinda fucked up. You could say I was like really into The Stooges at the time so the lyrics were very simple. But the inspiration was from by ex band mate who sadly became a junkie. He happand to come by my work at one of those retail stores, you know K-Fart, to steal some shit to hock for junk. The thing is he somehow he got into my car to hide all his needles under my seat cover and unknown to me when I hop in to go to lunch i get fuckin pricked all over my ass with like 3 spikes! So I'm thinking great I got fuckin HIV now, fuck!!!...I ended up tossing his shit out and looking for him but couldnt find him. I was so pissed I ended up a this parents all worried and shit I got freakin aids and they tell me he does like to share needles and that hes been tested an all that. So I wrote a very depressing song about my mortality and how I'm gonna end his. The thing is...the song was very theraputic because I actually would never want to hurt the guy, he was my bandmate who I loved very much and I was very sad to see him and all my other bandmates lives disintergrate from the begining from their addiction. Ray where ever you are..stay up! Back to subject...I keep a lyric book and just keep writing. A lot of the shit I write pretty much sucks but every once in a while I suprise myself. It also helps because if you keep a lyric book there are certain phrases that can be interchangable with other songs you may develope in the future. Cut and paste foo!!

I like to keep a guitar every where. Or at least have one around when i watch t.v. or cook, or shit or, whatever. The more you fuck around the more likely you are to come up with new sounds.
~T

Agreed, getting things down first and sorting it all out later is definately best. Sometime you can get some good bits and pieces that connect up with other bits and pieces. Try not to over connect parts though.

Good stuff will last, and crap will be well... Crap! (you just have to know good Crap from the forgetable stuff)

Good Luck!

Yep, thats rythym & booze, he, he, : )