I have been reading a lot of posts lately about writing, composing, writers block etc....
It seems that these things seem to come in groups. I would like to add my two cents to round out my idea's about writing and composing.
For me writing is more elemental in nature. What i mean by this is that when i compose, i don't try to write happy, sad, angry...etc. I will look out my window during a thunderstorm and try to write "the thunderstorm" I guess its more of an emulation of an abstract idea. I try to find things in nature either grand or mundane to write about musically. It could be something as simple as seeing two leaves chasing eachother in a circle because of the wind, and it sparks a musical idea in me.
Which is not to say i havent written, happy or sad or angry etc.. but more times than not this is not where i get my ideas.
Another way that i write something sometimes is by extracting a song from within a song. This is something i was discussing with Tjchep in chat a few days ago. If a song i am listening to really speaks to me i will take my guitar and compose riffs and ideas that fit in the framework of the song i am listening to. So basically i am drawing out the idea from that song. I am not borrowing riffs, or changing them. I am basically finding what they didnt play hidden there waiting for me to discover.
This comes to the main point of this topic. Experimentation in my opinion is the easiest way, at least for me to write and compose, it doesnt matter what that experimentation entails, it could just be switching picks to get just the sound i am looking for, or changing my tone. Or it could be coming up with a unique way of playing something to get just the sound you want.
As an example one of the more recent ideas i had as i was watching car racing on TV, i picked up the guitar and was trying to mimic the downshifting on the gears as they came into a sharp corner. What i came up with was this whirring bending thing, where i would sound a note and "twitch" a bend very fast and let it fall off slowly as soon as reached the bottom of the bend i would slide and do that again. It created such a weird sound.
Maybe i will use it in a song at some time, maybe i won't but the point here is that i am constantly experimenting with sounds i can get out of the instrument. Sometimes its silly stuff like above. Sometimes though i might mix and match certain phrases along with these sound oddities to create something very unique in my opinion.
My advice to all of you would be to experiment with anything and everything you can get your hands on, you might just find that doing this kind of thing on a regular basis will trigger a writing moment, or help you get out of a writers block situation.
As far as my thunderstorm analogy above is concerned, i might just try to write about how the thunderstorm makes me feel, or i might actually get rhythmic ideas from listening to the rain hit the window. Music is all around you in various forms, be on the look out for it.
Daniel
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