Metal School

[Dannyalcatraz]

Technique and soul are key elements, and not every guitarist has both in enough amounts to write or play good music. You also have to be aware of genre limitations, and how far you can go beyond those boundaries and still be "acceptable."

I remember seeing an old Steely Dan video. For those who don't know, SD is one of the prototypical bands in which there is a small creative core and everyone else is hired guns. In this case, the guitarist for that particular lineup was clearly talented, but he had no feel for SD's music: his solo- which was technically brilliant- was full of the high-energy blitz of notes typical of metal shredding.

IOW, it was completely out of place in the jazz-pop fusion of Steely Dan.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Lemmy has passed.

https://www.facebook.com/OfficialMotorhead/posts/1107561019276205?fref=nf

 

[ggroy]

Technique and soul are key elements, and not every guitarist has both in enough amounts to write or play good music. You also have to be aware of genre limitations, and how far you can go beyond those boundaries and still be "acceptable."

Once after one has mastered technique, the one thing I find which is really important is writing composition. I never learned how to write properly, other than by trial and error.

The stuff I write may sound like a mindless flash of notes, but it doesn't really keep my attention in terms of likability (ie. catchiness).

I've come to the conclusion there's no easy way to learn songwriting, other than writing a lot of songs and figuring out whether it is catchy or not. I remember an old interview with Lennon/McCartney where they mentioned that they hardly used the majority of stuff they wrote. The stuff which ended up on their records, was the extremely good cherry picked stuff. (I wouldn't be surprised at all if other expert songwriters also don't use most of the stuff they write).

I haven't written enough music to know what's good and catchy. I don't know of any easy formulas.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Once after one has mastered technique, the one thing I find which is really important is writing composition. I never learned how to write properly, other than by trial and error.

The stuff I write may sound like a mindless flash of notes, but it doesn't really keep my attention in terms of likability (ie. catchiness).

I've come to the conclusion there's no easy way to learn songwriting, other than writing a lot of songs and figuring out whether it is catchy or not. I remember an old interview with Lennon/McCartney where they mentioned that they hardly used the majority of stuff they wrote. The stuff which ended up on their records, was the extremely good cherry picked stuff. (I wouldn't be surprised at all if other expert songwriters also don't use most of the stuff they write).

I haven't written enough music to know what's good and catchy. I don't know of any easy formulas.

Emulating your heroes can be useful. It has been many years since I seriously wrote music but easing back into it and my experience in the past was that emulation can help a lot when you are first starting. Also music is like other mediums, there are lots of different forms. A pop song has different structure from a thrash metal song or a sonata. Some areas of metal are quite open in that respect.

I agree that just writing and writing is the way to go. Write a bunch of stuff and put it into a shape you like. Chances are you can rework that material into something better by taking elements or rough ideas from it as you get a better sense of what works. I usually do like three variations on each song before I get where I am comfortable.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I've been playing and composing for many years- alas, not a note of it affixed in any permanent media- and i know there are only a few of the tunes I wrote have stood my own personal test of time. Only a smattering of them do I still play more than a year post creation. If they survive a year, they're probably keepers.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Rock the vote!
http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/13/asia/...b_homepage_deskrecommended_pool&iref=obinsite

 

[Herschel]

Something about Lemmy's announcement makes me ....suspicious. To me, it sounds like he may have gone the Robin Williams route, not that I don't think he has the right to do so.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Something about Lemmy's announcement makes me ....suspicious. To me, it sounds like he may have gone the Robin Williams route, not that I don't think he has the right to do so.

What is making you suspicious about it? All we know is he had cancer and died suddenly in the middle of an activity at home (which isn't uncommon for people undergoing cancer treatment and dealing with the side effects of cancer itself. It is certainly possible suicide happened. But heart attack and stroke are also common among newly diagnosed cancer patients. With aggressive cancers there is a like a 16 fold increase in suicide rates but a 15 fold increase in heart attack/stroke (all within the week of initial diagnosis, usually before treatment begins). He was so sickly leading up to this, my guess is it was likely just a heart attack.

 

[Herschel]

That's also possible. My experience with cancer/leukemia patients is it's usually not sudden in the middle of an activity but when they're too weak to keep going and their system shuts down if it's the cancer itself.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

OTOH, maybe he heard St. Peter had a beer waiting for him at the gates of heaven.