Matt Makes Music (woohoo)

Musical Influence

mattmakesmusic — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 04:48:26 +0000

Today I was reading an email from the Songwriting Tips newsletter. It was about how musicians who have some of formal training might get stuck in a this mindset that a song HAS to have a certain form or be a specific way. However, Shamir (the author) also goes on to say that non-musicians who write music will not be limited in this way, and I disagree..to an extent at least.

I think anyone who listens to music at all or really anyone who isn’t deaf has been musically influenced. Rhythm, harmonies, scales must all be naturally embedded in people from their environment. Even people with absolutely no musical training can ‘feel’ that there is something weird about non-western scales, or African rhythms, etc. I actually think that people who learn about different musical systems and know that they are biased for certain ones will be more able to consciously try to get around their predispositions.

Anyway, here’s Elegie played by Rachmaninov himself. What I’m listening to at the moment. =)

Writing Song Lyrics

mattmakesmusic — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 03:07:21 +0000

The next few issues of the newsletter have all been about lyrics and gave a lot of ideas to write about if you’re having writer’s block and also how to connect with people. I sort of just skimmed them through since my focus is on the music but if you write lyrics you might want to sign up for the newsletter and check it out.

He did give one really cool tool though; RhymeZone is a rhyming dictionary and thesaurus. It’s pretty neat and probably has a ton of uses.

Songwriting Tips Online

mattmakesmusic — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 22:24:28 +0000

I recently signed up for this songwriting newsletter. So far it’s been pretty basic. The first email talked about inspiration and how you can get a “hook” from very standard, unsignificant events, like being late for work. The next one was about song-structure, like the different forms songs can take such has ABAB(verse-chorus-verse-chorus). This is pretty basic stuff but I think it should get more complex in future newsletters.

Yeah, hopefully it’ll show some crazy tricks or something; I have a few half-written songs that need some jumpstarting!

First Post! What I Use To Write Songs

mattmakesmusic — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 07:34:35 +0000

For composing music I’ve been using mostly Make Music’s Finale. Finale is mainly notation software (for writing and printing sheet music, like for orchestra) but I use it cause it has really awesome GPO (Garritan Personal Orchestra) soundsets. You can hear some examples at their site. The orchestra sounds really are amazing.

Writing with MIDI software can be quite tedious and tiring though, you have to edit all the MIDI data and even then it still doesn’t sound realistic enough. I also write a bit with a real guitar, but I haven’t experimented with any recording.. and digital guitars sound TERRIBLE unless you’re doing like Hip Hop or R&B or something.

Speaking of hip hop and r&b, I got Fruity Loops a couple weeks ago to start learning how to make more modern electronic music (since this type of music sounds good when it’s not “realistic”). Well actually, the primary reason was for the percussion sets and samples.. Finale has great orchestra sounds but absolutely terrible drum kits; in fact, all it has are the basic midi ones. With Fruity Loops you can import wav files made by Finale and finish the percussion and add finishing touches(such has reverb and lots of effects).

Yeah, those are the two programs I use!