Forum Closed
The forum is now to new posts. All the historical content is still available to browse.
if you are looking for musicians to play with, please view the Bands Seeking Musicians list, or use the Musicians Directory
You can use our pages on social media to connect:
Songwriters
| Message Board > Music Chitchat - Heavy > Songwriters |
| Mac User Info... | Do you consider yourself one? and if so,of what ilk? - Sat, 30 Aug 2003 9:20pm | ||
| serious booking guy User Info... | Why do you care. really? - Sat, 30 Aug 2003 10:09pm | ||
| Mac User Info... | Don't be so suspicious! I thought this might've turned inta an interesting discussion.Oh well.. - Mon, 1 Sep 2003 1:44pm | ||
| Gray User Info... | What do you mean by ilk? - Tue, 2 Sep 2003 5:51am | ||
| Raoul User Info... | I think what MAC may be getting at is.... There are different degrees of "writer" in each musician. Some are true song writers in the middle there is the player who contributes a fair amount to the process(gets credit and all that) while on the other end of the spectrum you have a player who contributes little to the writing process but somehow backs up the writer. I don't consider myself a songwriter, I think of mysef as a contributer though. ilk, ilk, ilk.............................. - Tue, 2 Sep 2003 4:30pm | ||
| Gray User Info... | hmm well I guess I should consider myself a song writer. I've been writing the songs I play for about 10 years now. Granted my writing has improved as I have learned to actully play my instraments instead of simply bang on them and scream about how unfiar life is. However I think there is something lost in the passion of early "i can't play but I'm going to anyway" punk rock. My biggest challeng right now is drums. Writting drum beats tends to be a bit tricky. - Wed, 3 Sep 2003 3:12am | ||
| KnifeGhost User Info... | Gray, do you have anything recorded and available for sale? Do you have a band? I'd be interested, knowing your influences...... I was thinking about this the other day, and I think I'm more of a composer than a songwriter...... I'm looking (seriously) at buying a 4-track.... When I rented a 4-track from L&M last winter, I produced some cool stuff.... But I have to be able to lay down some drums and bass to play over...... I've never ever written a song by sitting down with an acoustic guitar and strumming chords.... I don't think that's in me.... Yet...... I, like Raoul, am a contributor.... In the same band..... I think of myself as a Simon Gallup to Jake's Robert Smith..... Not to expose The Poppies' influences too nakedly, but there you are...... - Wed, 3 Sep 2003 3:53am | ||
| Mac User Info... | I was thinking mainly in terms of the history of "your Songwriting" ( whatever that might be )You know,who if anyone do you study? what you think constitutes "a song"? etc.. I remeber messing around with cut-ups as a kid.I enjoyed it but I never felt that I had created something worthy,like a "song",as how "I" percieved it,you know, structured properly. I still aspire to it.The more viewpoints the better.I appreciate the ones already here. Mac. - Wed, 3 Sep 2003 6:55pm | ||
| dicksplint User Info... | A song contributor is a song writer. Contributions create a song. A song writer's influences contribute to the creation of his song. No song writer can ever take full credit for writing his "own" song. There is really no such thing; unless you have grown up in complete isolation and have never heard a melody. - Wed, 3 Sep 2003 7:05pm | ||
| Mac User Info... | Dicksplint brings up an interesting point regarding "Authorship" I think it's one thing for a Band to jam and a song result and another when somebody adds something distinctive (which may make the song) to an already existing composition.I would think this would fall into the "Arrangement department" and be accordingly recognised. - Wed, 3 Sep 2003 7:12pm | ||
| Gray User Info... | Kinfe, yes I do have stuff recored and for sale and someday I'll even have stickers and T-shirts, for now you can check out my website: http://www.angelfire.com/rock2/shades/ I recently uploaded a new song, in fact it's the only song availbe on the web page right now. It was recorded with a crappy multi track recording progam that in many ways is better than the 4-track I have. Fo one I can record stero outputs, wich is nice cuse both my keyboard and guitar FX rack have stero out put, hell even my stupid drum machines do. umm my Influences as a song writer.. I like so much it's really hard to say, if you asked my lyricly I'd say Don Henly, David Bowie, Edward Kaspel, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus... I could go on and on, sound wise it varies from instrament to instrament - Thu, 4 Sep 2003 4:03am | ||
| Gman User Info... | DS: ... with that logic, you might as well say that since the English alphabet only has 26 letters, you can only possibly say 26 things with it. Gman - Thu, 4 Sep 2003 2:23pm | ||
| Justin User Info... | so dicksplint... your saying that all music is the same? and only contributions from our influences create our music... i can see where your coming from, but what if your just a solo artist like myself(i play in bands too) i would like to think that my songs come from my influences but are created from my style/imagination/diversity... maybe i'm looking at it from the wrong perspective. Meh, we all still have fun right? - Thu, 4 Sep 2003 2:40pm | ||
| ticklefish User Info... | When I write a song, as a solo performer, it is usually guitar and vox, sometimes piano and vox. I record that. Then in the arrangement phase I move bits around, see if the intro works, maybe cut a chorus, move a verse, extend or shorten a section. Then I start overdubbing, more guitars, bass, keys (if necessary), drum programming, and that gets into a sometimes spiralling nightmare, each layer reveals a weakness in a preceding layer, which then has to be redone... I tend to see it as the initial "scratch" track of the solo vox/1 instrument as the pencil sketch, and then all the arrangement/overdubbing is the songwriting part where either the song falls to shit and I decide it is weak, or it stands up and is a keeper. Sometimes I go back into the archives and cut a verse from 1 weak song and stick it with a chorus from another weak song, and then the two together make up an even weaker song, or a really good one. As far as songwriters go, I am most influenced by Neil Finn, Badly Drawn Boy, Daniel Lanois, a tad of Radiohead, and of course all those hundreds of others who I have listened to and planted seeds in my subconscious. - Thu, 4 Sep 2003 4:00pm | ||
| dick splint User Info... | No, I wouldn't say that the you can only say twenty six things with the alphabet. However, I would say it is important to remember that, had you not first been given the gift of Latin and subsequently the twenty six letters in the english alphabet, you would not be able to say anything (in English) at all. Your music, whether you choose to admit it or not, is derived from your musical influences. Therefore, could you name your musical influences as contributors? Of course. As writers? That might be a stretch. You are a solo act and you sit in your bedroom and write a song. Then, you bring someone in to do a solo, or some arranging, mastering - whatever. The song has changed and it has changed because other people who have different influences have added to it or subtracted from it. They have changed "your" song. The audience can change your song. For that matter, anything can change "your song" once you throw it out there. Play it on a different guitar...the guitar re-writes the song. Play it at the beach...the openess and mood re-writes the song. "Your song" can be re-written a thousand times without you touching a pen or changing a chord. How can you possibly call that a "contribution"? The only true way to be the sole writer/author of a song is to write it and then never play it again. To keep it from taking on a life of it's own. But that would keep songs from being meaningful. - Thu, 4 Sep 2003 7:56pm | ||
| Gman User Info... | I would make a distinction between the writer being the originator of the song and the performer interpreting the song. So I can indeed write a song and claim that it is solely mine. How you might play it does not change the fact that I wrote the song. In fact, I would include, in the definition of 'song' the eventuality of its changing sound. Gman - Fri, 5 Sep 2003 1:58pm | ||
| Justin User Info... | so what i gather is that any of my songs that i have written aren't my songs? and if i were to have my songs to be only my songs they can never be heard ever? so then if this is true, how can there be music if any "original" material isn't really original and the "real" original stuff is never heard, then what are we to do? also, as a solo artist, what if your a one man band and studio engineer/producer? (i'm just trying to be a smart ass now... no response nec. to the last comment) - Fri, 5 Sep 2003 2:18pm | ||
| Dick Splint User Info... | No, you are right. How I might play it does not change the fact that you gave birth to the song. But as soon as I play it, it changes. You write it on Monday and play it again on Tuesday and I guarantee you that the song will have changed. I hear a recording of your song on a a walkman and it sounds great. Then I put it through some Marantz speakers and it sounds totally different. Your song is always subject to change; change that may be within your control, or not. Mechanical, human, environmental - whatever. You own the copyright, but your song will take on it's own life. It's life is governed by the immediacy of the present moment and all of the energy around it in that moment. Can you anticipate the future when you write your songs? No. You can take credit for initiating a great song, but you cannot take credit for it's evolution - for every nuance that is created and dropped throughout it's life. In my mind that is more than a contribution. I just find it strange that people are so possesive of their songs. Songs just aren't meant to be possesed. I write alot of songs, but I never assume that the songs cannot or will not be re-written. They will, even if nobody else but me ever plays them - it is a wonderful truth. It is what keeps me writing music. - Fri, 5 Sep 2003 9:42pm | ||
| greg User Info... | Dicksplint says: "The only true way to be the sole writer/author of a song is to write it and then never play it again." What a load of rubbish. Tell that to Mozart, Dicksplint. - Fri, 5 Sep 2003 10:34pm | ||
| dick splint User Info... | How many different world class orchestras/musicians have played Mozart. Hundreds? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? If every Orchestra is playing the piece exactly as Mozart intended, then why do Mozart entuhusiasts have favorite renditions as performed by certain orchestras? My mom is a big Classical music buff and can quite regularily pick out Conductors while listening. This is not irregular. With classical music most enthusiasts will have a favorite composer, but what they are actually falling in love with is the capability of someone else to interpret the work. The song has changed. - Fri, 5 Sep 2003 10:48pm | ||
| Mac User Info... | philosophically Dicksplint,I love what you're saying, but the "current" human race has not achieved the same level of grace as you yourself! Nah whot I's mean guv'nor? - Sat, 6 Sep 2003 12:23am | ||
| greg User Info... | I think you're discounting the role of the composer. You can have the best symphony or the best musician in the world, but if the tune sucks, then the whole thing does. Sure, the musician is important. But don't overlook the importance of the song - and the composer. - Sat, 6 Sep 2003 12:49am | ||
| Mac User Info... | Maybe everybody here who writes songs could explain what motivates them to do so. - Sun, 7 Sep 2003 1:42am | ||
| Justin User Info... | yeah i guess i can agree with that philosophy... you got somethin' goin on that - Sun, 7 Sep 2003 10:01pm | ||
|
|||
Not logged in
Log In / Register (optional)
Featured Events
Featured Historical Events
Featured Article
Newest Profiles
Pacific Arts Market
Showcases local artists & makers, hosts events & workshops
Ladysmith BC
Open / Operational
