I need to be more innovative with my music .. but how?

[meinhold]

Hello fellow musicians,

I've been making music and just fumbling around having fun with it for a few years now, and I feel I have a pretty good hang of it.. but I have one issue..

I feel I have troubles expressing myself .. I mean, creating music with EMOTIONS. The links in this thread (http://jordanrudess.com/forum/showthread.php?p=101468#post101468) might give you a slight idea of what I'm talking about.

When I sit down with the grand piano I express myself. When I start making beats with Reason, finding matching bass scales and layering I am not.

Does anyone get what I'm saying here .. I'm having troubles putting these thoughts down myself, so bear with me. :smile:

Thanks.

[Enigma™]

Practice. It's all about practice.

What I mean by that though, is that you've played piano for a while... You learn how to express yourself through playing.

Well, when it comes to writing music, you have to learn how to express yourself intentionally. Like... When you improvise, you play what you feel.

When you write music, you should try and tell a story. It takes practice though to express what you're feeling through your story.

Something that I've started doing (Because I SUCK at writing music) is I've started to try and make music. Just anything. Most of it sucks, but I always have the intention of trying to find something I like about it... And how it makes me feel and find out WHY I feel that way.

I'm a pretty analytical person though - some people can just feel the music and instantly know how to put it to tape/computer. I'm sadly not one of them. I have to practice making crappy sounding music until I finally come up with something that I like and I can develop into something.

I dunno - this is just how I see myself anyway, but it's something that I've learned for myself too is that I have to practice certain things.

[-=AnatomiC=-]

You can't express emotions while operating a DAW, because emotions is something you feel right now - so you have to express it real time, like on the piano.

If you want emotion, I suggest you avoid DAWs as much as possible... play an instrument instead.

Playing is an emotional process, while arranging etc is a creative process...

That's my point of view, be welcome to disagree...

[PinkFloydDudi]

Agree with both the above.

To me it sounds like you are able to express yourself on the piano because (as Anatomic said), you can do it on an instrument you feel comfortable with at the time you want to!

A suggestion? Once you write a part on the piano, why not have someone who is more familiar with the other instruments try to write their own parts?

If you really are a piano player at heart, you will always think as one, instead of thinking like a bass player...you would try to do what your "left hand" would do on the piano rather than coming up with an expressive bass line that an actual bass player would.

Drums, multiply it by 10 because DAWs suck for expression with drums without investing a lot of time or having a lot of knowledge. And even with all that, drums are definitely not real-time and not "real feel" like if someone was actually playing a kit.

So yeah, suggestion - get some input from people who are more experienced with those instruments???

[whitelightening]

Improvisation is a great way to find the emotional stuff, but before you do it don't forget to hit the record button!!! You might make mistakes or do things in a way you wished you hadn't, but I'll bet you can find a ton of material that you can use in many ways. You might even hear something the second time through that you initially thought was crap, but on second listen you find you can slightly alter it to get what you want out of it. THEN go back and start the creative process in your DAW.

Just a few thoughts from my experience.

[Mathieu Fiset]

Playing is an emotional process, while arranging etc is a creative process...



Totally agree

One thing I can say : Improvisation is a really powerfull way of composing. Improvise untill you naturaly repeat an interesting idea, then the more you repeat and build something with this improvised idea, the more it eventually become a structured composition.

For some other musicians, the idea come first in their head and then they try to play that idea on an instrument, but for me it's by playing randomly first and then an idea can come. There's no "good" or "bad" way of composing by the way, you might find your own way and it would be as good, if not better !

Oh and do you know about the different scales and modes ? Sometime when I feel bored of the traditional minor/major scales I just mess arround modes...my favorites : Phrygian Dominant and lydian. To me it always sound great in those scales !

[RAN7ARAVE]

LEARN EVERY MODE! IN EVERY KEY!

:tongue:

but seriousely it helps HAHA