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The Makeshift Musician: Gain the Confidence to Compose Music

By makeshiftmusician 325 days ago from http://makeshiftmusician.blogspot.com

This is a blog I wrote about building up the nerve to write music. I know many musicians and non-musicians who would like to compose music but won't because they think they can't. I still don't know much about music theory and I've made about 50 songs of my own. There isn't any secret knowledge required to make your own music; all you ha

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Tags: musician composing music


Originality in Music: A Brief Observation

By makeshiftmusician 303 days ago from http://makeshiftmusician.blogspot.com

It's easy to say that there is nothing original left in the music world. But just with a couple of simple observations, one can see the infinite potential that lies in songwriting. Things like arranging two different melodies together, writing different lyrics to similar melodies, or simply modifying a single note can add a wo

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Tags: music originality musician songwriting composing


Don't Find Inspiration: Create It.

By makeshiftmusician 313 days ago from http://makeshiftmusician.blogspot.com

Though this article is written primarily for musicians, the lessons can apply to anyone looking for more creative inspiration. There's a myth that says you can't turn on creativity like a faucet, but anyone who says that has no idea about human potential. There are ways you can develop your own creativity so that inspiration

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Tags: creativity inspiration composing music musician self improvement


Postmortem - What I Learned From Producing a Game Soundtrack

By makeshiftmusician 268 days ago from http://makeshiftmusician.blogspot.com

I recently completed my first computer game soundtrack, and I learned a lot from the experience of writing 40 minutes of music in a relatively short time. I learned a lot about chord progressions, MIDI, organization and songwriting in general. There are many lessons to learn from writing a soundtrack that can apply to all aspec

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Tags: music games soundtrack composing


Efficiency: The Key to Writing Better

By makeshiftmusician 298 days ago from http://makeshiftmusician.blogspot.com

In your music writing or creative work, there are probably many little routine things that you do all the time that happen to be slow and inefficient. Often you won't bother to fix these things because it doesn't seem worth it. Well, seriously, by eliminating annoyances you may be opening up more energy than you think for you

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Tags: efficiency music songwriting musician composing technique


Daily Songwriting Exercise

By makeshiftmusician 166 days ago from http://makeshiftmusician.blogspot.com

Instead of worrying about making a polished song whenever you write music, why not simply work on whatever comes to your mind instead? This article describes the benefit of simply writing music every day as a creative exercise. If you simply don't care about what you are writing, you can write all sorts of new stuff and become

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Tags: composing songwriting music


Forget Genres!

By makeshiftmusician 285 days ago from http://makeshiftmusician.blogspot.com

If you're a composer, it is likely that you think a lot about the expectations of the genre you're writing for. Stop that! If you stop trying to fit your music into a genre, you can easily open up all new worlds of musical possibility. Any truly great artist will do some branching into multiple genres. You can even move throu

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Tags: composing genre songwriting music


Start to Finish: The Process of Making a Song

By makeshiftmusician 264 days ago from http://makeshiftmusician.blogspot.com

I write music somewhat differently than most. I've been doing it now for 8 years, so I have the process down to a somewhat well established routine. This article first covers the composing; coming up with melodies, practicing them, recording them, and implementing them with chords. It then deals with the post-production of tw

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Tags: composing songwriting producing


Jumpstart New Song Ideas

By makeshiftmusician 256 days ago from http://makeshiftmusician.blogspot.com

I often have a hard time coming up with ideas for new songs. I'll mess around with the same chords and rhythms too much and everything will start sounding the same. I've been trying to come up with a list of things to do to keep things fresh. Everything I've come up with so far mainly has to do with forcing yourself to see n

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Tags: songwriting composing