Surfguitarist

hi i am looking into starting a band with some buddies, to do some gigs around town. First off, what songs would be some good ones to do? so far i have come up with ones such as kryptonite, and maybe some switchfoot ones. are there any you recommend also? another thing is songwriting. i have tried to create chord progressions/solos but they never end up working......... any tips?

Danjo's Guitar

I feel like songwriting is something that just happens, or it doesn't happen. There are things you can do to get better, but if you can't do it all, you just can't. (Thats my opinion though, you're free to prove me wrong.) As for songs, you should probably just ask your band mates, their input is a lot more important on this than any of ours. Just try learning anything you want to play, and if its too hard, change to something else, or don't.

Go not to the elves for counsel, for their answer is both no and yes.

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Surfguitarist

i have asked them, i just need more ideas

Hail

rule 1 of a band: it's either covers or originals. no middle ground until you're selling out shows - and even then it's pretty much a bad call 99% of the time.

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Danjo's Guitar

Thats not true. My old band played Crazy Train, but all our other songs were originals. People liked us. We never really managed to get any other covers together. They just have to work together.

Theres probably a million threads on this, just search up "recommend a song" or something.

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If you are reading this you might need to chill out.

91RG350

If you arent sure about songwriting then I would suggest learning covers to play first...it will teach you songwriting techniques....

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Hail

even one is gonna be pushing it - you only have 20-30 minutes a lot of the time early on to represent your sound, and wasting one of those songs on a cover is a big mistake most of the time unless you really change up the song in a way that makes it a new experience for the listener.

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MaggaraMarine

Metallica started playing covers only (that were pretty similar to the originals) and look at where they are now. I actually think one cover in your set could be a good thing: It might be the only song the audience knows. But yeah, if you have enough original songs, I would rather only play them. But as I said, Metallica did many covers in their early days (though they weren't that well-known songs and I don't think they even told they were covers).

If you start a band, first I would play some covers to get acquainted with the bandmates' playing styles. And when you don't have enough own stuff to play, playing some covers is always fun. But I wouldn't maybe gig if I wanted to be in an original band and didn't have enough songs for a gig. First write some songs and learn to play as a band, then gig.

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My motto: Play what the song needs you to play!

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HotspurJr

A lot of bands cut their teeth on covers while figuring out their sound, but the reality is that you're not ready to play gigs as an originals band until you have originals.

Songwriting tips? Egads - I mean, that's a giant mountain, and I had reducing it to "tips," but I will say this:

Good songwriting comes from inside. You don't hunt around on your fretboard until you hear something you like, and you don't grab from a bag of theoretical concepts at random. Rather, you train your ear and your mind until you can think in music. You decide what you want to hear first, and THEN you play it.

To do you this you MUST have a good ear. If you can not hear a concept in practical application, that means your brain doesn't know how to process it and you can't compose in it. Whether it's a simple concept or a complex on, it doesn't matter. Develop your ear - through transcribing, the functional ear trainer, singing scales, etc. You have to do it.

Lastly, melody matters. While different genres emphasize different things, I've found that a lot of aspiring songwriters seem to ignore melody. In most genres, it's the most important part of the song. You have use craft to hammer out a chord progression to fill a melody (it's not that hard) but finding melodies, well, that's an art. I've never read anything by anyone that suggests anything other than inspiration and magic for where good melodies come from. Even very good, famous songwriters often admit they don't really know.

The best book on songwriting I've read is Dominic Pedler's "Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles." It's brilliant. It is also dense, and is a lot of work to get through. You will get more out of it if your ear is good enough so that you can really hear the things he's talking about. It's fairly expensive but easily worth it - it has far more content that cheaper books I've seen.