How You Do Dat? How To Start a New Song. Not even 101!

The other day while I was in the car with one of my roommates, I was letting them listen to one of my new tracks that's not out yet. They were all like "DAAAMMMNNN FUGLY, you got some sick ass beats poppin' off here. How you do dis?"

Let's be honest no one talks like that

Well some people do Fictional Reader, but you're right. none of my roommates talk like that (other than me).

Wait a minute here... are you by your last sentence saying you are your own roommate?

What?

*You said "none of my roommates talk like that other than you". This implies that you are your own roommate. *

Dude you're getting sidetracked here, listen I'm telling to tell you a story and maybe teach you something along the way. But yea, I'm guess you could say I am my own roommate, I mean after all I do have to live with myself. Just like I would have to live with myself if I put out some crappy song. Ha see what I did there.

yeah {rolls eyes}

Anyway, so my roommate asked me what my process was when I started working on a new song. I gave them a short overview, but after thinking about it I figured it was a good topic to write about. My short answer to them was I start with the chord structure. But, now after thinking about it that's not always the case for me. I mean logically that is what most songs start with, but I'm not most songs.

You're not a song

Fictional Reader, why you gotta always bring me back to reality, I thought it was a beautiful inspirational statement.

Ha "I'm a song, you're a song" I could see it now written on a poster with a kitten playing a piano or something, taped to a cinder block wall of your local community center

You are so cynical man. Anyway speaking of piano, that's a good place to start. I typically always write out my chord progression, my melody, and my bassline out on piano. This is where I start. It is my belief that if the song parts can sound good just on a single piano first, then it will have a solid structure for a song. From there I start taking those parts out of piano and pass them along to other instruments and sounds.

Let's talk about the different parts the song structure at its core, then I will move along to my process and one of tools I do this with.

As I mentioned above you have the Chord Progression, the Melody, and the Bassline.

Chord Progressions are very simply put the foundation. It's the key elements that set the harmony of the song. A chord progression can be any number of chords, but typically in most modern EDM are 4 bars long. Now in a song you could have multiple chord progressions, but the standards is that the chorus of the song will be a slightly different chord progression than the verse. The however should play well together like ice cream and waffle cones.

mmmm I love waffle cones

Me too Fictional Reader, me too.

Next you have the Melody. Now the melody is typically that part in a song you find yourself humming along to. The melody somewhat follows the chord structure, and often times an octave or more higher in pitch. This however, is not a requirement, and is not always the case. Melody can also harmonize with the chord structure or sometimes you can actually step out of your comfort zone to create a bit of tension by letting the melody do it's on thing all together. This can be risky however, so be careful.

I also failed to mention that melody often times is a blend of harmonic and rhythmic patterns. So it kinda in some ways acts as a bridge between the different parts of your song. Which now brings me to the bassline.

The bassline is more often thought of as part of the rhythm section however it is not always percussive. It can be, but that's not always the case. The most common trick when starting to work on your basslines is to use the bottom notes of your chord progression and drop them down an octave or two. Then start working out the rhythm of those notes to work well with your percussion.

I like to think of music kinda like a puzzle with no clear picture, all you know is that the different parts have to fit. How they fit is all up to you the creator.

I will typically make 16 bars that all sound good together using the above mentioned ideas. From there I will start breaking those 16 bars into different parts of the song almost like building blocks. I will chop those bars up and flip and do whatever I see is working. But at its core, it's those 16 bars that make up the building blocks of my song.

Now, I'm not the best at music theory, but I do tend to have a good ear on what sounds good. I also know there are wonderful tools out there to help you out on building out the parts of your song. One of the tools I tend to use a lot is called Odesi. It's pretty cool when you are stuck or trying to find a jumping off point.

Here is a screenshot from my project file for my single "Don't Wait"

It's only 16 bars long as you can see. The song is written in a Bb minor scale. The chord progression are the blue notes, the melody is in green, and the red notes is the bassline. This was the foundation I worked from when building my song.

After I got this to where I liked it. I then imported the midi file into FL Studio and started building out the song and those 16 bars that are are single midi file, becomes what you see below.

I hope this helps shed a little light on my process every musician has different ways of getting to the end goal, but this one is mine.




-dj FUGLY
Electronic Music Producer
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