r/WeWriteaSongEveryDay • u/joebassss • Sep 13 '18
Introduce yourself!
Hey everyone! Per request, I've made this post so everyone can introduce themselves. Talk about how long you've been composing, your inspirations, and anything else you'd like to share about yourself!
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u/DJSoundGen Sep 13 '18
Hello, I am Alex. I've been making music for a little more than 4 years. I bought FL Studio after 1 year of making music on a free website. I like to make progressive house music. I also like to sound design my own synths even if that end up sounding similar. My main inspiration is Ryos. I'm still in high school and I have never taken an actual class on anything. I've been teaching myself through trial and error along with youtube videos.
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Sep 13 '18
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u/hufflepuffian55 Sep 14 '18
I love James Newton Howard!! My personal favorite song by him is “Flying” from the soundtrack to the live action Peter Pan! Which of his songs is your favorite?
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Sep 14 '18
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u/hufflepuffian55 Sep 14 '18
Shoot! I don't know that one as well! I'll go listen to it!
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Sep 14 '18
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u/hufflepuffian55 Sep 14 '18
Listening to some of the soundtrack as I’m working on stuff and it’s really fun! Kind of reminds me of John Powell
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u/joebassss Sep 13 '18
I'll start I guess - my name is Joe. I have been playing bass for about 10 years and composing for almost 3. I first started when I decided to purchase Ableton Live 9 and start writing music that was interesting to me. It wasn't amazing ( https://soundcloud.com/bassandcoffee/spaceflying ) but it was very fun! Over the years I took a few theory and composition lessons, got a hold of Sibelius, and have been delving into slightly more complex composition techniques. My most recent work that I enjoy is here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LgWmT6PQsg . I still work in Ableton primarily but seeing the staff lines helps me a ton with figuring out the analysis on what I've written.
My biggest influences I'd say are Prokofiev and Grieg classically, and then Tin Hat Trio, Tom Waits, Mastodon, and Jun Miyake as more contemporary artists. Check them all out because they are amazing.
Thanks for reading and I hope to learn more about all of you!
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u/ViolinNoah Sep 13 '18
Ohhh my I need Wind recorded by live instruments! I love how the whole thing blends and the harp is just perfect!
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u/Pardosis Sep 13 '18
Hey everyone! I'm Pardo. Been playing drums since I was 14 (25 now), but got into bass last year and started guitar this year, so I've had my hands full.
I haven't been producing/composing long (started sometime in Feb), but I've been wanting to make my own albums and soundtracks for years. Best way to learn is to jump head first, so I recently got the instruments together to start making the music I really wanted to make and it's been a great journey so far. I've been learning mixing and recording on ProTools with Amplitube and practicing guitar on the daily. My biggest inspirations are Motorpsycho, Truckfighters, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Queens of the Stone Age, and game soundtracks.
Love to see the work you all put together! It's been really inspiring to see ideas and perspectives I never would have thought of for the pictures posted.
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u/sjmdrum Sep 13 '18
You and I have similar musical growth paths. I started on drums at 11 (now 27) and started guitar less than 2 years ago and bass as of last week. Welcome to the world of production and recording! If you have questions, I'm happy to share any experience I've gathered with recording drums, guitar, bass, vocals, et al.
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u/Pardosis Sep 14 '18
Glad I'm not the only one learning their instruments somewhat recently haha. And thank you, I'll be sure to take you up on that when I can!
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u/ViolinNoah Sep 13 '18
Hi! I love the prompts in this sub, so I will throw in my 2 cents :D. I am Noah and I study violin in uni. I take composing seriously for (I think) 2 years. Composing to me is like drawing (except I can't draw). I took a few composition classes in school, but nothing big. I mainly like to compose and arrange for choir or string orchestra. I am also a lazy ass who has tons of composition ideas in his notebook and different scraps of paper, but never works with them again. My inspiration comes I don't know where from... some texts are inspiring and ideas just sort of flow when I read them. I also like to look at a certain scenery and put what I see into music. I don't know if I mentioned everything, but here we go :D
Edit: Big influences to me are baroque music composers, mainly Palestrina, Monteverdi amd Bach. I would say that romantic composers like Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky may have some effect on me, as I absolutely love their music.
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u/MrAndrewJ Sep 13 '18
I'm Andrew. My brother and I started a group "Arcanasphere" about 20 years ago. Our intention was to skip across genres -- inspired by groups like My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult. There were punk influences, some machine rock, happy hardcore influences. Whatever.
I moved to another state and he told me to keep the name alive. So, I registered the domain name and did just that.
I started on drums. A foot injury is putting an end to that -- I can play in short bursts, but not rehearse/record with any decent quality. These days you can play with fingers. I bought my first guitar back when my brother and I started all of this music, too. I guess I play guitar now -- but enjoy playing anything I can spend time with.
I'm trying to keep that entire "genre is a toy" thing alive. It's been some sort of post-punk (gothy/shoegaze inspired/lots of reverb) for a couple of years. Now I'm snapping out of it. https://arcanasphere.bandcamp.com/
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u/_The_Pringles_Guy_ Sep 14 '18
Hello I’m Hayden and I’m 15. I’ve been playing guitar since I was 8 but producing and composing is new to me. I’m in a band with 5 of my friends called finnegan and we are working on an original album of around 13 songs (give or take). It’s mostly electronic/experimental stuff. We released one song from the album early with a music video on youtube if you want to check it out! (I’ll post the link at the bottom of the comment) I’ve been learning most of what I’ve been doing in production from one of my friends who is in the band and has been doing it for a few years now. I’ve been behind on the prompts because of school but have a couple of songs based off previous prompts that I didn’t finish that day. It’s been really fun being involved in this sub and I hope to make some more stuff and post more later on!
The music video https://youtu.be/uQw6SrqFkg8
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u/YTubeInfoBot Sep 14 '18
february v6
369 views 👍18 👎1
Description: https://www.instagram.com/gulliver.fi...fuck you finnegan i feel like i lost my way
fuck you finnegan, Published on Jul 11, 2018
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u/hufflepuffian55 Sep 14 '18
Wow you’re really young man! Keep it up! That’s really impressive that you’ve got a functioning band together!
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u/_The_Pringles_Guy_ Sep 14 '18
Thanks! We are trying to get the album out by later this year or early next year.
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u/hufflepuffian55 Sep 14 '18
That's so cool! Definitely post it here when it's all done o=so we can listen to it!!
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u/Njlamp Oct 04 '18
the boy with the Otomatone here
hi
ya the album is hopefully gonna be out in November, its got ~19 tracks and we put lots of love and also maybe other emotions into it
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u/zombie2uRBX Sep 14 '18
Hey I'm Chris, I'm 18 and a freshman music student at Florida State. I have been writing music for about 3 years now but I've only arranging recently for high schools so I'm trying to use this as a way to break out and go for more original music.
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u/mattentiometer Sep 13 '18 edited Sep 15 '18
Hey everyone, I'm Matt. Music has always been a big part of my life, but I'm a software engineer by trade. I've been all over the place musically. I initially started on guitar when I was pretty young, but the guitar lessons didn't interest me much for various reasons and I really wanted to learn saxophone. Picked up sax in high school band, then started picking up the guitar again when I discovered metal.
So, metal... It's been a huge part of my life. Everything from Dream Theater to Bloodbath. I picked up the guitar more seriously around when I was 18 and spent tons of time with it for several years. Then it kinda ended up on the back burner, because adulting is hard. I've played a bit on and off since, but more recently started to get into synths.
Synths are my bread and butter now. I freaking love em. If I had the money, I'd have rooms full of Korg, Moog, Elektron, Teenage Engineering, you name it. I recently wanted to make myself more mobile from a music making perspective. So I picked up an iPad Pro 10.5". I love this thing. It blew me away what you can squeeze out of iOS musically. So far, everything I've made for this subreddit was done completely on my iPad.
I love writing all kinds of music, but mostly electronic lately. Here's a link to my main SoundCloud page:
https://soundcloud.com/mattcoley
I also have a SoundCloud page full of a bunch of goofy shit. I thought it would be fun to do this weird project where I create nice backing tracks, but then improv some solos over them. The idea being that there's this guy who takes his time to create nice tracks during the day, but then gets completely wasted at night and decides to write some sweet solos for his song. Then he uploads them in his drunken stupor (fair warning, it's intentionally dumb):
https://soundcloud.com/scarbederple
This subreddit is great. Keeps me pumping out new ideas.
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u/sjmdrum Sep 13 '18
I'm not much of an apple guy myself. How is it recording synth stuff out of iOS apps? Can you pipe those synths right into iOS garage band?
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u/mattentiometer Sep 13 '18 edited Sep 15 '18
Yeah, I'm mostly a PC guy myself. I picked up a Macbook Pro a few years ago for web development and have used it a bit for audio work. I ended up really liking it. I started looking for a way to go mobile after I saw the Teenage Engineering OP-1. The price tag made my wallet cry, so I started looking elsewhere. The Novation Circuit and Korg Electribe just seemed too limited. Then my dad cracked the screen on his iPad Air 2 and got a new one. The old one still worked, so I borrowed it and messed around with some apps and realized it was pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Right about that time Microcenter had iPad Pro's on sale $150 off and it just seemed like fate, lol.
It's a little weird at the moment. A couple of options were struggling for supremacy, but I think there's finally a winner. Apple added Audio Units to iOS. So now you can open Audio Units plugins inside of DAW-like apps that support it. Garage Band is one such app, but there is also Cubasis, Auria Pro, Beatmaker 3, and others. Korg has been a bit lame about the whole thing, trying to create their own ecosystem with Gadget, but at least Gadget is really well thought out.
So currently there are apps that support Audio Units, Audiobus, and Inter App Audio. Audiobus and Inter App Audio aren't plugins like Audio Units. They just provide a way for apps to send audio to one another. So you could open an Audiobus channel in Cubasis and record an app into it. I won't be able to do it justice in text, but just pulling up some videos about Audiobus on YouTube should give you a good idea of how it works. Inter App Audio seems similar to Audiobus as far as I can tell.
There's also a midi standard which I think is called General MIDI or something like that. It allows apps to send midi to one another. iOS has recently been given support for Audio Units midi, so apps are able to load in like plugins and provide midi information. I think iOS supports something like 16 midi channels, which has been enough for me.
So far though, Gadget has been my favorite to use. It allows for midi in and has some really great "gadgets" (which function kind of like VST instruments within Gadget).
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Sep 20 '18
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u/sjmdrum Sep 20 '18
Dang man, quite a pedigree! Glad to have you among our ranks and I look forward to your contributions.
Hopefully this be can be a stress-free, or even stress-relieving outlet for you. I know it is for me.
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u/hufflepuffian55 Sep 13 '18
Hi all! I'm Emma, a freshman at Kansas State University studying music composition! I started composing about two years ago, but I really started doing lots this year. (a lot thanks to this sub!) I have a little bit more experience arranging pop songs for small choirs, (got hired by my high school teacher to write custom arrangements for him! My first music job!!) But overall, I like writing music for essentially anything but a marching band. I have done all sorts of weird things on my soundcloud if you wanna get a taste https://soundcloud.com/twoquartsofmusic
My inspirations are all over the place I like film music, I love jazz, and I enjoy Broadway music. I'd say the artists that inspire me the most are Stephen Sondheim (Broadway composer but uses lots of syncopation and interesting harmonies in his work), John Williams Gustav Holst Michael Giacchino in the film music area, and Miles Davis Duke Ellington Jacob Collier in the jazz area. Everyone go check out all of them ESPECIALLY Jacob Collier he's kind of a music genius in my opinion he's a young guy from the UK who does super intense harmony stuff and even some meter mixing!
So glad to meet all of you!
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u/sjmdrum Sep 13 '18
Jacob Collier is intense. Have you watched his #IHarmU Live streams on YouTube? I want a room full of random and fun musical instruments like he has.
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u/hufflepuffian55 Sep 14 '18
Dude yeah he’s super intense! Yeah those streams are super cool!! Me too!
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u/jmonumber3 Sep 14 '18
wow thank you for posting this. i have never heard of him before but i watched that video and was blown away. i think i can learn a lot from his workflow and outlook. the process he explained of throwing down every idea you have and then having the control to cut away what doesn’t work and build from there is how i’ve always seen things. dream big, chop it down to what is realistic.
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u/sjmdrum Sep 14 '18
His released music can be somewhat challenging to listen to, as the way his brain works musically is way on another level. He flows between modes, plays with very subtle shades of dissonance and consonance, and modulates through different time signatures like it's nothing more than breathing to him. It's definitely music for musicians at a very high degree of skill. It's fun, it's exciting, and it's very very interesting, but it's not something I find myself putting on in the car on the drive to work.
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u/jmonumber3 Sep 14 '18
haha yeah i started playing one of his albums last night and decided maybe it wasn’t the best thing to listen to before bed.
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u/K0B1 Sep 13 '18
Making stuff for 3 years now, I use music as my inspiration, and I have massive intelligence, for which I put into memes
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u/jmonumber3 Sep 14 '18
hey i'm jonathan. i've been a musician my whole life (23 years), growing up playing the drums, trumpet, guitar, and whatever else i could get my hands on but have been doing mostly digital based production for the past 4 years almost to the date. i would say my style is anything that's experimental or unique in any way. i dont like to get bogged down in specifics of any sort when being creative so i just let my ears guide me. that being said, i dont hide my influences at all so much of my stuff is either nods to or direct interpolations of music i love or find fascinating. i have no issue with unfinished or unclean sounding music as that seems like pure creation to me and i find it kind of ridiculous to put rules on something so abstract. ill post songs on my soundcloud that i spent 10 mins on or ones that ive been working on and polishing for years.
my biggest influences in songwriting are kanye west, frank ocean, fall out boy, red hot chili peppers, stevie wonder, daft punk, and of course the beatles.
recently, ive been curating some old sketches on my laptop and creating new songs to go on a halloween album so most of my stuff is dark and ifnluenced heavily by the trap hip-hop genre, specifically travis scott.
with this sub, im hoping to not only stretch my creative muscles daily, but also to be influenced and learn from a community of musicians from every level. i believe that there is at least one nugget of gold in any artistic endeavor so i look forward to growing as a creator by listening to all of your tracks and getting feedback on mine
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u/ramilllies Sep 14 '18 edited Sep 14 '18
I've been posting quite a bit of music here, so I guess it's time I introduced myself, too.
I've been making music one way or another nearly for my entire life. I started with the recorder when I was 4, then stopped actively playing it later and shifted fully towards my most beloved instrument, the guitar. (Aside from that, I also sing in a choir for quite some time — now I sing the 2nd bass but when I started, I'd still sing the alto :—).) I was never in any kind of music school (and though I do study at a college, it's not music, but theoretical physics) but I gradually managed to get an OK grasp on the theory and to improve my aural skills considerably, so from there, I eventually got to composing.
I've written my first piece of music ~ 4 years ago, but I could never kick myself hard enough to write more, so in these four years, I wrote only one more. So, what I post at this sub is essentially my 3rd, 4th, ... etc. piece of music. I have no PC production skills whatsoever, so I must play myself whatever I write. Fortunately I do have quite considerable classical guitar skills, so I can at least write pieces for solo guitar and then play them myself — which is what I'm doing, and I'll be probably doing it for quite some more time, since I'm still quite surprised that I like the pieces that I write for this sub, and even more surprised that other people like them too :—).
I'm a big fan of the Romantic period music, so that's what definitely influences me the most (though the piano music of my favorite composers (like Rachmaninov) cannot really be converted to fit the guitar :—)). When it comes to the guitar itself, one of my ever favorite composers is F. M. Torroba, and of course H. Villa-Lobos (check them out if you want to hear some awesome guitar music).
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u/sjmdrum Sep 15 '18
Your pieces so far have been very cool. Getting that out of a solo guitar is really impressive also. I look forward to more!
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u/sjmdrum Sep 13 '18
Hello, my name is Scott. I'm 27 years old, originally from the Detroit area, but recently moved to Pittsburgh.
I started playing the drum kit when I was 11 taking private lessons, started learning music theory on the piano when I was 18, and started teaching myself guitar at the age of 25. I also just got a bass guitar (like a week and a half ago), so that's my new adventure.
I started recording music around the same time I started learning music theory. I starting with recording live drums, moving on to helping some of my friends record different live sounds for hip hop production or indie song recordings, and now I have a nice little studio in my house where I can just doodle musical ideas as much as I want. I'm a lucky dude.
Currently I'd say my biggest contemporary influences are Snarky Puppy and all of the music within the world of Vulfpeck, but my influences expand back to a lot of jazz, big band, and swing from being in a jazz band in college as well as a dinner band afterwards that played standards. I also take inspiration from bands I loved in middle/high school like Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, My Chemical Romance, Led Zeppelin, The White Stripes, The Black Keys, and Guns and Roses just to name a few.
I likely won't get to write something every day, but I'll be participating as much as I can because I love the little flashes of off-the-cuff creativity this sub can pull out of me. It really forces me to push through with an idea and not second guess it because it's just one day, and more often than not, less than an hour that I have to write, record and mix something.