Hiya there! Welcome to my first blog post ever regarding songwriting and music production. I hope you find this blog helpful and inspiring. You can read more about me, my background in music, and my current interests in the About Me -section. Shortly describing, I’m an aspiring songwriter, and I have a “bedroom” studio. I practice music production and songwriting as much as possible in my spare time – I have a day job doing another business field.
Mostly I’ve been listening to k-pop lately, because I love the melodies, diversity and the endless inspiration it brings. I’m also a big fan of Britpop, classic rock and especially pop music. With blogging, I hope to spread knowledge of songwriting, music production, and k-pop as a starting songwriter, and it would be so much fun to find people with similar interests. So, I’ll also be diving into k-pop music and culture in these blogs with a music production/songwriting viewpoint. There will be occasionally blogs about food, dance choreographies, travelling, concerts, art, and design around these mentioned themes because I love all of these!
Here are some of my current tools for songwriting and developing song ideas:
Mobile app for chord structures and songwriting on the go: Suggester
I have enjoyed using the mobile app called Suggester for making chord progressions on the go. This app is fun to try out different chords, how they sound together quickly. I think this is a great tool for someone playing instruments or not because you can quickly try different chord progressions and how they sound. You can adjust the tempo and the notes, and there are other additional features.
I use Suggester mainly as an inspiration tool: I’ll dabble with the chords, and after that I’ll go to my DAW and start making song ideas with midi with the chord progression idea. You might have a beat and a feeling to the song in mind: next you could do a drumbeat, use the chord progression, add a bass, start building the song melody and so on.
You can find more mobile apps for music production and songwriting in Youtube video by Splice, “Best mobile music production apps 2020 (iOS/Android)”.
Writers’ block? A treasure chest of ideas and inspiration, Splice
Sometimes I need inspiration for sounds and getting ideas from different genres of music. Splice is a great tool when I have writers’ block because you can find samples and one-shots in a wide variety and different styles. You can also buy rent-to-own plugins for your DAW through Splice as Serum, for example. I love to find new ideas and sounds from Splice. Lately, I’ve been looping samples a lot to my beats, finding some interesting sounds and textures to my song productions.
Constructing songs in the DAW: Ableton Live’s Session View as a songwriting tool
I’ve been mainly using Ableton Live as DAW for my productions. For songwriting, I like that Ableton Live has the Session View for experimenting with samples, beats, song structure, etc. In the Arrangement View, you construct a whole song with all the tracks, effects, etc.; in the Session View, you can try out song structures and make fast arrangements or put different songs on the right side of the columns (Master) if playing live, for example. I think this is a versatile tool for song construction purposes or live situations. I mostly use Arrangement View nowadays to build songs from start to finish, but I still use Session View from time to time as a tool to gather ideas and play with them.
- Short Youtube video and demo by Ableton using the Session View in Ableton Live 10: Learn Live 10: Session View.
- If a DAW is a new term for you, here’s a short and great introduction in Youtube for beginners by IAMLXGEND: What Is a DAW? (Music Basics)
Last but not least: guitar/synth, pen and paper
I have a Roland Groovesynth JX-305 and few electric guitars, and an acoustic guitar for playing. These are my old and trustworthy tools 🙂
Summing-up
I hope this opened some of the tools I use for my songwriting, and possibly inspired your music-making. What are your favourite tools when you write a song or make song ideas/beats? Do you like making songs with instruments mainly, or do you use mobile devices for constructing songs? Would you please leave a comment here or on my Blue Tucana Instagram account, and let’s discuss this blog topic? It would be great to hear what tools you find essential for making your music and how you stay inspired.
I hope you are safe and healthy – stay inspired and keep making music the way that is best for you!
