Music Talk Board

I feel your pain, I finish one song every 6 months or so, and its sad I'll work on parts of a song for ages and never finish, but then the songs I finish and record, I shit it out in 20 mins. It's like "where was this before"

Me and a colleague have plans to play a song (if anything, just for fun; I'll be lucky if it even gets to that point) I wrote together in a band but fuck, we're both busy like Hugh Hefner's balls and we haven't even begun practicing since I've given her sheetmusic for it a few weeks ago.

It sounds like you might be overthinking it a bit Joel. Not that I'm really any more productive with songwriting, but my problem is mainly that I don't spend enough time on it.

When I was at my best last year I just got really good at improv, and then every time I sat down to play guitar I would try to come up with a new riff/lick. I couldn't always come up with other parts to make a whole song, but I did get quite a few out. I just need to get back to that point, and get better at writing lyrics.

I feel like I have a knack for lyrics, but mine always wind up sounding cynical and polemic, and I just want them to be more laid-back and neutral (not that there's anything wrong with having some polemic lyrics). I feel like I don't even have the free will to exercise that.

I definitely overthink my songs. I always have this feeling that it's too boring and lazy to do the standard pop song structure, and I always feel it'll be criticized because of that, though in the end I shit out a much simpler song and it gets praised.

The cycle just continues, so I just need to stop thinking too much and just stick to the simple song structure I feel is good.

Try writing lyrics in a different style? I always had trouble with my lyrics sounding whiny, but then writing a few songs in more of a rap-reggae influenced way I've gotten better.

Its hard to do shit though. It just kinda has to happen, at least for me.

My lyrics always sound like typical metal lyrics. lol

Which I guess fits most of my music. And I do try to get double (or even triple) meanings in my lyrics. But I also feel like there's a lot of times where I'm not very subtle.

I try thinking melodious, art-pop a la ELO meets heavy blues rock a la Led Zeppelin or Badlands. Not really obvious :/

I just noticed Joel added a lot more to his rant post

lel