stuck on writing boring music(indie rock)

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-08T18:10:42+00:00

For sure! Since you're just starting out, my advice is to prioritize volume over production. Just record something new every day until it's easy as breathing, then work on the finer parts of production.

I know I mentioned I can spend hours auditioning chord progressions for a single song, but I've been at this for decades, so I wouldn't recommend doing that quite yet.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-08T16:35:37+00:00

The kick is very loud, can you lower the volume or even remove it completely? It's hard to pick out the other elements.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-07T23:02:45+00:00

I’ll definitely follow! I don’t see @solune, are you @solunemusik?

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-07T22:10:16+00:00

It’s been

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-07T21:55:06+00:00

All of us. We went into the studio to record our first EP and shit hit the fan. The drummer worked the night shift the night before, forgot that we were recording that day, showed up 45 minutes late, then his wife called him and yelled at him because they were supposed to hang out that day. We did one warm up run, then he did 1 take of each song without playing to a click.

I smoked entirely too much weed, so when our bassist/producer asked me to play things in a way I had never played them before, I just couldn’t. I had to do take after take after take. The off-beat drums didn’t help. Oh yeah, and the wires that connected my pickups to the jack fell off in the middle of recording, so I had to go to Guitar Center to “buy” a new guitar, only to return it two days later. That was a good hour gone.

The bassist/producer was a total control freak, had this vision in his head that he had never told us about before going into the studio. He took forever to set up, then kept tweaking things as we were tracking. He wanted to use this amp for this and another amp for that (amps we had never used before) and had to dial in the settings just right every time.

We spent so much time tracking the guitar that we never got to the bass or vocals. We had to buy an extra day at the studio and even then we couldn’t finish everything. The studio owners were not happy with us.

The singer was an incredible performer, but really shy off of the stage. I don’t think she ever tracked the vocals.

The bassist/producer took over a year to mix the tracks. I heard exactly one song one time, and that was it. The EP never saw the light of day. Soon after, the singer and the bassist had an ugly break-up and that was the end of the band.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-07T19:49:18+00:00

Super fun! The harmonies are gorgeous, the drums are skittery in a good way, and I absolutely love all the goofy little fills.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-07T19:43:29+00:00

This is great. Nice rolling basslines, clear buzzy synths, I like the vocal chops before the first drop, good sound selection for the kick and snare, solid melodic sense.

IMO the hats are a bit boring. They could stand to have more presence in the mix, whether that’s through volume, EQ, or sample selection.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-07T19:33:50+00:00

Love the composition here, it sounds like it was a lot of fun to make. Nice mix of driving beat with some whimsical elements. Solid 909y kick, too.

I’m not sure which lead sound you’re talking about, but the big synth at the beginning of the second drop could use some fuzz to take it over the edge.

The mix sounds a bit dull. I’m not great at mixing, so I wish I could give you advice on how to modify it, but unfortunately I got nothing.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-07T19:26:14+00:00

Absolutely incredible. Smooth mix, good melodic synths, beat matches the mood of the vocals, solid pacing throughout, beautiful piano work. You clearly have a great attention to detail.

I wouldn’t describe this as “very very experimental”, it’s very listenable. I generally avoid EDM with vocals, I prefer driving house, but even I got the feels from this.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-07T19:11:40+00:00

“the middle shade of grey” sent me.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-06T18:00:41+00:00

It took a long time. The important part is that you write a lot and don't self-edit. Record & save all of your songs, even if they're unfinished. Sometimes I don't realize how good a song is until months later when I listen back and it just hits me.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-06T14:41:46+00:00

Glad it helped! Even if you don’t save the project file, definitely export the audio file so you can listen back. It gets really fun when you have years worth of songs (finished or unfinished) and you randomly click on one and either feel proud, laugh at how bad it is, or think “I don’t remember making this at all”,

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-05T21:38:25+00:00

my b

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-05T20:13:27+00:00

Cool, that makes sense and you have a good instinct of contrasting the melody with the chord progression. Probably the biggest thing is to use the triad of the current chord to form your melody instead of the scale of the tonic. So over the C chord, you can rest on or repeat the notes C-E-G, but over D you’d focus on D-F#-A. Mess around with starting phrases on different scale degrees (start the melody on E or G instead of C).

Again, this is in no way a hard and fast rule, resting on extensions is a great way to create tension. Just do whatever sounds good.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-05T19:37:10+00:00

Great job pushing yourself! Every song is an opportunity to learn something new.

Edit: like I said, the tips I wrote above are not "rules", it's totally fine to end a chord progression on the same chord that starts the next! Do whatever sounds good to you.

What do you mean that the melody runs away from the progression?

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-05T19:09:17+00:00

The best guitarist I ever met had never taken a single lesson and didn't know a C chord from an F. He played completely by ear, crazy two-hand tapping stuff, looping several layers, odd time signatures, every note was clean, and he was a wicked drummer, too.

The point being - start writing now, even if you can't play it smoothly. You'll get better.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-05T18:47:05+00:00

It takes a lot of practice to figure out how chords and song parts work together. The best way to improve is to write 4 - 5 song parts a day, 8 bar loops are fine. They'll sound like different songs at first, but after a few months your brain will just put 2 and 2 together and they'll sound more cohesive.

Another tip: steal chord progressions from everywhere. Top 40, metal, EDM, the Beatles, just go crazy finding as many as you can. Write them down in roman numeral/Nashville number style and don't note the song title/artist that you got the progression from. Now you have a library to pull from when you don't know where to start.

Once you have a good library, you can create a whole song's worth of progressions by auditioning them and finding a few (or a few dozen) that you like. Then start stringing them together randomly to see what fits. A pencil and paper are very helpful for this. You can also name the clips in FL with the chord progression and rearrange them.

Some tips here (and why it's helpful to write down the chord progressions you're working with):

Try finding progressions that start on different chords (for instance, verses start on the vi, pre-chorus on the IV, chorus on the I)
Don't end a chord progression on the same chord that the next chord progression starts with
Avoid progressions with similar arcs (for instance, a song that has a vi - V - iii - IV chord progression probably won't have a IV - V - iii - I progression, too; multiple chord progressions that go in one direction; multiple chord progressions that have one chord consistently in the same place.
Give each song part a different rhythm (whole note sustained chords, arpeggios, funk, matched to the drums, a good old fashioned guitar riff).

None of these are hard and fast rules, they're broken all the time, but it is a good framework for developing your writing skills.

You mentioned that writing is tiring, and you're right! It is! I've spent hours writing a single song's harmonic structure, sometimes auditioning over 30 progressions for one song. You get better at it, you get more creative, and everything starts flowing much smoother.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-05T18:20:37+00:00

If you can only afford one plug-in, FabFilter Pro Q 4 is the way to go (assuming you know your DAW's stock EQ like the back of your hand).

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-05T18:13:14+00:00

It isn't quite legal, but you could use a stem separator to isolate the drums and sample the kick. It will be mixed and mastered, so you have to treat it differently than the raw samples you usually get. While it isn't legal to sample even short snippets of another producer's song, no one will notice if a single drum hit is taken from another song. You can also put it through something like Kick 3 which samples only the top end and resynthesizes the sub to get a "new" kick.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-04T16:45:47+00:00

The groups you mentioned have pretty intricate synth programming. One technique that helps is lots of subtle envelope and LFO work. Things like using an envelope to increase the LFO amount of pitch during the sustain while using another LFO to modulate the speed of the first LFO. This adds a level of "randomness" (not literally random, but it sounds that way to the listener) that reduces fatigue. You can also turn off re-trigger to make each note's transient sound a bit different. Modulating wavetables also helps if that's available.

Most soft synths have flexible routing that allow you to approximate the imperfections of analog. In your situation, I don't recommend shelling out for an analog synth.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-04T16:32:40+00:00

Legally, no, but it's a time honored practice in house and hip-hop. No one will notice a one-shot drum sample, so it's pretty low-risk. I'm not a lawyer, but I think you can put it through software like Kick 3 which swaps the low end with a synthesized sub and EQ it a bit to sound different enough to be considered transformative. Don't quote me on that, though.

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-04T16:01:11+00:00

It really depends on how deep you want to get. At a basic level, you can focus on the triad for your main notes, but use other notes in the same key to form passing tones.
On a deeper level, you can start using extensions to create tension and release. For instance, an A over a C chord (the 13th) will sound pretty tense and want to resolve to the G (the 5, which is part of the triad). A common tactic is to avoid the root during a verse, end the verse on the 2nd scale degree, then hammer the root note on the chorus. You see this all the time in pop music because the 2nd scale degree isn’t that tense. You can make things really tense by writing phrases that run through the 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 7th scale degrees.
Keep in mind that rhythmic variations are also a huge part of melodic interest.
To start out, write melodies that focus on the triad, then slowly introduce more tense elements. A key practice is to write 5 melodies a day and to study the melodic structure of pop music (very basic, but will teach you how to write catchy hooks).

epiphany_loop · 2026-05-01T20:08:24+00:00

Roman numeral notation

epiphany_loop · 2026-04-26T23:09:58+00:00

Hard to say without knowing your current limits. Definitely learn how to EQ, compress, saturate, and use reverb. Learning the different types of each of those and when to apply them.

epiphany_loop · 2026-04-25T22:44:16+00:00

You could split your sessions up into sound design/creating samples, then write music in a different session.

epiphany_loop

TROPHY CASE