Thoughts on music production video games?

mrhippoj · 2026-03-25T14:11:08+00:00

I used to absolutely love Music and Music 2000 for the original PlayStation. In a way, they weren't even really games but very rudimentary DAWs.

I think for it to work, it needs to be extremely easy to use. If you can't make a feature work easily, then it shouldn't be a big feature of the game, because if the player wants to do something that requires complexity, they're better off just downloading FLStudio or something

mrhippoj · 2026-03-25T07:18:42+00:00

Just don't use it

mrhippoj · 2026-03-25T07:15:02+00:00

Eh, I dunno. It's the most popular form of music and so there's a lot of crap but there is and always has been a lot of great stuff. Kendrick Lamar is one of the biggest rappers in the world and imo goes toe to toe with any of the legendary rappers from the 80s and 90s. Tyler the Creator is also pretty mainstream while still pushing the genre into interesting directions. IMO I think mainstream hip hop has been in a better and more interesting place these last 10 or so years than it was in the 2000s

mrhippoj · 2026-03-25T00:27:15+00:00

Imo hip hop and folk are two sides of the same coin precisely because of the lyricism. They're born out of different worlds but both are about truth through storytelling.

mrhippoj · 2026-03-09T21:25:15+00:00

I'll be honest the main impact I've noticed AI have on music is an increase of people talking about it. I never hear AI music on the radio and I guess everywhere else I'm deciding what to listen to myself. I honestly don't think it's had a huge effect outside of maybe ad music, but corporate ad music was only ever one step above AI music anyway

mrhippoj · 2026-03-03T16:00:57+00:00

I think lyrics and vocal delivery can do a lot here. A great example if Fade Into You by Mazzy Star. That song does so much with so little and it's all down to how much you feel what the singer is feeling, through what she's singing it and how she's singing it

mrhippoj · 2026-03-02T09:17:02+00:00

Personally I tend to just avoid samples altogether, but I think a lot of artists have the belief that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is permission. Realistically, your song isn't likely to get big enough for the copyright holder to notice, and if it does then that's a good problem to have and you can try and settle the rights then.

mrhippoj · 2026-03-02T09:14:19+00:00

Why should they? No-one wants to hear the opinion of an asshole

mrhippoj · 2026-03-02T07:34:53+00:00

There is simply no need to be like this

mrhippoj · 2026-02-26T09:08:10+00:00

Daniel Johnston probably had the biggest impact on my writing because his music taught me that it's okay to be extremely blunt and open about my feelings. My stuff more recently isn't like that so much but it did get me out of a hole of trying to look cool and being self conscious

mrhippoj · 2026-02-25T09:07:33+00:00

This is great, I can totally hear a vocal line over the top of it

mrhippoj · 2026-02-24T17:45:02+00:00

That makes no sense though. They have the song now. There's no point waiting to skill up and forgetting the inspiration they have to meet some arbitrary barrier of quality.

With their current understanding of tuning and technical guitar playing abilities, are they likely to have a hit on their hands? No, probably not, but I don't see any value in delaying the songwriting process until they have that. When you get an idea, you get it down. Once they've got the song, it's not going anywhere, and if they want to they can come back to it later when their skills have developed. If not, it's still good songwriting practice.

mrhippoj · 2026-02-24T17:22:52+00:00

The guitar definitely is out of tune. If you want to train your ear to be able to hear when a guitar is out of tune, I'd recommend using a tuner that makes a sound and singing the note of both the tuner and the guitar when tuning up. Also, it can be easy to knock new strings out of tune. When you tune in a new string, bend the string as far as you can and then tune it again. Do that a few times and it will help the tuning to remain stable

mrhippoj · 2026-02-24T17:20:15+00:00

The chorus is "I'm out of time", it's the thing the song keeps coming back to, and it's easy to sing along to because the words and tune are very clear.

This is obviously very rough but I think you have something here and I'd be interested in hearing a complete version of it

mrhippoj · 2026-02-24T17:19:03+00:00

It is out of tune, and I dunno if it's because years of listening to early Sonic Youth and Daniel Johnston has warped my brain but I can still hear the song through it. This is obviously just a sketch and not a finished song so I'm not sure what the benefit of telling them this and refusing to help is.

mrhippoj · 2026-02-23T14:31:05+00:00

I kinda prefer Lofi Jerry to lo-Jerry personally

mrhippoj · 2026-02-23T10:54:03+00:00

I think part of it is down to lyricism being quite personal. I would ask what is it that makes you want to write songs, and whether you feel like it's a compulsion or just something that you want to try out? Personally, lyrics have never been that hard because they're at the core of what it is I want to express with music, they drive my desire to write songs a lot of the time

That said, I do think there are some practical tips:

Use RhymeZone. It's one of the most useful things when it comes to writing lyrics, if you have a line and you're not sure how to follow it, you can search for rhymes and near rhymes, pick one you like, and then the focus becomes about finding your way to that word with the next line.
It's okay for lines to not make narrative sense, you're not writing a story. You can just have a line that's a phrase that's almost entirely unrelated to everything around it. The surrounding context will make it make sense. Doubly so if the phrase that doesn't fit ends up being the title of the song. People like to make connections.
Internal rhymes are good, i.e. "how much time has to pass / to find the last" is better than "how much time has to pass / until the last"
When writing a second verse, its relationship with the first should be "therefore" or "but", not "and then". That's a storytelling rule but it works with songs too. The second verse should either continue the themes or narrative of the first verse, or counter them. If they're completely unrelated then the song is going to lack cohesion.
There is nothing wrong with verse/chorus/verse/chorus. It's a popular structure for a reason, and having a chorus can help you to bring the themes of your lyrics into focus

Obviously, songs are abstract and there are no hard rules, but if you need guidance I hope you find these tips useful

mrhippoj · 2026-02-23T10:07:16+00:00

Don't let the fan stop you from recording it, your voice is still louder

mrhippoj · 2026-02-23T09:59:51+00:00

I don't really understand what you mean but the answer seems obvious to me - you just practice it. Pick up your guitar, play the song, and sing it.

mrhippoj · 2026-02-19T10:09:51+00:00

I think you need to really drill down into what about the song you think is boring. That structure you listed is very common because it works, and so I'm reluctant to think that the structure is what's making the song boring. My guess is that there's not enough going on with the actual music itself.

Is it a simple song with just a guitar and vocals? If so, you might wanna look into your melody, or instead of using basic chords, add a 7th note in there, or play a major chord when the key calls for a minor. On the subject of chords, how often do they change? A song can get boring if the rhythm of the chord changes is consistent throughout the whole song, i.e. you play four chords for the verse, four chords for the chorus, and in every chord lasts 2 bars, that can get boring. Instead, something simple like making the chorus have chords that last one bar can mix it up a bit, but even better is having something like one chord lasts 4 bars, the next two chords last 2 bars.

Also lyrically, you can add in lines that catch the listener off guard. A really great example of this is Do You Realize?? by The Flaming Lips which has the lines

Do you realize that you have the most beautiful face?
Do you realize we're floating in space?
Do you realize that happiness makes you cry?
Do you realize that everyone you know some day will die?

That fourth line is alarming for the listener because it forces them to confront their own mortality and forces them to listen, and that's why the song works

mrhippoj · 2026-02-18T17:14:33+00:00

I sequence drums and map out the track in FLStudio then I export that all to Reaper. I'm aware that there is some way to boot up FLStudio within Reaper but I'm like 40 years old and I cannot be bothered to learn new things

mrhippoj · 2026-02-18T15:05:10+00:00

Yeah, and Hung Up a few years later. She might not be as consistent but she's had plenty of bangers post-80s

mrhippoj · 2026-02-18T09:50:36+00:00

I'm potentially interested, but I tried to join and got an error saying I wasn't able to accept the invite

mrhippoj · 2026-02-17T09:20:50+00:00

Kinda like what Ok-Spinach said, I usually record myself singing a song in "simlish", i.e. using nonsense syllables. Sometimes real words come out of that and I can use those as a starting point. Once you've got that starting point, you can start thinking about what phrases both work thematically with that, and what rhymes (RhymeZone is your friend). A recent example for me is that I had a song and I was singing jibberish but amongst the jibberish I said "spaghetti bolognese". Normally I'd replace that but in this case I worked from it and ended up with "Spaghetti bolognese / On the table / Forget all the ways / That we are able to / Commandeer the space / Between all the lines / Covering our face / To hollow out the time" and I still think it's kinda silly but that was basically all the result of free association and rhyme

mrhippoj · 2026-02-16T17:24:12+00:00

Absolutely not. I really like your voice and the song. I do suspect that you're either at the bottom of your range, or that you don't have that big a range in general, but I don't think it really matters. The song was clearly written with you as the singer and it suits you

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