[cpnhowdy]

Originally Posted by TheMasterplan

I write sound too much like something I listen to a little too specifically. Like I wrote this one riff the other day that I was going to use as the main riff of another composition but it sounded like the chorus riff from Cephalic Carnage's Endless Cycle of Violence except with a few runs and little extra bells and whistles but I couldn't get "ENDLESS, ENDLESS CYCLE OF VIOLENCE." out of my head when I played it.

Im in the same position and I think this happens all the time. Case in point YouTube - Metal That Sounds Like Other Metal: Volume III
I come up with stuff but then think/realize that it sounds like something else.
Just gotta make that riff yours.

[Methilde]

Composition is how I started in the music. It's the euphoric sense of making something that YOU think is the most awesome music there is because you wrote it entirely according to your taste It also allows you to explore your abilities, challenge yourself and improve all the time.

Also, improvising and recording can be cool. Just hit the record button and improvise, later listen and see what came out best. Surprising yourself is usually a nice push to keep composing and thinking about new melodies. Maybe getting inspired by other kinds of music, like classical, for instance, to obtain new kinds of layers and melodic lines.

Hope this could be any use

[Drew]

Well, obviously I have a few compositional hangups of my own...

A few pointers though, that have helped me over the years.

1.) Don't be afraid to show your influences, and don't be afraid to come pretty close to ripping something else off. Everyone around here seems to like my tune "Alien Love Child," and the verse hook basically started off as a hacked-up version of Moby's "South Side." Hey, it works, and done on guitar changed up a bit it's not really recognizable as such.

2.) A great song isn't the most perfect, complex riff you could ever come up with with the most perfect, complex melody line on top. Vince LuPone, another mod here, really opened my eyes in this respect - his debut, "Screaming into the Abyss" has a bunch of kickass riffs on it. Yet, the thing is, very few of them are the sort of super-complex uber-memorable things that you play and think, "duuuude, this is the greatest riff EVER!" Rather, they're just fuckin' cool grooves; it's tough to explain this without sound like I'm deriding the guy's playing (because I'm not - I Vince's work), but Vince sort of epitomizes what I'm trying to say where sometimes something that's just simply a good riff that doesn't really jump out at you as like a pinnacle of technical and harmonic complexity can do a pretty damned good job of carrying a song. Don't automatically reject something because it seems too simple, you know?

3.) Try to step outside of your writing "comfort zone." If you usually start with a set of changes and then come up with a melody, then start with a melody and come up with a set of changes that work underneith it. If you usually start with a melody, vice versa.

4.) Never underestimate how far you can take a single riff. One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands is a track called "Seventeen" by Floater - sort of Tool-ish hard-rock/-metal-prog-ambient-y shit. They rule. Anyway, this song is basically driven by a single riff, consisting of an Eb5 power chord muted and played with a slightly syncopated rhythm -duh, duh, duh duh du-duh..." over and over again, with two natural harmonics tossed off on the 4th repeat. The verse and the chorus are essentially the same riff, they just change up the feel of the drums. It fucking rules, yet it's basically just one chord for 80% of the song. So, if you've got a great riff, maybe try varying up other elements of the song - using the same riff but with two diifferent drum grooves and melodies for a verse and a chorus, say.