This is a guest post by Levente

For one, devoting your life to any kind of art is not only honourable and good, but it is also very natural

Like the more time I spend creating and playing music, the more that’s all I want to do

Sometimes I get annoyed when Soso or  or Lablah the bandees want to smoke weed for like 45 minutes when my brain is wanting to be submerged in playing music

And that’s a voluntary activity

But it takes away from what’s pulling my very existence

On the other, life is here for the living and though there are so many facets of songwriting that you could indeed spend every waking moment on it and never run out of things to improve and create.

...

If you don’t take the time to live life, and enjoy some of it, take in art whether it be in games, TV, film, books, or anything else, you deny yourself the possibility of any of those things expanding your creative mind and leading you to places you wouldn’t have gone otherwise


Not to mention receiving art into your mind is a way of connecting with all the humans who made it, and therefor gives you practice at connecting with humans, seeing how other artists do it, and draw your own conclusions there.

I’d argue that a great portion of art creation is sharing existence with other humans. You think the composers of yore didn’t have hobbies on the side?

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Today's video is another sit-down and do it style practice. I didn't really have much of a plan going in - its nice to have a structure - so it ended up being a bit of Melodic Development over one of my favorite chord structures. - Daily Gratitude - When your reality isn’t what you imagined: In fact its so much better. Be open to the possibilities and receive your blessings of unlimited potential.

​A song can be four chords. That's not wrong, but if your chord progression is simple, then consider the Principles of contrast to make your song POP.

Where do you put contrast in your song? What are your song's elements?

• Genre
• Hooks
• Metre and rhythm
• Lyrical content
• Instrumentation
• song structure

​Have you thought about how your song is laid out while the concept is fresh? I recommend as good practice to outline a few basic song-structures for the style of music you write. it could look like one of these examples:

or

• A section
  • Intro
  • Buildup
  • Verse
  • Chorus
• B Section
  • Instrumental
  • Verse
  • Hook
• A section
  • Chorus
  • Verse
  • Buildup
• B section
  • Hook
• C section
  • Outro

Helps with efficiency to simply put things into a place where you dont have to worry about structure. Why use this approach? because it takes the struggle out of putting the songs together because that part is already done. Just build the pieces to fit and stick them in. Songwriting En-masse, just remember your Contrast considerations. 

So now that we're fitting the pieces in, I guess you'll need pieces first. This is where creativity and imagination come into play. During your daily (and i hope it's daily) practice, noodle around until you come up with something. Some folks like to play from scales or books for inspiration. others simply jam. The point is to come up with something that sounds good to you. Remember it's music. There isn't a one-size-fits-all approach to this stuff.

​Abrupt transitions are not always bad. To me it depends on the characteristics of the genre, some being friendlier to rule-breaking than others.