The Songwriter Forum - songwriting reviews, tips and chat
Songwriter Forum => The Writing Process => Topic started by: Serotonin on May 26, 2016, 11:14:54 PM
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I might be bending rules a little bit here, but I'm going to post a 30 second track (shitty phone recording sorry) of a melody that seemed to come pretty naturally. I want to base a song around it. But I can't for the life of me work out the time signature or what kind of vocal melody should go over it. Any help would be much appreciated. Maybe a humming recording of ideas people have? If the issue is in the track itself then does anyone know what's wrong with it?
https://soundcloud.com/serotonin-17/currently-unnamed
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I think one of the issues is that you have put some subtle "stops" in there that are not "musical holds" but definite stops/starts - albeit very short ones
This disrupts the flow of the "pulse" of the track so if you tap your foot along there are some "stop/start" points that make it quite a "challenging" song to get in to - and therefore difficult to work out the meter/time signature of the track
This is not necessarily a bad thing as challenging songs can be great fun as long as you are aware of it but it could get "annoying" for the listener if the whole song has this "stop/start" quality so I would personally be tempted to use this "device" for instrumental sections and then settle in to a more definite "groove" / rhythm for the bulk of the track
As for melody...
The guitar is quite busy (but sounds great) so I would probably keep the pattern as it is and then put a simple melody on top with lots of long, held, notes so that the whole track doesn't sound too "busy"
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Definitely what Boydie said, plus, I hear two different rhythm styles between the stops. Both sound like 4/4 time, but one is straight time and the other feels like a long-short type of rhythm, sort of like swing rhythm. ??
Vicki