by the way , i will teach this my friend

Anyway, the most important thing you can do to write is just give yourself time alone, with nobody bothering you or interrupting you, where you can go completely inside your head and try to tune into some creative frequency. I find that to be the most difficult thing to do, since I'm very busy most of the time, and time alone, where I can make some ghastly noise on my guitar (songwriting is often a matter of trial AND error!) without bothering my wife or my neighbors, is also hard to come by. It's a matter of sheer willpower that whenever you do get a bit of time, half an hour or a full hour here or there, you tell yourself, OK, I'm going to not just play, but play creatively, and see what comes out. I will forget about the world outside of me, and just focus on the music. I find this to be the most difficult part. If you can steal a bit of alone time and get your mind into this space, you're halfway there.

he plays the second guitar in my band and does not seem to play surf with love and does not really have any willpower

Band: http://www.myspace.com/theterrortones

I've never written with a recorder on hand. Mostly due to laziness. I generally will play with ideas over time until a song evolves. The down side to this, as Danny points out, is that you need to retain these ideas in your head over a long period of time.

My chords usually come out from the lead lines. I generally don't even realize the chords until I need to teach the song to our bass player I've always worked strictly with melody.

I have tried to write chords first, but haven't been able to work that way. Now, if I had a recorded version of the chords to work against, I might get somewhere...

Ryan
The Secret Samurai Website
The Secret Samurai on Facebook

Ruhar
I've never written with a recorder on hand. Mostly due to laziness. I generally will play with ideas over time until a song evolves. The down side to this, as Danny points out, is that you need to retain these ideas in your head over a long period of time.

My chords usually come out from the lead lines. I generally don't even realize the chords until I need to teach the song to our bass player I've always worked strictly with melody.

I have tried to write chords first, but haven't been able to work that way. Now, if I had a recorded version of the chords to work against, I might get somewhere...

Ryan's approach is more typical of writing for the trio format. Adding the additional guitar widens your musical palette, so to speak, but typically requires more consideration to the chordal structure.

I also almost always have a drum machine going while I'm songwriting, really helps get a sense of how the music fits rhythmically.

Danny Snyder

"With great reverb comes great responsibility" - Uncle Leo

Playing keys and guitar with Combo Tezeta

Formerly a guitarist in The TomorrowMen and Meshugga Beach Party

Latest surf project - Now That's What I Call SURF

Ivan...thank you so much for your insight into your songwriting. I was signed to a major label back in the 70's and you could NOT stray from the "formula" that was the "top ten" back then. All that attitude changed, i think, in the 80's when it became OK to write anything, anyway you wanted to and the top ten "structure" was thrown out the window (thank God!) but i can remember sitting with a very big time record producer named Chuck Plotkin who insisted that my songs be written in a certain structure. I was bummed at the time because i thought i had written some pretty cool songs and he threw them in the rubbish! Of course he was the big time producer and i was a young lad on my way to being a "star" so i listened to him and tried my best to write songs that sounded like, or were structured like, the top ten at the time. It's (that structure thing) still ingrained in me. I can't get rid of it!! All my songs, vocal or instro, seem to have an intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/verse/chorus/chorus/outro structure to them and i don't wander too far from it still.
Am i the only guy that has 300 pieces of paper with chords or ideas for songs on them laying around the house? (my wife would claim at least 400/500!!) I love going thru a stack of notes and finding something that i had forgotten about, and it turns out to be a pretty good idea to work on.
It used to be pretty intimidating writing back then....cause there's only ten slots in the "top ten" and you can pretty much figure you aint gonna be one of 'em!! haha! and i never was!! Except around my house where i'm the best songwriter of all time!!!

The TakeOffs
"Kauai's Only All-Instrumental Surf Band"
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-TakeOffs/312866840587

Danny....The Beatles....if you weren't "the next Beatles" you might as well stay away from Hollywood. Imagine that for a second...if your band wasn't the next Beatles then get out of here. I can't tell you how many times i heard that which nearly stopped me from playing music altogether because i (we) knew then...there aint gonna be another Beatles!! Being from Berkeley, we knew better and our fans didn't expect us to be anybody other than ourselves, but when you got below Santa Barbara you better have a structured formula and it better sound like the Beatles!! You had to be pretty, sound pretty, look pretty, have pretty teeth, pretty hair and on and on.
"who were you trying to sound like back then?" For us, The Shakers, we weren't trying to sound like anyone...we were the first American reggae band to be signed by a major label and so i guess you could say we were trying to emulate the soundtrack to 'The Harder They Come' a Jimmy Cliff movie, and Hollywood just wasn't ready for us although they (Elektra/Asylum) did sign us in 1975 and tried to make us sound like bright happy shiny kids with a new beat!! They changed our sound so much that we weren't even the same act that drove down there!! I got so pissed off at Plotkin for making me sing these tunes that i didn't want to sing that i went crazy and threw a lot of stuff from my hotel room in to the swimming pool. He would say..."you gotta sing this one...i promise you it will be a hit" and he was a big producer and so i trusted him i guess and did what he wanted and for years i hated that record because it wasn't us. It wasn't what we sounded like and they wouldn't let us get a Jamaican producer and they did take the fun out of our chance to be something. This will kill ya...maybe...for our second record we got Bob Marley to agree to produce us if....we did a couple of his songs! We were in heaven and it was just what we needed to get that sound and credibility in the reggae circles. They turned him down. THEY TURNED DOWN BOB MARLEY AS A PRODUCER FOR US!! Chuck Plotkin said to me..."how many hits does he have?" Well, none but....and that was the end of that. David Geffen actually signed us in '75 and while we were on the road touring all over the U.S. in support of our first album "Yankee Reggae", Geffen left the company and Joe Smith from Warner Bros. took over the label and dropped us while we were still on the road!! I sold them the rights to my original songs on that album so we could finish the tour...$25,000.00!! Our first single was "Some Guys Have All The Luck" which was a great little tune but i didn't want to sing it...i wanted to do one of my originals instead and Chuck and i fought long hard on this one but of course he won. I remember doing the vocal for that and i was soooo pissed off that i just sorta blazed thru it...and did a harmony track...and then another harmony track and on and on all while reading the lyrics off a piece a paper!! Many of our recording sessions included guys like Glen Frey and other members of The Eagles and lots of heavy duty L.A. musicians who were there to check out the white reggae band from Berkeley and it wasn't easy to "perform" in front of these guys in the control room. Our engineer was Roger Mayer and English gentleman who worked with Jimi Hendrix and lots of English groups. Roger was cool. He knew what we were trying to do because reggae music in Europe was excepted with all other styles. I'll never forget the night we slipped a valium into Plotkins coffee and an hour later he was asleep on the floor of the control room and we got Roger to let us do a dub of one the tracks...Plotkin wanted nothing to do with dubs which to us were a huge part of our sound...we admired guys like King Tubby as much as guys like Bob Marley and it was all a part of who we were. We mixed up all that Jamaican stuff to create a sound of our own...and Hollywood took that away from us and basically took the soul right out of our music. So Danny, we weren't listening to..."The Doobie Bros? BTO? BeeGees? Abba?" we were listening to reggae music that i found on import compilations at Tower Records for $4.99. Then Rather Ripped started getting import stuff and it just took off from there.
I'm still pretty upset that they wouldn't let Bob Marley produce us....now that, to me, would have been something to be proud of!! So from 1972-2000 i was a reggae musician that wrote instros on the side. I always had and still have my surf 45's. I even did a soundtrack for a surf movie called 'Playgrounds In Paradise' in 1977 a film by Alan Rich but we fought about compensation and legal rights etc. and he wound up putting the film out with all covers of rock tunes!! Too bad...my songs were much better....he just didn't want to pay. So, reggae and surf...that's me!! My old friend Jack Miller always called my music "surf reggae"!! I like that.
For the record...Chuck Plotkin never mentioned passing out in the control room!! As stupid and dangerous as it was for us to do that....we always got a good laugh out of it.
You can hear that version of "Some Guys...." here:
http://www.myspace.com/theshakersreggaeband
It got to #17 on our local Bay Area charts in 1976. We wound up on the cover of Billboard magazine as a novelty act!! haha! Which i guess, in hindsite, we were. We did help turn America on to Jamaican pop music though, and i'm proud of that too.

The TakeOffs
"Kauai's Only All-Instrumental Surf Band"
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-TakeOffs/312866840587

DannySnyder

Ivan
I think it's really important to try different things during the songwriting phase, just mess around with it - but have your antennae up and running to the full extent to recognize what could be a cool new unexpected part for the song. Be SENSITIVE to what you're hearing! This is where recording yourself can be very helpful. I've had it happen quite a few times where I'd just be improvising, and pushing myself a bit, playing things that I'd never played before, and wouldn't really hear anything terribly interesting while doing it. But then I'd listen back to the tape (sometimes right away, sometimes days or weeks later) and certain parts would jump out and shout "I can be a song - work on me!" That's how "Moroccan Adventures" by the Space Cossacks and "Desert Drums" by the Madeira started, two songs I can think of right off the top of my head. Though sometimes it's a bit tricky relearning those parts!!

That pretty much sums up my songwriting technique, gotta have a recorder. My brain just doesn't retain music until it's heard it many times over.

I've found that this low budget hand held recorder is my best friend. For me a lot of times, stuff just comes to me-driving in the car, goofing around on the guitar. The melody line first, and then later maybe a certain bass line, or drum part. But, I forget things almost instantly if I don't record them. I've actually even called my own phone and left a guitar riff message for later. So I keep my hand held recorder around to get the fundamental melody line down. Then, I kind of work out the chords and take a rough demo cd to the rest of the guys in Reverb Galaxy. Joe, our rhythm guitarist, is really good at listening to what I have and coming up with ideas for the middle eight or transition parts. Jim, our bassist, and Joe a lot of times email me complete rhythm tracks (with the Dr. Rhythm or some other canned drums) and I get to play and listen to them driving around. If I get an idea, once again, the recorder comes out!

art

Surfcat

NEW - MARCH OF THE DEAD SURFERS (Released Oct 17, 2024) - Agent Octopus
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AGENT OCTOPUS - BANDCAMP](https://agentoctopus.bandcamp.com/)
SPOTIFY LINK - AGENT OCTOPUS - SURF

As long as I thought about "writing songs", I never did it. Later on I forgot about it, and over time, music just started coming to me. Not songs per se, more like riffs and short arrangements. So I'd play that stuff, and as more time went by, they became instrumental tunes.

The process itself, even how we refer to it, can be intimidating. So I'm a big believer in distracting yourself from that, take away the tension of it and just let stuff flow. Here's a real irony: I've been a writer professionally for many years, yet cannot write lyrics. Nada. This could be infuriating, but I'm choosing to be amused. Some day it'll fall into place if I leave it alone. YMMV.

Tim:

It's some sad sh*t, yes? I write all day long (technical writer). No struggle for me ... i've always loved writing. But make it a song, and I'm dead in the water. Not word one. Ha. All my songs are instrumentals. Some writer I am!

MD

synchro
I have the same problem. The best song I ever wrote was a Bossa Nova. I tried writing some lyrics for it but they were so sappy that even I couldn't stand 'em. They are still in my head and will stay there exclusively until I fall off the perch.

Forget sappy Bossa Nova. Think "a stick, a stone, it's the end of the road...it's night, it's death, it's a knife, it's a gun." Witty, dark stuff.

But back to surf tunes: somebody explain the secret recipe for a decent bridge!

SSIV

LHR
But back to surf tunes: somebody explain the secret recipe for a decent bridge!

Go to the IV.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

Last edited: Jan 16, 2009 15:23:44