r/askmusicians

I can slowly figure out notes one by one, but I consistently forget there's a key signature involved and then get frustrated when I can't tell what's wrong. Does anybody have any advice on how to improve without driving myself mad?

The other day, I finally decided to start writing music after a year and a half of learning music theory up to grade 3. I've gotten stuck immediately, which is to be expected, but I'm too frustrated to unstick myself alone.

1. I've got basic chord bashing, but I'm stuck on the same five-ish chords and can't come up with any new ones.
2. I find it incredibly difficult to stick to key signatures or to even remember to take them into account.
3. I can't come up with all the little single notes and such to put between chords. I don't really know how to explain it, but it's just all of the little things pianists do that aren't chords.
4. I find it hard to come up with a melody that really sticks. One that even sounds like a melody. It just has no zest.

Please be patient with me! I'm still very new to taking this whole music thing seriously or doing any songwriting! I'm sure there's someone out there eager to publicly execute me for making this post, but if the answer is obvious and logic simply failed me, just know I Tried My Best.

The first time I tried music production, everything felt way more complex than I expected. Plugins, mixing, theory… it all hit me at once.

I didn’t have much time to begin with, and trying to learn everything before actually making something just burned me out. I ended up quitting before I made anything I was genuinely happy with.

The second time was pretty similar. Life got busy, I fell off for a while, and somehow getting back into it felt even harder.

I’m still trying to stick with it this time 😅

Curious what it was for you guys — was it the learning curve, not having enough time, losing motivation, getting overwhelmed, or something completely different?

Classical violinist, I want to play other styles (with excellence as the standard). I have a very good ear but am completely stuck when it comes to improvising! Once, just for a laugh, I turned my violin round and played as if I were holding a cello, and the notes just came naturally… I have a cellist colleague who improvises like a god, and when you ask him what he’s playing, he replies: ‘I don’t know.’ I’m deeply saddened to be so limited in my favourite means of expression, after all those years at the conservatoire. All that for this. Where should I start, please? I want to know who I really am in music. It’s burning inside me, and I’m terrified of dying having missed out on my life.
P.S.: I’ve just turned 30 and I feel like my life is over

Translated with DeepL (https://dee.pl/app)

I wanna start writing songs but I struggle to be creative and make the words sound interesting or poetic. For example in the song lonely avenue it goes “now my room has got two windows, but the sunshine never comes through” which is a clever way to convey depression and loneliness. If I were to try to convey those feelings the best thing I could write would be something like “since you’ve been gone the nights have felt so long” which doesn’t really sound as poetic or clever. How do songwriters think that way?

I have been playing open mics for a while now, and I am ready to make the leap to more "proper" gigs. I don't mean huge rooms, I just mean non-open mic, scheduled shows at say a coffee shop. I've looked up a lot of advice on here about how to approach venues, and of course all of them say to include links to your music.

The problem is that I like to record full-band music, so that's what I have to share. But I don't have a band right now, so I am looking to book shows as a solo artist. What's the best way to handle that in the booking email? I could ignore the recorded versions entirely, but they sound better than the handful of phone-video solo live clips I have. But in a very short email, it's a little clunky to say "Here are some full-band examples of my songs, but I am looking to play these songs as a solo act." What would be a good way to handle this?

Love that tune... can't tell what instrument is being used.

I feel I can write pretty easily in terms of taking my guitar or keyboard and coming up a progression or writing a structure down but I’m terrible about getting myself on ableton over the week to actually record. Feel like I’ll never drop anything just because I can’t keep a consistent fire of it. I’ll work like 4 days consistent everyday and then 2 days I don’t and the flame dies for it. I want ideas of how hard I should be working for this to happen

I’m new to all this and I know metronomes are easy so don’t judge too hard but I need help. Started writing my first song on guitar and I don’t know how to figure out the BPM. I tried using a tempo tapper but wasn’t sure where to tap exactly. Is it on every strum or what? Stupid question I know but please help.

I've dreamed of being in a band for a long time. I sing in the shower and sing in the car. But I'm deathly self conscious without liquid courage to say it mildly. Two weeks ago, I was at a party and my fiends were playing and somehow I got on "stage" (corner of the basement) with them and somehow belted something out. It felt so freeing. A couple of guys there have been texting me to do stuff with their band, they sent me music and wanted to hear me do vocals over it. I've tried countless times but I honestly can't stand my own voice.

It FEELS like this could be my moment. But fears are creeping in. People laughing at me. Laughing at my lyrics (I have notebooks full of twisted poetry). I've actually performed on stage, its not absolute stage freight, its self consciousness about my voice and I guess baring my soul.

I even had to make a new account to ask this because my friends know my real account.

I assume everyone here had to battle stage fright and self consciousness initially. Maybe you still do? How did you power through it? Your break through moment maybe?

i really hope i'm not posting about something super common and annoying or whatever, but i'm kind of at my wits end here and sort of need advice.

i've been writing music on my own for almost like 6 years now, and i genuinely love it. it's probably been the most meaningful thing in my life. like, i taught myself how to write from what feels like the ground up, i spend the majority of my day making music, that's how much i love doing this.

but, recently, whenever i try to put anything together, it feels like i'm just bashing my head against a wall. i can never finish anything!! it's not like i have much issues coming up with ideas - i was getting pretty burnt out a while ago so i kind of just stopped doing anything with music and eventually i came back to just messing around on my piano, which is going well but it's like. all those ideas never go anywhere. i spend maybe an hour or two putting something together on my piano, i record it on my phone, but as soon as i transcribe it into a daw it's 30 minutes of what feels like the musician equivalent of rolling an eraser up and down a desk until i give up for my own sanity.

i dont know if its perfectionism or whatever, but i just feel so paralyzed whenever i try to take any idea past a rough sketch. i have been feeling like the things i write are way too basic recently, so maybe it could be that, but i dont know. i can sketch things that are complex enough to be interesting to me, but i cant follow through with anything - not even the things i used to be able to write.

i apologize if this is maybe a little all over the place but, man. i just miss being able to write without having to care so much about it, and i honestly dont know what to do with myself other than wait and hope i get better one day.

anyway. if you guys have any advice or techniques for working past creative block or whatever this is, i would genuinely really appreciate it.

I am a musician, music producer, and songwriter currently facing writer's block. How do I deal with it?"

Guys, I need help

I was just curious because I’ve seen some bands make their bassist their secondary vocal while some made their drummer secondary. Or could most musicians can comfortably sing while performing if theyre good enough regardless of their instruments? I play drums myself and i just cant sing while playing it

A friend of mine finished a song recently and I watched him go from being super excited about it to completely buried in release stuff.

The song was done. Recorded, mixed, changed a million times, listened to until he probably hated it, then finally approved. Then suddenly he was making artwork, clips, lyric content, figuring out posts... basically another project.

At one point he said, "I think I've spent longer figuring out how to promote this than I did writing the chorus."
Which honestly made me laugh because... yeah lol 

I've been experimenting with a few different approaches to the visual side, mainly because making short promotional clips can become tedious pretty quickly. One of the things I ran into was toneframer, which helped simplify that particular part without adding much extra work. It also got me thinking about whether we're creating more content around each song than we really need to. Stil tryina figure this stuff out tbh 

The algorithm seems to be the thing we need to impress, I guess. And content is apparently how you do that now.
How do you guys decide when enough is enough? At what point do you just put the song out and get back to making music?

As the title says basically...

Little bit about me for some context.

I'm looking to sing, move on from just enjoying singing along to songs in my own time and to make it something I can continue to pursue in a serious (read, regular) manner. I'm not going to be going into this with dreams of stardom. I just want to enjoy myself and go wherever that leads.

I grew up with and therefore practiced singing a lot of metal songs. I'm not professionally trained. I would sing with headphones on and try and match my tone to that of the singer on the track, which seems to have steered me reasonably well since when I've sung Audioslave's like a stone in front of people, I've been asked if I'm in a band, so I must be doing something right?

I appreciate this isn't a fantastic resume.. but I feel this would be a great outlet for me in a time in my life where I need that.

I'm in Bristol, in the U.K.

Any advice on where to look to pursue this would be appreciated!

Much love

So, there is a song I'm working on that has taken me all day to get the vocal take correct and I have finally settled on one and I am worried that I am going to listen to it and then just immediately find a mistake in it or something, but I also never want to sing my song ever again. How do I learn to just let go and go with the take I have instead of reworking the lead vocal for the rest of my life?

I want to preface this by saying that I like the people in this band and i would like to keep playing with all of them so leaving is not really an option im considering at the moment.

I sort of ended up in the band by accident but i really clicked with the drummer and guitarist. Playing with them is really easy, we come up with fun riffs and when we’re jamming we can easily coordinate everything without even looking at each other. the instrumental sections of our songs are fun to come up with and play.

it’s a completely different story with the singer. they honestly sound like they just started singing despite being in the band for almost three years at this point. they’re absolutely oblivious to any kind of music theory, can’t come up with their own melodies and seem to actively avoid singing in the right key.

unfortunately they’re the person who started the band and until i came in the vision for the music they wanted to make was very different (think very simple noise punk) and when i came in me and the drummer started naturally making more complex and heavy instrumentals which everyone liked but the singer can’t keep up and doesn’t seem interested in trying to improve due to their insecurities.

i like playing with these people and we’ve come up with some really fun instrumentals. the vocals are severely lacking and some of us are frankly a little embarrassed to perform live with this vocalist. we’ve tried pushing them to get better but at this point the options seem to be essentially an ultimatum and a serious conversation about the future of the band