Okay, now I’m waiting for an EZDrummer sale!

penningtron wrote: Sat May 18, 2024 8:47 am Yeah, writing solo is more difficult, but that is also what makes it a good exercise. It's worth forcing yourself through the process even if you don't want to share the final results (but you might!) It will make you a better, more empathetic collaborator in your main bands. I got real tired of working with people who write solely from their own perspective, not considering how boring the bass or drum parts for their songs are to play.

When we would write songs together, I liked how you would power through ideas to arrive at a better place. That's a skill I picked up from you.

Gramsci wrote: Sat May 18, 2024 9:43 am Okay, now I’m waiting for an EZDrummer sale!

Toontracks almost never has sales. However... You can purchase software licenses from people who want to sell. Toontracks allows this, I've bought drum packs this way. Check eBay or Knobcloud. Another one is buying from Thomann. They usually have it cheaper than others and they don't charge tax. I saved about $80 on superior drummer this way.

Also thought of the notion that good vibe/groove/melody/arrangement is way more important than good lyrics. Which is a bummer for me because I feel that I've written lots of great lyrics to okayish songs.

cakes wrote: Sat May 18, 2024 12:39 pm

Gramsci wrote: Sat May 18, 2024 9:43 am Okay, now I’m waiting for an EZDrummer sale!

Toontracks almost never has sales. However... You can purchase software licenses from people who want to sell. Toontracks allows this, I've bought drum packs this way. Check eBay or Knobcloud. Another one is buying from Thomann. They usually have it cheaper than others and they don't charge tax. I saved about $80 on superior drummer this way.

Awesome. Thanks for the tip!

losthighway wrote: Sat May 18, 2024 1:22 pm Also thought of the notion that good vibe/groove/melody/arrangement is way more important than good lyrics. Which is a bummer for me because I feel that I've written lots of great lyrics to okayish songs.

I thought about this statement and there’s a lot to unpack. Like, who’s saying that good lyrics are less important than the music? Most of my musician friends and music fans I know would say lyrics are the thing that makes a song deeply connect with them. And yeah, I don’t doubt there is a large listener audience who might not connect with music that way, but is that significant to how you produce music and your motivation to do it at all?

Also, what are “good” or “bad” lyrics? I guess on one end you have Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands and Copperhead Road and over on the other side there’s Cheeseburger in Paradise and songs with the word “Placenta” in them. But between those are 95% of songs where you never know what’ll land with people or not.

I dunno, I’m not trying to dissect your statement or anything as much as say keep writing and focus on the aspects that you value. It’s super hard putting lyrics out there but just doing it is brave and artistically meaningful.

^ Your skepticism is wise. The way these different facets intersect is how our favorite records were born. I suppose I think my take is better demonstrated by a friend's Bandcamp page more than a heavyweight like Dylan. Like "the tune with the awesome riff, the catchy bridge and that great drum part" is probably going to move you more than a meandering dirge with a notably sharp metaphor.

These kinds of cake vs icing arguments are probably dumb for me to make cause we all know we want quality across the board. I once read an interview with Bob Mould where he unflinchingly stated he knows he's an excellent rhythm guitar player, a good songwriter and a merely okay singer. I thought it might actually be good to know the stats on the back of your own baseball card like he does. I think I gravitate towards my strength as a writer and make statements about these things just to kick myself in the ass and work harder on the other areas.

I've only ever written lyrics to a handful of songs. The stuff I come up with usually makes me cringe when I read it back later. I guess that never stopped Bernie Taupin though.

I rarely pay attention to lyrics in songs anyway. I'm way more invested in chord progressions/melody/rhythm, in that order.

This all works out now that I'm in an instrumental band. Our process is pretty collaborative. I'm pretty good and writing an A and B part, but the C part always eludes me, so the other guys are good at fleshing that out once we sit down and work through it.

I've probably only written maybe 3 songs over the past 20 years on my own top to bottom where I felt like, "yeah, that's finished." Everything else has been a riff or two workshopped with a group of people until it became good enough to perform and/or record.

Gramsci wrote: Sat May 18, 2024 9:43 am Okay, now I’m waiting for an EZDrummer sale!

https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=43

Is good for s/hand vsts. I'd really recommend you go for ezdrummer3. It's far easier to use than 2. The grid speeds everything up for me.

cakes wrote: Sat May 18, 2024 12:37 pmWhen we would write songs together, I liked how you would power through ideas to arrive at a better place. That's a skill I picked up from you.

Thanks! I learned it from playing in a metalcore band early on that would just ruthlessly edit their songs week to week. It was annoying to me at first because I would get used to and attached to ideas, but it always made the songs better in the end.

There's kind of a fine balance of inspiration and detachment, and ultimately it takes work. It would be unsatisfying at this point to just mash parts together and call it done.