hey

this is my band, we've been writing stuff for a couple months now, we're going into the studio in a couple weeks to record an album. We have a rough recording we made in our Drummers basement during practice on our purevolume

www.purevolume.com/icemanout

and we also have 2 youtube videos we recorded at our practice session! Our bassist is at school out of town, so he was absent in these recordings, but please check them out. I know it might not be the style of music you're used to, I don't even know what genre it is, so if you want to try to tell me go ahead. Thanks for checking it out !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1N_Dczjjkk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPihkzeSE4w

Tagged for later listening enjoyment. :)

awesome, good luck bringing your band into the limelight.

Me likes, though I can't see anything so I can't prove that the most handsome members are there ;>

Got any advice at songwriting?

as u can see, playing in the evening by candle light creates a more intimate experience.

But hmm the way we write our songs, either I (I'm the one on the left btw) or my buddy Chris (guitarist on the right) comes up with an idea, and we present it to each other.  We'll play that part over and over while the other person comes up with an accompanying part.  It's important to keep in mind that it's just him and I, the more people we add into the writing process, the more difficult it becomes.  So once we get one part together, we see where the song goes next and we just go piece by piece, and at the end we look back and change things that don't seem to work or that need to be smoothed out.

I've tried writing music a lot of the years, and the most important thing is chemistry.  It's like finding a girlfriend or wife almost, it's something inexplicable that just clicks.  We work really well off of each other musically.  Once him and I layout the entire song we'll bring it to our drummer and bassist and see what they say, we give them the freedom to come up with their own parts, and we'll give them some guidance if we are looking for sometihng specific.  We take their advice into consideration too, and change song formats or parts if they make any suggestions.

I don't know if any of that was useful, but it's just a gradual process, you have to come up with one good idea that you can really connect to, and just continue from there, always making progress, while at the same time, making sure what you previously did still fits in the new, always changing, context the song takes.

That was a really good advice. I haven't really tried to write music, just some lyrics. I have close to zero knowledge on music theory, neither my friend (the only other stable member on our 'project'). She only sings and has some lyrics too. Do you think it's important to have knowledge on musical theory? So far we only play covers.

 Lyrics are always a great start when writing music. It's good to have a centeral theme to have your music focus on, and lyrics will give you the basis to work on top of.  A lot of my earliest compositions, I would write out lyrics first, and would then write out music to accompany them.

 Covers are a great way to become comfortable playing with other musicians.  It gives you some experience playing together and is definantly worthwhile.  I don't know how far along you are on whatever instrument you play, but learning to play other musicians songs definantly helped me, esspecially earlier on.  It introduces you to new techniques and ideas that you can then implement into your own writing.

I personally took AP music theory in highschool, I have played various instruments since 4th grade, and I took a couple years of guitar lessons, so in that sense I am classically trained.  I would not say it has been completely worthless, but you can definantly go without knowledge in music theory.  The other guitarist, the one on the right, has never taken a music class or a guitar lesson in his life.  Knowledge of music theory can definantly help, but by no means is it necessary. 

I am a strong believer that a good musician is not determined by how fast his fingers are, how many notes he can jam into a short period of time, or anything of that sort.  It's about what you do with what you've got.  Some of the musicians I admire most aren't what I would consider the most "talented."  You just have to write something unique, honest, and true.  If your friend can only sing, try some different things with her.  There's a lot of cool things you can do with your voice.  What instrument do you play?  Don't feel like you need to be trained or that you haven't got enough lessons to write anything worthwhile.  It's about your mindset and your vision.  Taking the right approach to music, you can definantly write something beautiful.