HOW TO START AN EDM SONG, 7 WAYS TO GET YOUR IDEAS GOING
This is probably the hardest “how to” I ‘ll ever have to write.
Starting a song is such a random process for me, I’m not entirely sure about how many songs I started in my career, but I’m sure about one thing, I have never followed a specific process to start any of them.Some producers have a specific formula; others are just so good at writing music that they’ll fiddle with the piano or a guitar, write some chords and then work on the whole production around that.
In my case, as I said, it’s mostly random; however, there are a few recurrent situations that helped me get started with a song, and this is what I’m going to focus on today.
1) FIDDLING WITH THE PIANO & PIANO ROLL
Most of you know I’m not a musically trained guy (not proud of that), I don’t know what’s going on musically when I’m playing, but I have a good ear, I can tell what sounds good, and I know my way around the keys a little be so I can write chords and melodies.
I started a few songs from scratch this way but surprisingly, not as many as you’d think.
Something that has definitely been more successful for me, however, it’s randomly putting notes in the piano roll until you get something fun, could be a rhythm could be a neat sequence of notes that inspires you to write the rest of the melody, it depends, but it has done wonders for me in the past.
2) LISTEN TO LOOPS AND SAMPLES
Hasn’t worked out for me a whole lot; however, I know producers who built their entire career off of doing this.
Sometimes a sample gives you the right input for an idea; maybe it’s the chords, the rhythm the flow, inspiration works weird ways, and you’d be surprised how easily can be sparked.
3) BROWSE THROUGH PRESETS
Not notably different from listening to loops and samples; however, in this case, you are the one who has to play the keyboard.
I found browsing presets to be very inspiring when starting a song. Depending on the preset, you should already have an idea of where you should be playing your keys, from there you can start randomly playing melodies and rhythms and get into the flow.
Out of all the ways I’ve been starting my tracks, I would say this has been successful a fair amount of times.
Check out our presets and samples HERE if you need some inspiration.
4) RECORD YOURSELF WHEN YOU HAVE AN IDEA.
I’m pretty confident every single person reading this experienced at least once having an idea while in the shower, at the gym, while doing groceries or in a million other situations that have nothing to do with actually making music.
You should NEVER let an idea go so always be prepared to record whatever comes to your head, have quick and easy access to a note recording app on your phone (on my iPhone is right on the first page, and I also have a shortcut setup).
Sing your idea and the possible variations that you hear in your head make sure you have as many information as possible in that recording; you’d be surprised how easily you forget what made it a cool idea when you are playing back the recording in the studio.
Out of all the tracks I started this has been so far the most common and successful one.
5) USE CHORD GENERATOR PLUGINS
A tool that has been helping me a lot with starting new ideas is Chtullhu by Steve Duda / Xfer.
This plugin is great to put down chords quickly, get the foundation of the track, and then build the song around it.
Alternatively pretty much every DAW now comes with a chord generator, but I find Cthulhu to be the most fun and thorough.
6) WRITE ON TOP OF AN ACAPELLA
When you are lucky enough to have a publishing deal, it’s not surprising to receive top lines or song ideas that you can then turn into full tracks; however, if you just started, chances are you don’t have a publishing deal let alone access to songwriters and singers.
Well, fear not! I’ve seen plenty of top producers starting tracks by writing chords and melodies over acapella of well-known songs that are available on the web.
Now bear in mind, the acapella should only be used as a guide to writing new chords that have nothing to do with the original song where the acapella comes from.
Once you wrote some chords or bass lines or melodies you are happy with, get rid of the acapella and build the track around what you put down.
7) BE IN A CREATIVE SPACE
I ‘m going to be more thorough on this subject in the future, but it is ESSENTIAL to be in a place that inspires you when you are trying to make music.
The biggest misconception is that the only place where you can make music is your studio, and your studio has to look like a spaceship and as pro as possible, FALSE!
I made parts of the drop of my track with KSHMR neverland, in the kitchen, the breakdown at the airport in Iceland during a connecting flight, sitting at a bistro.
I have a beautiful looking studio, very inspiring, yet, most of the tracks I made, I started in the kitchen (true story).
So find a place that it inspires you and make music there no matter how silly it might look, and if you have limitations on where you can work, make sure you pimp your place up, candles, mood lights, art, pictures, and plants, you’ll be surprised how little things like these can boost your creativity.
CONCLUSION
As you can see, there are no specific formulas to write a song, there are many ways to trigger inspiration, and every trigger is unique in the way it occurs.
The most important thing is that you are ready for it when inspiration strikes, don’t save it for later act upon it as quickly as you can, and if you can’t, make sure you record it somehow, just don’t let it go cause you never know what that idea that you didn’t record could have become.
David SKIES
