Help with song writing. (Page 2 of 3)

first, go to lsdjguides on youtube and watch every single video.

then i'd say, take it one piece at a time. start with drums. google stuff like "basic drumming" or "basic drum beats". check it out on youtube. you'll learn the basics like, put the kick drum on 1 and 8 and put the snare drum on 4 and C. then you can randomly place hi hats anywhere you can fit them in. if you do that, you should have an okay drum beat in a few minutes. change the tempo around.

then, when you program your melody, just stick to the following notes - C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C

if you do a bassline, don't do anything super fancy and just stick to the notes - C, F, G, A. and make them last a long time, like an entire phrase or 2.

that should give you something resembling a song pretty quickly. then you can experiment with changing things up later.

I was being a little sarcastic before   Only a little.  There I go again.  Anyway, I didn't have time then to leave an actual response, but here I go.  Just try and stop me now.

It would do you some good to look up some basic theory, but since I'm such a nice guy I've done it for you!  I'm assuming that, since you're just using LSDJ right now, you aren't really looking to be able to read notes on a staff but more likely just be able to put them together to create decent sounding melodies/beats.  I would suggest, as others have, picking up even a cheap keyboard and learning how notes are laid out.  It gives you a really good visual representation of the notes and you can physically count up notes from your base note to see which notes are in a scale.  For instance, a major scale is Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step, Whole Step, Whole Step, Whole Step, Half Step.  It is very easy to see this on a keyboard.  Anyway, go to this site:
Music Lessons
You can either do them in order or skip around.  The most important things for you (assuming you're starting from scratch) in regards to LSDJ alone would probably be:
Note Duration
Measures and Time Signatures
Steps and Accidentals
The Major Scale
The Minor Scale
After this, it wouldn't be a bad idea to move on to Intervals and Chords, which will help as you get more advanced.  Just do all of it, really.  It's valuable stuff.  Don't expect it will all come in one day, though.  Have some patience with this stuff.  It can be confusing.  Just keep at it, and you'll be writing some sweet and even complex tunes!  Cheers!

EXPLAINS A LOT.

yeah -- to a certain extent music theory can only help you codify what sounds good in your music. everyone points to music theory because it's a reliable way to explain to someone WHY something sounds good but honestly the best way to do it is to learn the theory and then APPLY it to music you listen to; otherwise, it's just a bunch of letters and numbers that don't mean anything.

so as far as learning how to compose, I would listen to a (ONE (SINGULAR)) song and deconstruct it all the way down to individual components mentally or on paper. just concentrate on tones and rhythm; forget about things like audio effects and such. also concentrate on separating musical lines so that you can follow one pattern all the way through the song (and if you can't do that, just try and separate the melodic lines from the bass). you don't even need to know what the notes are -- just trace a line that represents how high or low the tone sounds TO YOU as it plays out across the song. if there are any parts in a line where you're tracing the same pattern, chances are you just stumbled across the whole bass line for a certain section. try to make it a song that you've listened to a lot: this way you're already familiar with it and you can concentrate on doing the exercise (if the deconstruction is too hard, you probably picked a song that was too difficult).

chances are this is going to be kind of difficult. this is where the music theory helps. once you can separate the melodic/bass lines into tones, you can start talking about them and why an E sounds good after a C or whatever.

but the most important part (and why I wrote that stuff above) is to learn how to LISTEN to other music so that you can deconstruct it and figure out why stuff sounds good. after you are able to do this then you can borrow the concepts, add your own little flair and then GET BONUS:MUSICIAN ACHIEVED. and if it's proving to be really hard: welcome to musicianship 101 (it took a long time for us too)!

don't worry that you are doing something wrong, there is no right or wrong way to make music

you really don't need help, what you need is practice kk

keep doing what you are doing kk

I'd get any kind of instrument so you can doodle melodies without having to mess about with lsdj first. I suck at writing too, and I rarely have a melody in mind before I start making music, and tend to just go with what comes to me. I too have no musical background and the main problem in writing for me is/was chords, not just getting them to not sound horrible but also getting them to fit with the mood instead of just finding what sounded like a chord and going with it. I think the main thing that helped me with writing was finding my exact taste in melodies/chords and channeling those styles into my own. I hope this helps, but then again I am a rambling fail of a musician and yeah the whole looking at .savs thing