creating new music

[stevenmando]

I ask a new question how do you create new music is it taking segment from music that was before and finding new combinations or is it hearing the music that is in you or a little of both. Some times i can hear music and I can hear it with mandolins instead of the instrument that it is playing, like right now I hearing OLD MAN RIVER and I can hear the mandolins instead of the voice that is singing , I can see the strokes with the mandolin and the strings that it is being played on is that how you do it ?
steven http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif

[Jeffers]

It took me ages to come up with any of my own stuff! There are so many wonderful songs out there that I used to hear and say, "I wish I could write that!"

I think you can interpret music you hear and play it any way you want (Crazy Train - Yonder ... Wow http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif ). I think there's definitely a knack to coming up with your own stuff. I find that every now and then, especially if I've just been playin on my own without listening to too much other music, a little series of double stops or something just grabs me. And sometimes if you grab back it just takes a life of its own ... all of a sudden I'm humming a melody and the chords are based on that. Then I puzzle over what it sounds like subject-wise and try to work out a few words to fit, et, viola!

OK, maybe it's not always that easy but sometimes it is - and I think the best songs I come up with are the ones that WERE that easy.

All attempts at sitting down and trying to write the next number 1 have failed. All attemps at sitting down and trying to write a song with the same sound, feel and meaning as "You must've had your reasons" (Yonder again!) only different have likewise failed.

My theory is that there are songs inside you but they only show there faces when they're good and ready - and you have to try to recognise it when they do. A little inspiration from life events can help! Maybe they're not the songs or tunes you originally wanted to write but they're you none-the-less.

I could go on all night (can you tell? http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif ) but this is turning into a bit of an essay and it's gettin late. Not sure if this is all relevent but I feel like I was asking the same question a couple years ago and this is what I've found since then! And yes I am a big yonder fan!

[Randy]

Hearing an existing song in a new way is the art of arranging. It's Dolly Partin taking her song "I Will Always Love You," and turning it into a perfect fit for Whitney Houston.
Creating, writing, composing a new song...who knows where that comes from. You'll get as many theories as there are writers. A gift from God, a phrase "borrowed" from another source and reconfigured? I've been writing since '67 and sometimes I'll play a chord structure that just leads to a song. But who knows where it comes from.

[John Flynn]

I have played music for 30+ years and had never written anything. Recently though, my old-time band played at a festival in Ozarks and we camped out. The first morning, I got up at sunrise when everyone else was still asleep. I wanted to practice the mando for our performance, but I didn't want to wake anyone, so I took my mando about a quarter mile down the road, where I had this beautiful view of a mountain and a valley with the sun coming up. It was reallying stunning. I ran through the set, but a couple of completely unrelated licks just kept running through my fingers and they seemed to kind of hang together. I decided to go with the flow and see what happened. After noodling around for maybe only 10 minutes, I wound up creating an original old-time tune that really seemed to express how I felt seeing that view. I named the tune after the mountain, "Little Yeoman." BTW, "Little Yeoman" is also the brand name of a micro-brewery whose property we were camping on. The owner is a fine banjo player who I had jammed with and whose beer I had sampled liberally the night before. That may have been part of my inspiration also!

[mandodebbie]

When I was a child/teenager ( I was learning guitar ) I used to write my own music and lyrics. I thought everybody did that.( Well, nobody told me I was special - just an oddball.) I never got a career, however, as I never met the right people, etc. And as I got older, I discontinued my creative practices to enter the real work force. I now can no longer write songs. In retrospect,I guess the art of writing music was a gift from God. But as the Lord gives, the Lord can taketh away. If you don't keep on working at it. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

[steve in tampa]

I recently read this in an article about Hank Williams:

"Country music is three chords and the truth"