Are your “songs” nothing more than a collection of riffs, clichés, and cookie-monster vocals? Tired of people hitting the “next” button when your song plays? Here are some ideas to help! Get Trey’s Metal Songwriting course here: https://howsongsaremade.teachable.com/p/complete-rock-and-metal-songwriting-2?coupon_code=GLENN2&affcode=1172991_se2x–i0
0:00 Combatting Boredom With Better Songwriting
1:41 Write Shorter Songs
3:54 Enough With The Riff Salad
5:32 Guitars Are Not A Song
7:07 Trey Xavier Songwriting Course
9:03 You’re Doing Too Much!
11:01 Sing & Harmonize
12:18 Enough With The Lyric Clichés
13:38 Hooks
15:03 Final Words & Endscreen
About Spectre Sound Studios:
I’m Glenn Fricker, engineer here at Spectre Sound Studios. I love making records, and after doing it for sixteen years, I want to pass on what I’ve learned. On my channel you can find tutorials on how to record guitar, bass, real drums and vocals. There’s reviews and demos of tube amps, amp sims, drums, mics, preamps, outboard gear, Electric Guitar, Bass Guitar, and plugin effects.
We’ve covered Moon on the Water, played Bias FX, given you the absolute best in Stupid Musician Texts, ranted & raved about bass guitar, and this channel is where The Eagle has Landed.
Everything you’ve wanted to learn about recording Hard Rock & Heavy Metal can be found right here on this channel!
I also respond to your comments & questions: The best make it into the SMG Viewer’s Comments series of videos. Loads of fun, lots of laughs.
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"I am not a great songwriter" – guy telling people how to write great songs
I'm gonna stick with Trey for this. You are, by your own admission, no authority on this topic ?
Please outlawed the use of the word "subside"
Lyric cliches are my biggest pet peeve, and something I’m pretty adamant on avoiding when writing lyrics. Running from your demons, haunted by the past; shit like that is almost cringey at this point. Glad you brought that up Glenn!
I'm not a musician but I love great music. I fell in love with Dream Theatre with Images and Words, but over time they tried to "become more metal" and I think it ruined their sound and uniqueness. Now a days I find bands like Avantasia fill the void. Stratovarius was another group that had these phenomenal epic tracks. They knew how to make an intro and build it into a masterpiece. While a wankfest for sure, early Dragonforce was pretty good. High energy music, very hooky and tons of varying elements. Unfortunately, they did not age well.
Awww man the Super Crush 100 isn’t in the background anymore ??
Write shorter songs? Make shorter videos.
This is my new favorite YouTube channel.
What’s Moon Knight salata?
all right but why are you screaming all the time, its boring, ahh?
Ngl, I am guilty of the long songs
I mean I want a piece in the middle where the instrumentals get to shine and then I easily exceed the 4 minutes I intended for the song
But luckily I have managed with 1 song that's 8:21 to put hooks right at the intro, between the pre-chorus and the chorus and at points that the whole song is changing, just to close it off with something that the audience has heard already in the song
And ngl modern metal genres really can't deliver that kick in the face as well as oldschool metal genres
And yes, writing lyrics is hard
I tend to prefer lyrics with meaning or a good story, but it's hard to get there
Everything else I'm not very guilty of
I agree we already have one suicide silence we don't need 500 more
Love it Glen, it's been my philosophy for years "if you can't say and do what you want to in 4 minutes then it's too much"
So many are concerned with buying 4k+ custom guitars and just shred….no rhythm, just taking solid songs and trying to shred over covers.
Guitars ARE songs.
Some of these can be boiled down to "stop trying to be Dream Theater or Rush". (I love them both, but prog has gotten weird)
He said go listen to breaking the law
Your Metallica and Bob rock.i know that makes you proud to hear.your welcome
Why not just string together several "butthurt comments of the week" as your next song? ?
Great pointers! Coming from a 'riff salad' kind of band (Hellacaust) I appreciate your take on the topic. The new project I've been working on is definitely taking a less is more approach to song writing.
Im a hard rock player (not full blown metal as most people here), but one of the humbling lessons I learned was playing in a pop band where actually I had to cut my solos to 15, 20 seconds…. and honestly, the songs are great, crowds love them, chorus are catchy. One of the lead writer philosophies was ''strong hook, the rest is just to support it''. And it damn works, that guy can write great choruses and the structures just point toward the choruses. No long solos, no long intros, dont bore us, get to the chorus.
I ended leaving the band because I miss playing heavier rock, which is my thing… But I honestly believe the guys are on the right track to something great, songs are just that good.
Glen, love the videos, but only two months before uploading this video, you had your video about sounding unique, where you said “don’t stop at the 3 minute mark” and then proceeded to talk about how much of a masterpiece a 10 and a half minute Led Zeppelin song is.
I’m just conflicted, 3 minutes good or 3 minutes bad? Simple good or simple bad?
I am totally offended
Does anyone in these comments train vocals with Ken Tamplin?