How to write good music

What you have to do to maintain your musicality

Over the past year, I’ve been writing a bunch of crappy songs, bereft of majesty in melody as my earlier songs had. The key point to bringing back that musicality was very simple, but I had been too busy to see it. If I were to rate programming versus composing music, I would put them right next to each other. They both have a satisfying end result and a lot of effort that goes into getting there.

Thinking back a couple of years, desperate to find the correlation to making good songs, I remembered that when I had made those good songs, I was playing minecraft a lot. So, I decided to start playing minecraft. A week in, and I was still not able to make a good melody, let alone a chord structure to build it on. I created a castle or two, maybe even a game within minecraft, but simply using my inherent creativity was not enough.

I thought back again, and saw the simple answer staring me back in the face. It wasn’t just playing minecraft that made me make good melodies, it was what I generally did whilst playing minecraft. I used to be a huge consumer of music. If I liked a song, I would play it over and over again, and I would never get tired of it. A good song is a good song, but I guess my analytical mind would look at it, and tear it to pieces and then put it back together again.

As easy as it may be to put aside listening to music while you work, (especially in my job doing sound design) it is vital that you keep listening to good music. Artists that you stopped listening to years back, because they may provide good tips to creating your own music.