Getting ideas for writing your song.

Some tips when you're not "inspired".

 You won't always wake up every day with a brilliant song in your head, most of time you'll have to work hard to get somewhere. These are some  methods you can use.

• JAM!

Very obvious but jam until you bleed if necessary. Sometimes you'll get something right away, sometimes this will take hours and even sometimes you won't have a thing.
 Be ruthless with your ideas, keep only those with value and work with them until you feel you have "something".
 Try different approaches of the same thing(different rhythm, extra/less notes for example) to ensure you're not missing a better idea.
 Make sure you're in  mood to play, otherwise everything will sound "meh"(This happens way too often).

• Hum or whistle

 Great way to brainstorm, you can do it anywhere, anytime. Very useful for chord progressions and melodies. Want to improve your humming?. Beat Box.
 You can have a portable drum to work while humming. A basic kick and snare sound it's all you need. 
 I personally make heavy metal and beat boxing helps me a lot. I can set a tempo and write drum patterns  really easy and quick, even sometimes I do it while playing guitar (instead of humming) to make a good jam session.

• Listen your favorite bands/artist/composer

 Before jamming listen a few songs from a band that you like to inspire yourself, this doesn't mean you have to redo the song, you just want a little push to start working.
 Influences are very important, in fact everybody begin by imitating their idols, later you develop your own style, your own sound. 
 Be careful about cryptomnesia happens when you think you did something original but is not, you heard it before but you can't remember it. More info here: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptomnesia.

Equalizers learn to love them(Basic)

Get better sound quality with a simple EQ.

The picture speaks for itself. Want to boost the bass kick?, move the bass up. Want to boost the snare? move the Mid up. Wanna boost the hi-hat?, guess what, treble up. 
 It's that simple but very effective. I usually "draw mountains" to get a smooth sound, nice and clear. 
 You can use EQ on anything, guitar, synth, piano, voice, etc. Try different parameters and hear the differences. 
 Pro tip: No need to boost all the way up, a few decibels will do the job. 

Making drums with ezdrummer and cubase.

This is how I do it.

• Right click to open the contextual menu

• Select Ezdrummer (you can use alternatives like virtual drummer if you like).

• Hold right click on the white zone and release on "draw".

• Left click to draw a single bar.

• You can edit Ezdrummer (Drum kits, Volume, etc).

• Change the snare, the kick, the crash or the whole set if you want to. (pro tip: Turn off humanize).

• Close the vst interface and double click your bar to open the piano roll.

• With your draw tool you can put notes on the piano roll and this is what you need to know

C1-kick
D1-Snare
F#1-Close hi-hat
G#1-Foot hi-hat
A#1-Open hi-hat
E0-Crash 1
G#0-Crash 2 
E1 to C2(white keys only) - Toms (lowest to highest)
This are the most important keys but you can check the others.
Change quantize(Upper right)  to use 4th notes, 8th notes, 16th notes, etc. When you need it.

• This is how a REALLY basic drum pattern looks like:

1st beat: kick
2nd  beat: snare
3rd beat: kick
4th beat: snare
on top of each beat add a hi-hat.
Once you have finished close the piano roll (grey x under the BIG red one)

• Hold ALT and drag your bar to copy it.

• Like this!

 You can edit each bar individually. 

• Experiment with patterns.

• Create dynamics songs with them. (This is not a good example :P)

That's how I do it(except I use a lot more bars).
But wait there's more.

• Click on inserts(left sidebar).

•  Click on some empty space and Voilà.

 You can add Reverb, EQ, distortion and more.

• Use this inserts to create a very realistic drum sound(Warning: real drumkits still are better).

Very important last words: Have fun experimenting!.

Be original!

Always!!!

Some rules I like to follow are: 

• Don't repeat yourself

 If you feel you did something too much (like chord progressions, riffs, solos, etc) stop immediately and start all over again until you have something different.

• Try new rhythms

 You got a cool progression there?, good. Now try playing it with triplets or  mixing some 8th and 16th notes, experiment yourself for a while.

• Silences please!

 Silences are more important than you think, use them wisely and you'll get a nice dynamic. You could create a cool suspense atmosphere and then --- BOOM killer riff came out of nowhere.

• Verse-chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus is bad for you

 Let your imagination fly and create intro, bridges, outros, instrumental sections, anything that makes your songs different from any other generic pop song. Music structure is very important.

• Use different scales

Minor scale, major scale and pentatonic are very useful but what about some others like the Spanish scale, chromatic scale, Arabic scale, diminished scale etc. They exist too and you can use them whenever you need. Try different modes like Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian to get extra flavor.

Grand opening!

HELLO!

I made this blog to share some tips about composition, mixing and more. I'll take requests too, if you need some help.