funny songwriting stories anyone?

V

v01c354nd51gn5

Awakenings
Dec 18, 2003
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does anyone who's ever written a song have any funny or ironic things they encountered while writing it? ... just off the top of my head i can think of 2.
1.) a few months ago me and meedleyx10 were thinking of a chord to finish off this phrase in a calm section in a song, and i played something on my keyboard, that fit real well, and we tried it out and really liked it. i kept hearing it and thinking i'd heard it b4 somewhere, but i couldnt think of where, so i let it go. then i realized it was the first 4 notes to the guitar part of Dont Fear the Reaper by blue oyster cult. (thats the *need more cowbell* song for all you SNL watchers out there) so we quickly changed it and haven't talked about it since.
2.) just today, whole band minus our singer, working on a part i'd written today for our new song, and meedleyx10 kept messing up, and we could figure out why. we thought he couldnt keep a straight beat or something. (he can keep a straight beat, infact he's a really amazing guitarist), so what we were doing was putting a guitar riff kinda like what romeo does in the solo section of Of Sins and Shadows underneath the solos, (pretty much every prog metal band uses it) and it sounds amazingly awesome in our song , until this one part where it falls apart. turns out that that riff only works when the time signatures are in constant even times, like 2/4, 4/4, 6/4, 8/4, 10/4, etc. well our's is phrased as three bars of 4/4, and one bar of 3/4. so the guitar riff would always come out sum'm like an eigth note or a quarter note earlier than i did on drums, playing the usual drum beat for that riff for the three 4/4 measures, then straight 16ths on the bass drum and accenting certain 8th notes with the snare and crash cymbals for that 3/4 measure. so we all feel really dumb now and its all worked out. dont worry, its all under control. ...just feel REAL stupid. :erk:
... not so much funny as ironic and making me feel stupid, but i KNOW others have stories. c'mon. :Smug:
 
One of my first songs was composed in a toilet. It's called Dream Gathering and it's available in MySongBook.com. Really funny.
 
well, i had written, recorded, and released my solo CD... done-deal, out the door, in people's hands.

so one day, i'm having coffee with a coworker/friend, and i realized i hadn't listened to ARK for a while. So I stick in the "Burn the Sun" CD, and as the opening vocal line to "Heal the Waters" comes on, I said, "Oh F*CK!!!", and she says, "Yeah, that sounds like your song."

I guess that intro "whoa-whoa-whoa" vocal riff got stuck in my head without me realizing it, and then months later, it sort of got regurgitated out into my song. The rest of the tune is "ark-like" without being a copy, but that opening vocal line in my song is a little too similar in feel for my taste.

But it's too late to change it now...
 
I was on a higher level of conciousness one day, and thought I had come up with the most badass melodic black riff ever, and so I quickly incorporated it into a song I had, and everything was perfect, but the riff seemed so good that I knew I couldn't have written it myself. It was quite familiar... so I listened to it carefully for a while one day, and it was about 95% identical to the riff at the end of "Kings of the Carnival Creation" by Dimmu Borgir :(
 
I wrote the intro to DT's A Change of Seasons (but in E). It had the initial clean part and then the heavy part, only that was in 4 instead of 7.
A couple months later I started getting into DT and needless to say, I was pissed at them for copying my work ;)


I also wrote a groove while shoveling dog crap in the back yard, which turned into a fusion-esque tune for one of my bands, which we titled "Blue Shovel"
 
SevenString said:
But it's too late to change it now...
Click to expand...
:loco: !! That's funny. I said, "Oh F*CK!!!", and she says, "Yeah, that sounds like your song."

I remember when George Harrison got in big trouble for "My Sweet Lord". I felt so sorry for him. He had "He's So Fine" in his head when he wrote it.
What can you do if you have so many musical influences?? Shit happens. hehe.
 
I'll try and think of a few to contribute. Sometimes my bass player and I get sleep deprived and funny stuff happens. But I COULD tell about the punk song we wrote when we were doing a show with all punk bands.

I introduced it, "Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a big fan of punk music, so one time Colin and I wrote a punk song just to show how easy it is."

*C, G, A, F powerchord progression*
"Let's go!" (All high-pitched and girly)
Then there were some lyrics about buying shoes at Pac Sun, and something about a girlfriend's picture on the floor and getting dumped.
The next part is "Hardcore punk." It was the same thing only really fast and this horrendous screaming and yelling over it.
Next was the screamo section. Turned off the distortion and played the powerchords real quiet. Our singer came up with really funny lyrics off the top of his head.
"My girlfriend left me, she said 'Too little too late'
'Cause all I did was play 3 chords on my guitar and skate.
'Cause I'm a punk, I rock. I'm a punk, AND I SUCK!"
Then horrible screaming over quiet powerchords.

Sad thing was... all the punks in the audience were actually rocking out. *sigh*
Yeah, pretty stupid, but it was entertaining at the time.
 
Hahaha... I'm glad someone appreciates it. After that day, some of my friends didn't talk to me for like 6 months. But I suppose if they made fun of power or neoclassical, I'd be pissed too - although they do all the time and I just kinda take it in stride.
 
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