Voice-leading and harmony studies have been worthwhile; I just wrote a short etude. There's modulation and lots of tension-release. It will be fucking badass when applied to metal.

Pretty much got the hang of 7/8 and 5/4 time. Wrote a short song that contains plenty of 7/8 and 5/4 riffs, as well as a bit of 4/4. I guess I should try 13/8 next.

I also wrote another unrelated acoustic outro in 5/4, which was also my first attempt at dynamics.

going to demo out a bunch of old doom and sludge riffs for a new band and send them to the guitarist to see if he wants to develop it further.

Recording songs for demos. Juggling that with attempting to pay rent.

Know the feeling.

Money stress is not good for the creative side.

Hah, thanks man. Doesn't help that I'm 16.

Anyways, what I HAVE recorded so far is coming along great! Now I just have to finish WRITING the rest of the demo.

Getting a 4 track cassette recorder today, and going to record my powerviolence bands songs this saturday. We are also playing our first show on the 25th. Hopefully doing a split with a band I do bass in as well.

Does anyone else love to play with other people? I like just want to practice with my band because its really fun and I love writing songs.

when it is good people to jam with I enjoy it. I've played with many people that i've enjoyed greatly and ive also delt with idiots that made it terrible to deal with.

basically when it's good it's good and when it's band it's quit time.

wrote a couple of songs yesterday for a two different bands. going to scratch them out and then record the drums as well.

hey, to everyone in this thread, i'd say go check out the song challenge for a good time!

Ah that's good, at least something is progressing.
I moved out of home at the same time, it hasn't always been easy.

scratched out those two songs. changed up one a tad. disassembled the other song.

did vocals for a track. so at least I did something

I quit my job back in september to try my hand at music professionally, it's been really tight financially thus far, but I've learned a lot and things seem to be picking up. I have 40 piano students that I'm teaching, plus a number of other things on the go, such as:

I just joined a cover band playing 50's and 60's rock and roll (as a keyboardist) so I'm been really busting my blues/rock piano and organ chops. Learning 40 songs and drilling my left hand have done wonders these past couple weeks. Looking forward to doing some weddings, corprate gigs and such this spring/summer. Also been talking with a fellow putting together a funk cover band that is wanting to grab some slick bar gigs.

Landed a session gig composing/recording keyboards for these folk-rock guys in Northern Canada. They are on a government grant, and they are paying me for the preproduction (I write and record my keyboard parts at home, and they pay me per song I send them) and in late April they will be flying me up to their studio to record the track for real, and be paying me for that.

In my spare time, I'm working on writing/practising keyboard parts for my power metal band "Samandriel" and I'm seeking members to complete the lineup of my Epic heavy/doom band "Gatekeeper". Check the links in my sig for some samples of each. Samandriel released an EP last october with a good deal of positive reviews across the world, and we are writing our debut full length and also looking for a permanent singer. We also landed opening slots for Cauldron/Holy Grail, Woods of Ypres and Into Eternity this spring.

Gatekeeper as 8 songs written and recorded, and I will be putting them out as 3 separate releases (one single, a two-track split and a 5-song EP) once they have vocals and lead guitar solos. I want to get real drums recorded too, but the vocals need to come first. Speaking of which, if anyone is/knows a great CLEAN singer, please get in touch! gatekeeper[at]live.ca. I've been getting lots of emails from band members in groups that I like, as well as some festival promoters and label folks in Europe, so there seems to be a lot of potential in the project. I really want to get the music released this year!

Hopefully this will encourage some others on their musical exploits, both professional and otherwise. It can all be done!

Wrote a melodic All Shall Perish-deathcore/melodeath kind of song with a BtBaM-ish (think White Walls) outro, complete with a nice solo I improvised.

Very satisfied with the result!

Going to be jamming with some friends on this long in the works doom project. hopefully it starts rolling quicker now.

At the moment learning Fates Warning's ''Point of View''. The solo is a bit complicated, but really fun to play. Right now it's going well, although I can't say the same about my fingers. If I'll play a lot more, they'll probably start to bleed again.

well, i've finished the song i mentioned earlier in this thread

moving onto another one... should be psychedelic, somehow sludgy (in the vein of Neurosis.... but i want to use some early Soundgarden )

got back from jamming it went extremely well. we starting up a weekly practice and already have two skeletons of songs.

Been experimenting with Drone / doom, it's good fun very unrestricted.

Just finished writing a short and simple post-black metal song in the vein of Alcest, Dopamine and what-have-you. It was easier than I thought, but somehow it doesn't move me as much as the above bands do. Damn. Back to tech thrash...

Nonetheless, I would love to jam it out with my pal. (Post-)Black metal is pretty much the only genre he can pick up a riff I just made up and learn it in a few minutes. He can't most of handle my thrash riffs :/

My powerviolence band Bedsheet (Changing the name to Dusted Cop Punch) is playing our first show this coming Friday and today (saturday) will be our second real practice. Got a lot of work ahead of us.

Slicing my brain to write song for my 2 bands and 1 solo project.

For my Death Metal band http://myspace.com/kalabian
for a non-metal side project
and for a Prog/Jazz/fusion Solo project.

jammed with a friend yesterday. his drumming leaves much to be desired.

Been coming up with a few guitar parts for an ambient shoegazey post-black metal type thing. Going for a kind of Agalloch feel.

And writing some stuff for a new pisstake project - a crap metalcore band about Charlie Sheen. Lots of samples, and breakdowns. Breakdowns everywhere.

I showed some of the more complex Gorguts songs to my music theory teacher. She has done big band stuff as a saxophonist and got a jazz background. In addition to that she plays guitar, drums and piano and knows I don't know how much theory. She liked the rhythms a lot.

Been running low on inspiration lately, so I haven't made any new riffs. I have, however, managed to arrange some of my older riffs into a groovy little Decapitated-ish tune that ends up becoming Krallice tremolo-wankery. Weird stuff; need to work on it more.

I also wrote fragments of lyrics on the bus home. Not really satisfied with them.

Now tabbing out Dark Angel's TDNH to see whether it really has that many riffs.

Well, first of all, I started being more active in these forums.
I've been working with various projects, one being Old-School Progressive Death Metal with a couple of friends of mine, Me on low tunings of guitar, we've covered Nile songs so far.

My main project is Temple Theory, We are a 4 piece power/heavy metal band with me on vocals from St. Louis. We are recording professionally in early April. As for today, we have a show that we will be recording for the StL music scene to see who we really are.

That's pretty much it, I've also started work on a Symphonic Depressive Black Metal project called Akoros.

Oh, and I'm 16.

Right now I have nailed sweep picking (well, I can do it cleanly) and now I'm working on trying to apply it to my song writing. If anyone has advice for this, please help, me, but i think I'll learn it eventually

Right now I'm working on finishing up a random song that belongs to no official "project" with a friend. I'm a huge fan of Summoning, and he's a huge fan of folky melodeath, so we're attempting to mix the two styles. I've tried my hand at writing Summoning type stuff before (did it for a song competition on here, actually), and hopefully this will actually pan out more and have vocals / guitars by the end of it. I'm pretty excited for it, though.

Aside from that, the only thing I've really been focusing on is recording some stuff for my death / doom project Salvo. The bassist / vocalist and I just moved so we've still got a bit of equipment unpacking to do, not to mention we don't want to irk our new neighbors right away, but we've got a lot of material panned out and I'm curious to see where it'll go.

@ Grimmig: Sounds nice. It's a great feeling, knowing that you've got some great stuff up your sleeve and almost being able to get started with it and see where it goes. Any chance you guys are gonna take that "no official 'project'" to the next level anytime soon?

Currently working on the track for the MA Songwriting Challenge. University is very hectic right now, so my other bands/projects are in the freezer for a couple of weeks, apart from the rehearsals, of course. That shit should always remain consistent.

Does anyone have a good cure for (music wise0 writer's block? I'm in a rut, fellas

I've just completed an ambient/depressive symphonic EP.
www.myspace.com/damnumanimus

Well, depends how things go, I suppose. I've been working a lot on the production aspect of things so I'm hoping to get something that sounds pretty good. The two people I'm collaborating with (a vocalist and a guitarist) are in a band together already, and I only know them through the internet, so if it works out the way I plan on it working out it might be something we'll do every once in a while.

Also, you've reminded me that I totally lost my old rehearsal space. Not that we play live anyways.

Ok, cool. Not sure whether I'd dig it myself as the combination of styles you mentioned could lead to many different sounds and I have no idea which would resemble your work best. But, it'd be cool nonetheless if something you really enjoy would work out. It's a good thing, in my opinion, that you've been working a lot on the production. Good production is makes the music way more enjoyable and it can open quite some doors. Labels often seem to care more about sound quality than the quality of the music itself, which actually is a shame. Either way, I'm starting to ramble. Hope things work out well. Perhaps let us know up here if you guys finish some tracks?


That won't hurt, then, especially if you work via the internet. Although rehearsing is a lovely thing to do, regardless. I suppose finding a new one wouldn't be too hard if necessary?

Try listening to more different bands and get inspired, I guess.

don't try to go in to writing something specifically for ingeneral.

if you try to force it you will seep into that writer's block.

better to compose something completely outside of what you are normally writing for. and while composing for that something will slip out that can be used for your original project.

Will do! Actually the only reason neither I, nor the other guy who also posts on MA, entered the newest song competition is because we all wanted to do a song together. I figured it was my first time working with this vocalist and I didn't want to force lyrics on him or anything. Should have it finished soon. If you like Summoning, it's definitely more on that end of the spectrum than melodeath. The little melodeath influence is from bands like early Amon Amarth, Insomnium, Kalmah, and the like. So, what I'd consider to be "good" melodeath. We'll see how it works out though.



Oh no, not rehearsing with the internet band is fine. iamntbatman and I know each other in person though and practice together for a project, so that's a bit limited. Finding practice spaces is a tad difficult here, though.


Also, for the inspiration thing, I agree with SLK, don't force it. Just sit around messing on your guitar, or whatever you play, and let it come to you. Or just go on a music listening binge for a while and see if that helps.

1) Rehearsing with Space Vikings... we are getting more gigs than I anticipated!
2) Finishing up the Space Vikings demo.
3) Doing vocals for the Alas, Tyranny full length.

A whole lot of fuckin nothing, unfortunately... I still play my guitar, write when the mood strikes me, but I'm about a year and a half away from being done with a military enlistment, which doesn't really allow one a whole lot of free time. Once I'm out, gonna go back home and get a band up and running again. All the guys in my old band are off doing different shit now, I don't think they'd be interested.

I'm currently learning the ropes of guitar. In addition, I'm getting quite decent at tremolo picking. I hope to get a black/thrash band started up soon.

recorded some improvised neanderthal death metal with a friend of mine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1x9YSoJ2zE