I hope I am not the only one with this “issue”, but whenever I pick up my instrument (most of the time guitar) with a specific genre or style in mind, I struggle to write just something like that.
To give a little background info: I listen mostly to blues rock, hard rock, and alternative/garage rock I’d say. But for the longest time my music leaned more towards the blues rock side; slower (e. g. 80-100 bpm), very focused on the blues scale. These days, I want to create songs more in the vein of Guns N Roses, Van Halen, Motley Crue and the like but I struggle with the general feeling of those styles.
What are your tips regarding this? When I look up some actual songs, it’s just I-III-IV power chord stuff or basic pentatonic scales again. So why do my powerchords not sound like that as well? Phrasing it that way makes it sound ridiculous, but I hope you get the point. It feels like I am missing the point that distinguishes let’s say sleaze rock from classic heavy metal. Maybe I’m m overthinking it but it annoys me that my writing process seems to be very trial-and-error.
I’m not sure if this will be of help since I don’t listen to/write 80s-style hard rock/metal tunes. But generally speaking, I’ll learn a couple songs from my favorite bands in the genre(s) I want to write a song in, and then experiment with different chords and keys until I get something original that I’m happy with. I’ve picked up on a handful of techniques that I’ve since started to employ more in my own songwriting from using this method the last few years, and it’s really satisfying once your noodling starts to click and you belt out a more-or-less complete song out of nowhere.
YMMV of course, and you’ll probably still wanna work on your material with other instruments and musicians to really round it out, but that’s what’s worked for me.
Sounds reasonable, I guess I have to sit down and do a considerable amount of covers again. I am really no fan of learning covers if I don’t want to even play them live or something, but I guess its the process here that counts. Thank you for your reply!