The creating process is connected to the music you listen to. At some point of my guitar playing, I only played a couple of Megadeth songs, just because I liked them so much and it turned out to be quite developing for my technique, but eventually I felt that I need to taste other rhythms and melodies than this. In a moment, the songs I played most frequently turned out to be boring and I didn’t feel like it’s broadening my mind to listen to them or play them anymore. I discovered that many bands tend to focus the essence of their music on rhythmic riffs, like the one mentioned above (of course there are some exceptions), meanwhile other bands, like Iron Maiden or Avenged Sevenfold, have their lead guitarists, who carry songs on with melodic lead guitars and dual harmonies. Once I noticed it, I said to myself: “Well, they divide it into two options, screw that, I’ll pick the number three.” I can’t even explain, what my “third option” is about, because it’s what you feel you want in a song and it’s personal and subjective and you would do it on your own anyway, WHICH IS THE POINT! You have to figure out, whether you’d want a song to be riff-based, make it have lead parts, or maybe something brand new we haven’t heard before? Also, it’s worth mentioning that, let’s be honest – a big deal of songs in EVERY genre comes down to starting a song with an intro, introducing the first verse, then you have chorus, then again a verse with a possible breakdown, then you go back to chorus, now you can throw a solo in, it just gets really boring and overused. I think this also might be what keeps you astern, so just go crazy with proportions and your song structures. It completely changes the way you thing about music. I’ve also found out that playing to jam tracks with odd meters you’ve never played with helps you think ahead and you kind of learn that rhythm and metronome are MADE to alter and experiment with them. When I write songs or riffs, I never truly am loyal to scales and I love adding weird half-measured endings. Animals As Leaders is a perfect example of how far you can musically go, making it less and less like-everything-else. Don’t be afraid to make it progressive. Listen to a lot of bands, genres, don’t you dare making it boring to yourself. Make it senselessly contrived at first, then, step by step, go in the direction of making it simplier, easier to understand. And remember not to go too far in complicating your own songs – out of the two, the guy who says more by doing less is better than the guy who does the complete polar opposite. Let it make sense in the end. If you don’t put that beast of creativity you have in your mind in a cage, but also instead of letting it go nuts have it obedient, one day or another, you’ll end up making a song comparable to Exist or Master of Puppets. I hope it helped, good luck.
