help

hello im new to this site and this is my first post can anyone help me. i can usually come up with half decent riff and stuff but when i go to record it as a song i cant come up with a decent structure can anyone give any advise on how i could improve my structure building? :o :)

What I did years ago was drop in the library and get a few books on songwriting. There's some really good ones out there that take you through all the different structures. There's certain formats like AABA, ABAB etc...
and certain 'rules' to follow when writing lyrics like first and second tense, past and present etc.. and not randomly switching mid stream.
Once you know the 'rules', you feel a lot more comfortable breaking them.

In agreeance to what Schmange said... It's important to know that stuff, but it's not essential. I don't know all the technical terms of writing songs and such but I've listened to enough music that I know how to structure a song and how not to. Listen to some of your favorite songs and see how they're structured. You'll find that they're pretty similar most of the time. Also something I like to do is read lyrics to some of your favorite songs... then you can really see the structure of the song. Sometimes songs are so simple lyrically but they make them seem more complex through changes in chord progression and solo breaks and bridges. Just get a feel for what is out there and check out some books. good luck!

wicked ill pop down to the library tomorrow and see what they got cheers
:D

I really like odd songs, the whole ABAB thing is great,but I really love songs that are varied, where you have to listen twice to try and identify the chorus, or when each verse has a completly different riff or melody...you know what I mean? Listen to Junesong Provision or Everything Evil by Coheed and Cambria and you'll see what I am talking about.

"How to write songs on Guitar" by Rikky Rooksby is a really good book. One thing that I like about him is that he is really against pop music and how there is no substance to songs now a days. The book has a lot of chord diagrams as well.