Originally Posted by: srpianojrguitarok. i have to say something. I suck at guitar. probably cuz i ve ben plyin the piano too long. but ive figured out something. I can play the piano pretty good, but im not really good at writing music for it. not true for the guitar. a lot of the times, i have no idea of what im playin on the guitar, so i just play random stuff until i hear what i like. Then i try to add to it. I then take the notes, and play them on the piano, and turn the one note notes ive been playin into chords, and then i play those on the guitar. I was wondering. is that how anyone else writes music? or r u guys just really good at that sort of thing.

That's kinda how I do it. Whenever I play in standard tuning, I can't make up songs. I try, but I just end up playing power chords and simple bluesy riffs. If I tune my guitar to some weird tuning I've never used before (or just detune it so that each string isn't even right on a note), I can come up with some really cool stuff. It's the same on say, a mandolin. I know the tuning of a mandolin, I just don't know the instrument well enough to know the notes I'm playing as I play them. In fact, it's exactly the same on a piano for me.

I've figured that my key for writing songs is to have no idea what the notes or chords I'm playing are called, because then I can just focus on the sound rather than think something like "Oh, I'm playing a G, an A should come next." Then, after I've got the song written, I go back to standard tuning and see if it's any easier to play. It's usually not.

So in a sense, yeah, that's how I do it. :)