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Creating a song is often confusing if we have to work together with another Band personal. There would be a lot of different song ideas origined from every brains since they have their own inspirations. It’s hard to construct a band with a close relationship between each player, so we have to bottom line that a band is similar with family, also a real brothers and sisters. Therefore, some managements will be helpful to rule the song creation, this allow us to analyze what we have and haven’t done yet with our creations. I often involve my band in a song creation, and based on my experience, there are four steps we need to arrange a song. Here they are :

1. “Song Characterization” phase

This phase is not the begining of song creation, it’s just purposed to have each players character mixed. Here, all musicians gather to make some warming up by playing certain chords and then improve it as we like, this process could be said as a personal recognition between players. There are no rule in this phase, it’s just for having fun and to share happiness in playing music. This process spend about one hour intensively.

2. “Take a Break” phase

This process is far from music activity, it’s purposed to increase musicians friendship after we pass the “song characterization” phase, anyhow, a band is like a family. Time spent is filled with having dinner together, tell a joke, share about girlfriend/boyfriend, playing cards, and more.

3. “Song Making” phase

A song is initiated with idea that has been made before by one or several persons. Each player must appreciate it, so they need to hold their own ideas for a while. After that, the main idea is introduced to another players to be evolved and perfected. This phase is divided in three sub-phase, they are :

1. Chording; is to determine the basic chords of a song. This was created before by idea owner, all he/her has to do is to make another players understand and enjoy the song with a simple plan.
2. Jamming; is to evolve the basic chords into more improved chords by playing it over and over. Then, all players evaluate what they have done and make a better composition. It’s important to understand that every improvisation must be related to the main idea.
3. Sequencing; this is a result from evaluation above (jamming) to get a standard arrangement. The masterpieces need to be recorded to the audio media to avoid it forgotten.

3. The last is : “Song Perfectionating” phase

This phase is done by performing the new created song in a real stage or music studio, casually I bring some listeners to get their responses. Their opinions can be vary, and could be our new song needs to be fixed in some parts. If this happens, we have to review it again and repeat the steps from the first above unlikely.

The steps mentioned above must be written into a big paper and sticked on the wall, so everytime the players gather to make a song , they will implement the rules to manage the process. Song is a precious product of musicians, and every great product has had a good management, remember that we sell quality not quantity !!

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