How to write a good rock song - Part 2

"Write the lyrics first"

Today I talk about the second option of how to write a song. This option is called "write the lyrics first".

Writing lyrics is like I've already discussed in the chapter a month ago one of the most difficult things in music. In my opinion, lyrics should always content a message. Besides this content, the matching of the lyrics to the melody is as difficult to achieve as the content's message itself. Therefore, it is sometimes easier writing lyrics after the melody, sometimes writing lyrics first creats the melody by itself. What does that mean?

Take our song Your Valentin for example. Here, I wrote the lyrics before the melody came alive. While writing the lyrics, the content drawed the picture of the melody construct. Again, it's about the sound picture. Telling a story or creating a message gives you an idea of this picture. While writing those lines, you maybe already feel the whole song with its melody. If that happens, a good composed song is for certain. Sadly, the hardest part about this way is still the writing. The way you write effects the whole song.

So I advise you, if you weren't a phantastic story writer, don't pressure yourself to write lyrics first. That doesn't mean that if you have a clear picture about the content of the lyrics in mind, you should't try to write lyrics first.

Sometimes, you write lyrics and aren't able yet to creat the melody. Years later you recall the written lyrics and then it happens. The melody comes and so on. Or even better, you jam a melody and your back up lyrics match perfectly to it. Keep trying writing lyrics. The more you write the better you get!

In conclusion about option to write a song, I recomend to keep writing lyrics that way but never push and pressure yourself it to happen. Let it decide to faith, maybe you succed, maybe you don't. And still, having a big back up of good written lyrics can be very useful for future song writing. 

In the last section, I talk about the last option I call "the wake up session".

In the mean time, stay tuned and take care.

Enjoy Seasplash!

How to write a good rock song - Part 1

"Let the jam get you to your song"

Writing a song happens per occasion or planed. However, there are three different ways to create a song. First, you jam a song. Second, write lyrics first, then compose a melody. The third option is what I call the wake up session.

Today I present you the strategy of jaming. This means simply just to jam the hell out of everything you've got. Sometimes your drummer has a heavy fast beat to which you're playing along with your guitar. Or the other way round, you play some nice riffs which lead you to the melody. The drummer then just needs to find the right beat. While jaming stuff happens and developes itself, even to a nice melody. Our song See the Rain came alive using this strategy.

The nice thing about jaming is that you can creat really fast a nice melody and a song picture. Let's take a deeper look on this song picture. Analyzing the jam and define what it means and what kind of song you want it to build up to should be the first thing to do after jaming. After that you may go further and start coloring the picture with choosing the structure and instrumental composition. Choosing the right instruments isn't easy. Sometimes you tend to play the song with a hard driven guitar, but in time you don't like it anymore so hard and try a smoother accoustic guitar. This is a process that developes over time.

Still, having done this step, the hardest part in this strategy is writing the lyrics. Like I've already described the post before, writing the lyrics to a jam is in my opinion really hard. Sometimes, I tried and tried to find the right words or the meaning of the lyrics but didn't get where I wanted it to be.

You might have been laughing about my description above about the picture of the song. But writing the lyrics is easier while immagining the song's picture. So the match between the mood of the song and the lyrics is essential and even more garanteed.

At the point where the lyrics are written and the melody stands, you need to make adjustments for the match of the song. After this step, it's a cakewalk to finish the song.

But the most important advice I may give to you about this strategy is that you should always take a step back if you don't succed for the next step and try differently.

To me, this strategy is the most difficult in writing a song, though it has its advantages.

In the next section, I will show you the strategy of having the lyrics first. Until then, take care and stay tuned.

Enjoy Seasplash!

Album Seasplash

How to write a good rock song

Within the next three month, I will give you a little expertise of what makes a song in total good and give you some tactics to write a good song. To the occasion of our record release, I make some examples with a couple of our songs from the record.

In this section I want to talk about the criterias which make a song to me actually good. To state clear, I always take the perspective of a musician and not a customer.

To me a good song is a song I can hear all the time and never get sick of hearing it over years. Of course there aren't a lot of songs like that. But quite a few exists. For example one of my alltime favorite songs are ”I'll be there for you” (Bon Jovi), ”Nothing else matters” (Metallica) or ”Can't help fallin' in love with you” (Elvis Presley). But what makes these songs to me so perfect.

First, they share all a lyrical message. Sure these mentioned songs are all love songs. But their content of the message is something I understand, I feel what is intended to say and know the feeling. That means a good song needs to get you lyrical.

Second, the kind of how the song is structured. Of course basics are always intro - vers - chorus - vers - chorus - solo - chorus. But sometimes it is cool and a freshly diversification to structure a song differently though the majority of songs you'll write will have the basic structure. So the structure in these three songs are different than the usual. ”I'll be there for you” for example has got three different vers structures, ”Can't help fallin' in love with you” is totally different than the basic structure. ”Nothing else matters” differs at the end with the solo part and the outro. In sum, a variety of structures in song composition makes a song compared to the majority unique and interesting.

Third, the melody is to me the core of a good song. A melody should be easy to listen at, be recognized anytime and immediately, and have the potential to want you to sing along with it. Well, compositing a beautiful melody is not too difficult because mostly it's about for to six chords which are arranged just differently for each part of the song. Take our Song ”Red Roses” for example. The chords for the verses are C - Am- F - G. Instead the chorus takes the same chords but just arranged else (C - G - Am - F). So the melody is actually simple. The important factor though is how you arrange the instrumental part around that simple melody. Take a clean or accoustic guitar for vers, add drive for the chorus. As a singer, the most important instrument is the vocal. To close the circle to the lyrical aspect, a good rock song depends on how a singer matches its voice to the lyrics and of course the melody.

This matching ist the fourth aspect. Out of a song, you should be touched of what the words ment to the singer. The instrumental part and the melody supply this feeling. So it's the part of ”I'll be there for you” where Jon and Richie start to sing: Baby you know my hands are dirty. That part gives me always creeps.

Sure, everyone has its personal view of a perfect song. But the aspects of these good or even perfect songs are those I tried to point out.

On the way to create a good rock song, in the following sections I will show you some tricks and give some advices to get you to write a good rock song.

To be prepared, check out our record on

Seasplash-The King of Death

Cheers to you and stay tuned

Enjoy Seasplash!

Record Seasplash online available - Story behind the scene

A few of you know that Seasplash is working on its fourth record. When the first record, named Seasplash, was released in phyisical form, the guys tried to distribute it by themselfs. Besides the fancore who bought the record, not much was yet achieved. Still the band kept moving on writing new stuff and some other records were done, but again not professional distributed. Therefore, Seasplash has created a new social network to inform and to reach people from all over the world.Though, this announcement is not really new but its the first commercial step that Seasplash makes. Be a part of it!

That's why we announce the first release of Seasplash's record called Seasplash on iTunes, Amazon and many more.

Check it out and enjoy Seasplash!

Stay tuned for upcoming posts.

Online Record Release on March 25th 2016

Dear Seasplash-Fan

We finally managed the release of our first record. Though we had a lot of handling with the property and rights. We are really sorry for that. But the day comes. On Friday March 25th 2016 you are able to buy our first record online. The record is saled on more than 250 online stores. If you don't find it somehow, please contact us directly and we will give one's eyetheeth to make you a satisfied fan. 

Thank you for your loyality!

Stay tuned for more posts. 

Enjoy Seasplash.

Gear Rig - Seasplash FOH Gear Talk

Front of the House Gear Talk by Seasplash

Now this is going to be our last gear talk. Just announcing this already, we will continue this blog with a post about latest news in the world of instruments. So we will give you here some expertise about some instruments like guitars and stuff. And by the way, if there is someone who wants an opinion about an instrument or has a question, just write an email at info@seasplash.ch

Coming back to our rig talk. Since the early years, we've been working with analog stuff by Yamaha. Yamaha proved, at least in our work, the stability and quality their gear has because within almost 10 years we never had any problems or defects with the gear. That's why Yamaha has been a solid and economically priced label to work with. 

Getting back to the real issue here, our FOH rig is actually quiet simple. We use a analog Yamaha MG24/FX mixing console (16 mono Inputs, 4 Stereo Imputs, 4 Busses, 2 Effect-Busses, 6 Aux, 1 Mono-Master, 1 Stereo-Master) that goes into a 31 graphic EQ of dbx, which in turn runs into a Yamaha P-5000 Series amp. Amplified, the signal goes either into two Yamaha 215 CV speakers (those for greater gigs) or into two little 112 CV speakers. Both types are built solid and sound incredible. 

Having described the signal routing, we'll show you more specific how we manage the mixing parts. Yes you heard right, we mix our shows by ourselfs because we haven't found the right man yet who knows mixing better than we do. However, each channel on the console is occupied. You'll find a Input-List bellow. The majorety of channels has inserted a compressor, limiter, gate or expander. The label and types we use for the effect processors differ, but most we use Behringer compressors / limiters. In our experience, you only need to limit the peaks of the channels to make a clear sound but keeping the dynamic of it, so a solid working limiter is all you need. Behringer does its job there. Now following the channels chain on the mixing console, we equalize every channel carefully. Since the MG24 has got a 3 band eq with a frequency pointer for mids in addition, we only cut bass frequencies out and find by turning up the gain knob and searching with the mid knob the worst frequency and gain it slowly down. A tip, cut out every bass frequencies below (100 - 120 Hz) in a live mix for each signal which isn't going into subwoofers. Therefore, make the crossover between subwoofer and top frequencies between a bass frequency you don't need. We actually cross about 90 Hz.

In our experience (without a separate mixing console for monitoring and without a mixer) adjusting the monitors for each member is the worst part about mixing. Sometimes, flexibility is needed to make the monitoring right, sometimes, you need more monitors but have no aux-chanel left and so on. We learned to work with 6 Aux-channels to monitor our stuff (also listed bellow). Fyi, all our monitor channels are leaving the console after the fader level. This has the advantage not to edit again the monitor signal that goes out. 

Now, what's really great about the MG24 is its effect-processor. We have two busses to send for each channel an effect, where again, we can adjust the channel signal with the effect. The two effect we use the most, are reverb and delay (sometimes we use distortion for vocals). With the effect-busses we can adjust the volume of the effects right away. Besides, we can also adjust the level of any effect on the aux-channels. That's pretty cool, because Michel for example loves when he hears his voice coming with some reverb or delay.

Our philosophy in mixing is, make everything as easy as you can and prepare adjustments well to be fast making them. So, we actually summarize drums and instruments on two stereo subgroubs (which are also inserted with compressors / limiters). Therefore, only the voices are going directly into the stereo-master-fader. If adjustments have to be done, we only need to move 6 faders instead of 20. 

What makes our FOH gear in addition professional, is the fact that we are able to click out the speaker - amp system and click in into another speaker system. Depending on the location and the equipment of the location, we can set up our own whole FOH rig or only bring the mixing console with the racks and click in, adjust the signal of each channels (because the mics work more or less the same) and adjust the EQ-processor suitable for the room. That's all.

Once again, we hope you enjoyed reading our rig talk and hope to see you soon back on this site.

Stay tuned and keep rockin'

Seasplash

Input-List

1. Michel Vocs (compressor - reverb - delay - stereo)

2. Julien Vocs (compressor - reverb - stereo)

3. Talk Box (compressor - reverb - sub 1-2)

4. Mesa Michel (limiter - sub 1-2)

5. Line6 Michel (sub 1-2)

6. Mesa Julien (limiter - sub 1-2)

7. Randall Julien (sub 1-2)

8. Acoustic Guitar - DI 2 (compressor - reverb - sub 1-2)

9. Acoustic Guitar - DI 2 (compressor - reverb - sub 1-2)

10. Bass Guitar - DI (compressor - limiter - reverb - sub 1-2)

11. Kick (gate - compressor - limiter - reverb - sub 3-4)

12. SN Top (compressor - limiter - reverb - sub 3-4)

13. SN Bottom (gate - limiter - reverb - sub 3-4)

14. Mid-Tom right (gate - reverb - sub 3-4)

15. Mid-Tom left (gate - reverb - sub 3-4)

16. Floor Toms (gate - reverb - sub 3-4)

17./18. Overheads (gate - sub 3-4)

19./20. High-Hat / Ride (sub 3-4)

21./22. Stage-Piano - DI (limiter - reverb - sub 1-2)

23./24. Aux-Input (stereo)

Aux-List

1. In-Ear left (reverb - delay)

2.  In-Ear right (reverb - delay)

3. Drum Monitor

4. Vocs Monitor Michel (reverb - delay)

5. Guitar Monitor Michel 

6. Spare output