Unlocking Your Musical Creativity: Tips from Music Producer YBZ Vandr

Being a music producer of any sort, you’ll restrict the range of your musical ideas if you simply use a select few chords. For a more complicated and intriguing sound, try writing songs that incorporate all different kinds of chords, including major, minor, dominant, reduced, and augmented. But how to do so? Let’s hear it from YBZ Vandr. YBZ produces retro-inspired, sincere hip-hop tracks over generally guitar-based rhythms. He has done a collaboration with Jesus Honcho, a musician best known for the popular song “Infatuated” and a Gold Record Award winner. Both Lil Noodle and Gold Record Award winner Jesus Honcho have collaborated with YBZ on songs that have been made public. His song has received hundreds of thousands of streams across a number of platforms.

Make your beat distinctive

Many of the most memorable, well-known songs—from hip-hop classics to country hits—have a recurring rhythmic pattern. The next time you hear one of your favorite songs, pay attention to how the catchiest section of the song might sometimes be a funky or syncopated melody or background track, and then experiment with your own song’s rhythm, says YBZ.

Build the riff in your song

You may create riffs that serve as the foundation for an entire song whether you play the guitar, the piano, the bass, or another instrument. Riffs can make or break a song, as seen by Tom Morello’s funk-metal guitar lines on Rage Against the Machine’s “Bombtrack” and the Timbaland-produced synth lick on Jay-“Dirt Z’s Off Your Shoulder.” They are among your greatest available songwriting tools as a result, in YBZ’s opinion.

Create a song that you can perform live

As per YBZ, using their own home recording studios, composers may now build digital symphonies thanks to modern music production tools. When creating music, digital audio workstation (DAW) software is an excellent instrument, but you need also to consider how you can play your compositions live. You should make sure that your music is equally as appealing when performed live as it is when it is recorded because record label executives want to see how performers connect with live audiences.

Put your instrument down and go to writing

Common sense would dictate that you should compose music while sitting on a keyboard or strumming a guitar. This works well most of the time, but it could make you revert to clichés, which might put you in a songwriter’s block, according to YBZ. Put down the instrument, go outside, and jot down rhythms and melodies in your brain. Sing your smartphone’s voice recorder with your good ideas if you have any. Once you have learned how to perform them instrumentally, go back to your instrument.

Set a high bar for song structure

A song typically consists of an intro, a verse, a pre-chorus, a chorus, a bridge, an instrumental solo, and a coda or outro. Try to go beyond simply switching between the verses and the chorus when you create a song. Try using the standard song structure, which is verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus, at the very least. This structure is seen in a lot of popular songs, YBZ notices.

When creating lyrics, approach it with both structure and spontaneity

Early in his career, YBZ released music without thinking about whether or not it would be heard. As it gained popularity, he started to take it more seriously after treating it at first as a pastime. Artists like Lil Noodle began contacting him as his fan base swelled. He got to know him, and the two of them collaborated on a song after meeting in the city center of Chicago. In an effort to increase their fame, YBZ started producing higher-quality music videos and other content. He started producing high-quality footage and collaborating with seasoned industry videographers. It’s difficult to write lyrics, there’s no doubt about that. It’s not like a walk in the park. So, YBZ suggests planning out your lyric-writing process, but giving yourself room for exploration. Like a poet, you should learn to let the words come to you even if you have a general notion of what the song will be about or have chosen a song title and some lyrical concepts. You could discover that nothing more than the consonance and assonance of phrases causes you to gravitate toward particular passages. 

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Use rhyming as a technique

Song lyrics may be made memorable, coherent, and catchy by using a rhyming system. However, songwriters aren’t always required to use rhyme. Sometimes a rhyme cannot fully convey an idea; in this situation, focus on the concept rather than the rhyme. YBZ had an idea about all these concepts from a very early age. Since he was a little child, YBZ has always enjoyed building things. He started a little computer repair business in my neighborhood when he was just 8 years old. After learning how to code, he later produced mobile games that were uploaded to the app store. He finally discovered a passion for music composition because of his curiosity about computers and his love of music. When he was 13 years old, he started making his own beats. Soon after, he started writing and recording vocals to accompany those tracks. Growing up close to Chicago gave YBZ the opportunity to connect with other bands and business experts. To create music that connects with listeners and makes them feel that they are not alone in their troubles, YBZ works hard.

How to get beyond writer’s block

Changing up your creative approach is an excellent technique to overcome writer’s block. Do you often start with lyrics and then compose music? Try attempting it in reverse. Do you often play chords first, then improvise a melody over them? Start with a tune or riff and then put the instrument down. Try creating a song on an uncommon instrument or in a new genre. Leaving your comfort zone might inspire you to be more creative, YBZ closed the conversation on this note.