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A lot of keyboards have demo beats preset that you can use casually to aid in composing melodies and such. For me, the songwriting process generally comes before developing the beat of the song - the melody comes to me naturally, and I develop the rhythm under it as I fiddle and experiment and record. You don't need to necessarily start at a specific place in songwriting: just play and experiment and let the music come from you.

 

But on the subject of rhythms/beats, since that's what you seem to be focusing on: obviously nothing really can replace a real drum set, but if you don't have access to one, I can personally recommend d-lusion drumstation as a free and really easy-to-use drum machine software. I used to use it when I was a teenager, before I got a legit drum set at auction (a lot of my really, really old recordings, including some of the earliest powercast tracks, use it).

That makes sense, yeah. Mine has some demo beats as well, but it's admittedly older than the hills. xD An old Yamaha; not bad by any means, just not exactly the newest thing on the block. =)

 

Well, I was looking for tips in general technically; the focus on beats was pretty much because that was the first thing I wanted to look at for this. I think I'll check that out in the very near future to give myself a little bit of experience with that. =)

 

Thanks for the advice! =)

I usually use the program TuxGuitar to write music, and most of what I do begins as just fiddling around until I get something that works. I would definitely recommend that you not get the idea stuck in your head that the point at which you begin writing is the beginning of the song - with what ended up being one of my favourite pieces, I wrote a few measures, realised it didn't make a good beginning, and had to add several sections on in front of it before I got to one that actually worked to start the song off.

 

I would also recommend getting some familiarity with any instruments you plan on writing for - you don't have to play them, but knowing what is possible on them and listening to a few examples can't hurt.

 

Unfortunately, I don't have any advice for what to do if you get stuc and can't come up with an idea to either finish an existing piece or start a new one. If I knew what to do in that situation, I wouldn't be typing this right now, I'd be writing music.

*Nods* I'll definitely keep that in mind. I can see how it would be troublesome in those different situations; especially for the writer's block of music. =/