Blackgaze Songwriting Advice

You want a storm and a cloud at the same time. You want the raw, snarling intensity of black metal and the washed out, narcotic haze of shoegaze. You want riffs that feel like waves and vocals that sound like a confession in a cave. This guide gives you a brutal friendly map to write blackgaze songs that land on first listen and haunt the next ten.

Everything here is written for busy creators who want fast results. You will get practical songwriting patterns, sound design wins, vocal strategies, lyrics that breathe, and mixing tips that make noise sound like art. Expect vivid examples, real life scenarios everyone will laugh at, and exercises you can do between scrolling playlists and texting your ex.

What Blackgaze Really Is

Blackgaze is a hybrid genre. It mixes black metal and shoegaze. If you do not know those two, here is a quick primer.

• Black metal is a style that often uses tremolo picked guitars, blast beat drums, shrieked vocals, and cold reverb to create a feeling of vastness or menace. Think raw energy and an emphasis on texture and atmosphere.
• Shoegaze is a style that uses dense layers of guitar effects, soft to distant vocals, and slow to mid tempos to create lush, immersive soundscapes. Think warm haze, feedback beds, and vocal lines that blend into the mix.

Blackgaze blends the two. It keeps black metal intensity and combines it with shoegaze's textural obsession. The result can feel like someone screaming inside a cathedral made of pedals and clouds. The emotional range goes from bleak and cold to tender and beautiful sometimes within the same song.

Core Elements of Blackgaze Songwriting

Before you arrange gear or buy another fuzz pedal, know the building blocks. These elements make the music feel like blackgaze instead of two separate influences stitched together badly.

• Tremolo guitars played with open chords or single note lines to create a wash of sound.
• Dynamic contrast that moves between intimate and volcanic moments. Use quiet to make loud matter more.
• Harsh and clean vocal interplay where aggression and melody talk to each other instead of competing.
• Dense effects including long reverb, layered delay, chorus and fuzz that create a cloud of tone.
• Textural drums that include blast beats when needed and restrained patterns when space is required.
• Lyric focus on landscape and interior life using specific images to avoid tired metal clichés.

Song Structure That Works for Blackgaze

Blackgaze is flexible. It can be sprawling and cinematic or concise and violent. Here are three reliable structures to start from. Use them as scaffolding not law.

Structure A: Wave Form

Intro build to first apex, retreat to a whisper, second build higher, final sustained apex that dissolves. This structure is great for long tracks that want to feel like a natural phenomenon.

Structure B: Statement Then Echo

Verse with a clear melodic statement, a noisy bridge that blurs the line, chorus that repeats the melodic phrase now drenched in effects. This is ideal for songs that want hooks without losing texture.

Structure C: Chapter Model

Multiple movements each with a different tempo or tonal center. Think three small songs stitched into one journey. Use transitions with ambient noise or field recording to glue sections together.

Writing Blackgaze Guitar Parts

Guitar is the atmosphere engine in blackgaze. The right part can create a mood without any words. Here is how to write parts that feel massive and delicate at the same time.

Tremolo Picking and Chord Choices

Tremolo picking is a technique where you rapidly repeat a note or chord to create a shimmering sustained sound. You can use tremolo on single notes or on open chord shapes. To avoid sounding like a drum machine, vary the intensity and place accents on different beats. Tremolo can sound aggressive when played fast and hypnotic when played slow.

Chord choice matters. Use diatonic minor shapes, modal moves like Phrygian or Dorian for color, or power chord dyads for clarity amid fuzz. Keep your progressions simple. A small two or three chord loop can carry hours of exploration if the texture changes across sections.

Voicing and Inversions

Use inversions to create movement in a static tremolo pattern. If the low root stays the same, change the top note. That tiny motion gives the ear a place to rest. Drop the low end for a verse and reintroduce it for impact on the apex.

Picking Patterns to Try

• Slow tremolo on quarter notes with accents every fourth stroke for a heartbeat feel
• Triplet tremolo where every third note is louder to create a rolling sensation
• Open string drones under a moving melody for a ruined harp effect
• Alternate picking into finger picked arpeggios for intimacy before noise returns

Temp And Drum Choices

Tempo sets the emotional scale. Blackgaze often sits in the slow to mid tempo range with bursts of faster playing for catharsis. A good default is a tempo where tremolo feels like a wash rather than a machine. That is often between sixty and one hundred and twenty beats per minute depending on feel. If you need a label for this choose the number in beats per minute or BPM. BPM stands for beats per minute and is how tempo is measured.

Drum patterns can be sparse and textural or full blast beat fury. A blast beat is a rapid drum pattern where the kick drum and snare alternate quickly. Use blast beats as punctuation not as a constant wall unless you aim for relentless intensity. Let drums breathe. Use cymbal washes and rim shots to add color rather than fill every space with busy hits.

Vocals That Work in Blackgaze

Vocals are where you can take big risks. Blackgaze thrives on contrast between harsh scream and soft melody. The trick is to serve the song not to show off your lung capacity.

Harsh Vocals

Harsh vocals include shrieks, screams, and growls. Focus on technique to avoid damaging your voice. Learn breath support and placement. Keep harsh takes short and punchy for the sections that need catharsis. Use reverb and pre delay to push them back in the mix or to make them cavernous.

Clean Vocals

Clean vocals in blackgaze are often airy and intimate. They should sound like a secret told close to the listener while reverb makes the singer feel distant. Double the clean parts for thickness and pan doubles slightly for width. Use subtle pitch drift to make the human element shine through the processing.

Vocal Interplay Techniques

• Call and response where harsh vocals deliver a line and clean vocals answer with a melodic phrase
• Stacked textures where one vocal is buried in reverb and another is forward and clear
• Shared lines where the same lyric is sung once guttural and then repeated clean to change meaning

Lyrics That Match the Sound

Blackgaze lyrics tend to favor landscape imagery, personal torment, existential wonder, and small concrete objects used as metaphors. Avoid cliché words unless you can make them feel new. Explain any genre terms you use so readers understand. When you mention an acronym like EQ please expand it as equalizer the first time you use it. Equalizer or EQ is the tool that shapes frequency balance.

Lyric Writing Strategy

1. Pick one central emotional idea. Keep it honest and simple.
2. Collect three concrete images related to that idea. Objects and times of day work well.
3. Write one line with a clear sensory detail for each image.
4. Use a repeating phrase as an anchor for the chorus. Make it ambiguous enough that harsh then clean delivery changes its meaning.

Example theme: late night grief that feels like weather.

Verse line ideas: The streetlight melts into the gutter. My coat smells like a memory I owe. The kettle clicks three times like a clock that forgets me.

Chorus anchor: You were winter and I was waiting. Say it once as a scream and then as a whisper and watch how the meaning folds.

Prosody and Melody

Prosody means aligning natural speech stresses with musical accents. If you sing the wrong syllable on a weak beat the line will feel off even if the words are perfect. Speak your lyrics out loud at conversation speed. Mark stressed syllables and place them on strong beats or long notes in your melody. In blackgaze keep verses lower and denser. Save open vowels and longer melodic notes for the parts where you want to break into clean vocals or shout.

Textural Production Tricks

Blackgaze is a production heavy genre. You can write a simple two chord song and production will make it cathedral size. Here are effects and routing strategies to get that sound fast.

Reverb and Delay

Long reverb tails are a blackgaze staple. Use plate or hall reverb for a smooth wash. Pre delay controls how much of the initial vocal or guitar comes before the reverb swallows it. Longer pre delay keeps clarity. Delay can thicken lines and make them feel endless. Try a dotted eighth delay for rhythmic echo or a long slapback with heavy diffusion for a ghostly effect. Remember to use filters on delay returns to keep low end from blurring everything.

Modulation and Chorus

Use chorus and subtle vibrato to make guitars shimmer. A stereo chorus on an ambient guitar can create movement without pitching the part so much that it loses definition. Be sparing. Too much modulation makes the mix swim and the song loses its center.

Distortion and Fuzz

Distortion creates the weight. Fuzz pedals can give you massive harmonic content. Combine fuzz with reverb and you get that huge wall of sound. To preserve low end clarity, EQ the distorted track and carve a clean bass pocket. Consider reamping a DI signal for a thicker center tone. Reamping means sending a recorded clean signal back through amps or pedals to capture real hardware character.

Layering and Bus Processing

Layer guitars across different tones. A clean reverb guitar sits on top of a fuzzed tremolo guitar. Route similar elements to their own bus for glueing. On that bus use mild compression and a tape saturator emulation to make the layers feel like one organism. Compression should not squash the dynamic contrast that makes blackgaze dramatic. Use slow attack and medium release settings to keep transients alive.

Mixing Tips That Preserve Power and Air

Mixing blackgaze requires balance. Keep punch and breath. Here are practical moves.

• High pass non bass tracks to avoid mud. Remove unnecessary low end from guitars and vocals.
• Create a vocal space by carving around the vocal's main frequencies with narrow EQ cuts on guitars.
• Use sidechain compression subtly to let big hits breathe. Sidechain compression is when one source triggers compression on another so the trigger reduces level momentarily.
• Automate reverb and delay sends so big moments feel huge and verses feel intimate.
• Check in mono to ensure hullabaloo does not collapse into mush on small systems.

Practical Exercises to Write Blackgaze Better

These hands on drills force ideas and prevent safe writing. Do them on your phone or in the studio between coffee runs.

Exercise 1: Three Image Warmup

Set a timer for ten minutes. Pick three distinct images from your day. Write one line about each that uses a sensory detail. Now make one of those lines the chorus anchor and repeat it in two different vocal styles. You have a raw chorus idea.

Exercise 2: Texture Swap

Take a riff and play it in three textures for five minutes each. First clean reverb. Second heavy fuzz. Third tremolo with chorus. Record each version. The version that feels the most emotional often has the textural balance right.

Exercise 3: Quiet Then Storm

Write a twenty bar piece where the first ten bars are half the volume and instrumentation of the last ten. Focus on arrangement changes rather than new notes. Replace one guitar track with a field recording in the quiet section. That creates contrast with little effort.

Real Life Scenarios and Tips

Writing blackgaze is not just technique. Here are everyday scenarios you will face and how to handle them.

Late Night Writing With Noisy Neighbors

If your building hears everything and you are not allowed to blast amps at midnight, practice writing demos with headphones using amp simulators and impulse responses. Impulse response or IR files emulate cabinet and room character. Use them to create convincing demo guitar tones without waking everyone in the building. Bonus tip put a blanket over the cabinet or amp if you must play loud for feel just keep the volume down at the source.

On a Budget With No Drummer

If you cannot hire a drummer program beats with humanized timing and velocity. Avoid perfect quantization. Add cymbal swells and subtle room reverb to give synthetic drums life. Use layered samples and replace kicks with real acoustic samples for a warmer feel.

Recording Harsh Vocals Safely

Warm up properly. Use a soft consonant based exercise. Record in short bursts and hydrate. Use a pop filter and keep the mic a little off axis to reduce harsh sibilance. If you feel strain stop immediately and rest. Preservation matters more than one great take.

Getting Bandmates to Agree

If one member wants full black metal intensity and another wants dream pop softness find a middle test. Record a two minute demo where the verse is entirely ambient and the chorus is full throttle. Play it for everyone and ask a simple question. Where did you feel the song lived in its best version. Use the answer to choose direction not democracy. Lead with the version that serves the song emotionally.

Before and After Lyric Edits

These quick rewrites show how to move from obvious to specific. Blackgaze benefits from lines you can picture.

Before: I feel cold and alone.

After: My breath draws pictures on the glass and the streetlight forgets my name.

Before: You left and I am broken.

After: You left your scarf on the radiator and the apartment pretends it is summer.

Before: I scream into the night.

After: I send a yell down the chimney and the stars spit it back in silver fragments.

Finishing Workflow For a Blackgaze Track

1. Lock the emotional idea. Write one sentence that captures the song feeling.
2. Make a skeletal demo with guitar, basic drums, and a vocal scratch within the first hour.
3. Choose two textures that contrast, then arrange them into verse and apex sections.
4. Record guide vocals both harsh and clean to test interplay.
5. Layer guitars with one clean reverb bed and one distorted body track.
6. Mix with the idea that quiet matters. Automate space and avoid constant density.
7. Get feedback from three listeners and ask what image they remember from the song.
8. Finish when the best image does not change with more mixing. Ship it to the world.

Common Mistakes and How to Fix Them

• Over layering without purpose Fix by removing one layer at a time until the emotional center returns.
• Harsh vocals that never sit Fix by sending harsh vocals to a darker reverb and using a pre delay to maintain clarity.
• Everything loud and no contrast Fix by automating volume and muting parts in places to create anticipation.
• Vague lyrics Fix by adding a single concrete object or time stamp to each verse.
• Mixing that kills low end Fix by carving a dedicated space for bass and kick with narrow EQ moves and not slashing everything below a fixed frequency.

Blackgaze Gear and Plugin Recommendations

You do not need expensive gear to make great blackgaze but some tools speed things up.

• Guitar amp simulator with cabinet impulse responses for quiet demoing
• Reverb plugin that can handle long tails and modulation
• Delay with tempo sync and tape emulation options
• Fuzz and distortion plugins or pedals with mids control
• A DAW or digital audio workstation with reliable automation lanes. DAW is the software you use to record edit and mix music.

Pro tip buy one versatile pedal that can do fuzz chorus and reverb in a single unit if you gig and want fewer cables. If you record at home put budget into a good microphone for vocals and a quality audio interface for low latency recording.

Blackgaze FAQ

What tempo should I use for blackgaze

There is no single tempo. Many blackgaze songs live in slow to mid tempo ranges so tremolo becomes a wash not a machine. Try between sixty and one hundred twenty BPM. Use faster sections for catharsis. Test where your tremolo feels like water rather than like a rake on paint.

Do I need a drummer to write blackgaze

No. You can write convincing demos with programmed drums if you humanize timing and use realistic samples. Focus on dynamics and let drums breathe. Replace samples with live drums later if possible.

How do I keep harsh vocals without damaging my voice

Warm up properly and learn breath support. Short takes and good technique prevent damage. If you are unsure work with a vocal coach who knows extreme techniques. Hydrate and rest your voice after heavy sessions.

What are the most important effects for blackgaze

Reverb and delay come first. Distortion and fuzz make the weight. Chorus and subtle modulation add shimmer. Balance is everything. Use EQ to keep clarity under all the texture.

How do I avoid sounding like my influences

Use your life details. The most convincing blackgaze lines come from small personal images. Also try unusual instrumentation like accordion or field recordings and then treat them with the same heavy effects. That will give you a signature sound without losing genre identity.

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