My songwriting process

I'm going to try and post a blog entry about once a week or so.  I thought for the first one you guys might like to know how we write songs.  I have a particular process I tend to follow and after a few years of doing it, this is what works for me.  This is a pretty long post but it's a pretty long process!  Feel free to comment with your thoughts, I'd love to hear what you think as well as suggestions for blog topics.

Note that I use certain tools which I mention in the description, but your methods will vary according to your genre and your resources.  I run a Macbook Pro and use Logic with an Apogee Duet for recording guitar and bass, and I run the bass through a Sansamp Bass Driver for a more amp-like bass sound.  I use the guitar amp emulators in Logic, and a VST called Addictive Drums for my drum parts.  I use Logic’s onboard instruments for everything else, and record vocals (roughly) with a beta 58 straight into the Duet. 

For most of the writing period for Perfect Flaws, I wrote on an acoustic guitar only, recording that and vocals into Protools LE.  I was living in a boxy little apartment and the lady below me used to knock on the ceiling with her broom if I started playing electric guitar!  This resulted in songs like Everywhere, Down By The River and Here Beside You being written – songs that are based around chord progressions.

I then moved to a more electric guitar-friendly house and started working with Garageband (Apple’s excellent free music composition software, which is mainly aimed at beginners and amateurs), mostly because it was so simple to fire up whenever inspiration struck, unlike Protools which at the time required plugging in hardware so you could only work when you had all the necessary tools at hand.  This change over to Garageband resulted in songs like Bullet for your gun, Pass You By and Call The Doctor – riff based songs.

Eventually I upgraded to Garageband’s big brother, Logic, and have been using Logic for the past three years or so.  I absolutely love working in Logic – in my experience, it’s the most complete all round solution for songwriters.  I plan to get into Ableton next, as well as Reason, but if I could only have one piece of software for all of my music requirements, it would be Logic.

Ok, so here’s my method:

1.     Take existing song (or part of a song, like the chorus) that I like for whatever reason (feel, chord progression, melody, drum beat, atmosphere or whatever).

2.     Copy existing song/part, but make changes to make it - to make it something new that I like even more than the original (or in a different way to the original).  Recording this idea into Logic.

3.     Now that kernel of song has been created, things often progress quickly.  They can take on a life of their own as you work to complement what you have come up with. The part that I have borrowed and changed will become a verse, or chorus, and so a complementary chorus, or verse part needs to be created. Sometimes I'll reference a different existing song for this part, so the new song becomes a combined inspiration of the two reference point songs.  I’ll usually get drums, bass and guitar recorded to have something to work with vocally.  I try not to get too carried away with trying to make everything sound perfect at this point – it’s just something to get me started.  It should be a blueprint, or a pencil sketch of what is to come.

4.     Once a verse and chorus part are established, I sing gibberish (i.e. exactly like I'm singing lyrics but I’m just using nonsense words since I am yet to write the lyrics) to try and stumble upon a suitable melody and the rhythmic feel of what the lyrics will eventually be.

Sometimes (actually, quite often) certain words might pop out while I’m doing this nonsense singing, that just seem to fit the music.  It’s really hard to explain this but it’s a genuine phenomenon that I’ve experienced many times.  It’s like your subconscious gives you a direction for the lyrics.  I know it sounds a bit flakey, but if you spend enough time trying different things out with your song, good stuff will come through eventually.  This is most definitely how the lyrics for some of our most popular songs have come into being.

5.     Now, sometimes the above does not work, or instead of doing the gibberish thing, I might instead have an idea for lyrics and so I do a more conventional method of writing.  First, I loop the part I am trying to write for (usually the chorus to start with).  I will usually base my ideas on a one sentence idea (say, something like "You are your own worst enemy" or “I miss you” or “Why didn’t things work out between us?”).  Then expand on it, without needing it to be lyrical/poetic just yet. Brainstorm. Just allow any ideas that are remotely connected to come through.  It’s a stream of consciousness that relates to the central theme of the song.  I do pages of these ideas before really starting – it’s the raw material from which I build the lyrics.  I usually do this with pen and paper rather than typing.

6.     Now I try to mould the lyrical ideas I have written into rhythmically effective lines that rhyme with each other, work with the rhtyhm of the song, AND connect with me in some way.  This is the most difficult part in the process, for me and every songwriter I've ever discussed it with. Musicians are usually not poets but we are expected to be if we are to write good lyrics.  I recommend Pat Pattison’s books on writing lyrics – they changed my writing enormously.  A very good basic rule of lyrics is use actual tangible objects as much as possible – if you just write in terms of feelings (for example “I feel sad that you are leaving”), you aren’t painting the picture for the listener – there’s no image in their head for them to latch onto.  If you instead use a metaphor (“When you left, all the colours turned grey”), you give the listener imagery to work with.  I have noticed that my most successful songs do this extensively, while others that have not really connected tend to lack enough of this imagery to get the message across.

(NB The lyrics can often be quite a struggle, and I might make very little progress with either of the above ways of working, so at this point, I will tend to put the music that I have (without lyrics) onto my phone and then listen to it in the car (a lot – weeks, months maybe) and allow it to settle into my brain.  I become really familiar with the music and start to like certain things while idenfitying others that I don’t like so much.  I’ll change the weaker parts out in Logic til I feel like the music is working for me.  At some point, I’ll go from (4) and have another go at the lyrics.  Don’t be discouraged with lyrics being difficult – after 15 years of writing, lyrics are still not a walk in the park for me).

7.     I will flesh out the Logic session for the song, with a full band mix of drums, bass, guitars, keys and whatever else I envision for the finished track.  It’s still not a completed song by any stretch but I have a really good template for the band to hear at this point.  I will also load this demo onto my phone and listen to it endlessly in the car.  I replace this demo with a more up to date one each time the band and I make an improvement to the song.  Sometimes an idea will sit in my demo playlist for years before finally, something clicks and I get the idea I needed to finish it.  Don’t be discouraged if it takes a long time!  I also upload the demos to box.net for the band to get familiar with the song before rehearsal.

8.     I play the Logic demo to the band at practice, and then make some suggestions for what I have in mind. I'll have a goal for the song overall and for the individual parts (probably trying to capture the atmosphere and feel of an existing song or a particular part).  As a band, we play through the song.  Everyone in the band has free reign to try different things or tweak the parts I’ve come up with for them to suit their individual style, as well as making changes to improve the parts.  At all times, the band and I will be listening for what “works” or does not work – does it feel “right” or not?  If not, we try and isolate the problem part and fix it.  Our guitarist and I bat around guitar parts by getting the other guys to "loop" on the Verse or Chorus part. I will sing in a loop as well so that we only create parts that complement the vocal, not compete with it.  This can take time and we’ll often change this over weeks as other aspects of the song evolve.  It’s a long process and we’ve learned not to rush it.

9.     At the end of each practice, we record the song with any changes we’ve made.  We always do this to an iPhone which we’ll put in a box (or something – under a carpet can be good) so the mic is not overloaded by the volume of the band.  Obviously, it’s a very rough recording.  We don’t even use a proper recording mic – it’s just the onboard phone mic.  But this is a crucial part of the process – it means we have a pretty good record of every single detail we’ve worked out at practice, which I can then implement in the Logic session at home.  This means we never lose a great idea that popped into existence spontaneously at practice – which tends to happen a lot.

10.  Expand and complete song structures. If a bridge, intro and outro is not yet written, we'll try different things as a band until we stumble over something really good – something that just feels right. I'll usually have a think about it during the day of band practice and again, have a starting point for what I want the various parts to do – maybe the bridge is a quiet, reflective part, or a lead up into a guitar solo, or just the chorus with a new chord progression. I treat the intro as separate to the verse and chorus - it can be a single part that only occurs once in the song, since its job is to draws the listener in early on, rather than to give them something to hum along to.  It might have a melodic hook to it but it’s not mandatory.  Typically the outro will be a variation on the chorus.  The bridge is important too - generally it's an alternative to the chorus so it needs to work as well as a chorus, and to take the listener somewhere new. We'll often try things out as a band on this part. Lyrics for the bridge will often be a variation on the chorus lyrics, or focusing on a particular part of the chorus lyrics.

11.  Hopefully, at this point the song is written and we can consider it ready for pre-production with the producer.  The final stage before pre-production (which is the final step before going into the recording studio) is doing a high quality demo in the rehearsal room.  Rusty (our bassist) will record the track in Reaper, his preferred DAW.  We’ll track approximately 8 mics – guitars x 2, bass DI, kick, snare, room, and Matt and I on vocals.  Rusty will mix this and upload to box.net for the band to download.  We’ll listen in our own time and discuss via email if we feel the song is finished or not.  If not, we’ll go back to whatever stage we need to in order to fix what is not working, and repeat the process from there. 

12.  We also like to test new songs with audiences on tour – sometimes a song really connects even though the audience have never heard it before and don’t know the words yet.  We really noticed this with our song “Bullet for your gun” and more recently with a new song (which is at this time unreleased) called “Hold The Line”.  When this happens, we can feel confident that we have a finished song.