What is your songwriting process?

[Atalkingsausage]

Mine usually involves noodling on my guitar until I get an interesting chord progression coupled with a nice picking pattern. Then, usually I struggle to come up with some words to complete the idea. then I'll play/sing it over until it's smooth, and usually it will still change a little until the very end when I decide it's done.
How do you guys do it? How do you decide on words/subject matter? That seems to be my real sticking point.

[Johnny.guitar]

Me too. I can come up with the music fairly easily. However lyrical content is a struggle. I believe practice is the key and also trying to not overthink it too much. I've subscribed to American Songwriter magazine on my iPad and have found it to be an excellent source of knowledge.

[buzzardwhiskey]

Having read books and attended workshops on the topic, I would suggest that there is no one way but that for many (and maybe most) the music comes first. A snippet, a cool turnaround, a small musical phrase can be used to germinate a song.

For me, it's always the other way around. I write poetry to a pre-decided rhythm and then put it to music later. Sometimes years.

[RedJoker]

Originally Posted by buzzardwhiskey

For me, it's always the other way around. I write poetry to a pre-decided rhythm and then put it to music later. Sometimes years.

This is how I do it. But again, I've been talking/writing for a much larger portion of my life than I've been playing guitar. For me, the lyrics hold the power of a song. The music then supports and accentuates the lyrics.

I'm a beginner at all of this so I don't really know what I'm talking about.

[jim1960]

I've tried music first, I've tried lyrics first, neither method worked well for me. I lean heavily toward writing the music and lyrics simultaneously. While I suspect it's the least used songwriting method, to my way of thinking it's the most organic since neither the music nor the lyric ever lives apart from each other, they're born together. I've only met a couple of people who write that way. The rest split fairly evenly between music first and lyrics first.

[trueviper]

I don't think I could ever right anything without first being inspired by something I'm playing.

[Pitar]

It's not so much the method; it's the spirit. It doesn't visit much anymore. When I was writing regularly it was a matter of hanging lyrics onto existing melodies.

[TBman]

I get a beat in my head and hear what I want to play in my head and I "kind of" make it happen. Sometimes I "kind of" don't

[buzzardwhiskey]

Originally Posted by jim1960

I've tried music first, I've tried lyrics first, neither method worked well for me. I lean heavily toward writing the music and lyrics simultaneously. While I suspect it's the least used songwriting method, to my way of thinking it's the most organic since neither the music nor the lyric ever lives apart from each other, they're born together. I've only met a couple of people who write that way. The rest split fairly evenly between music first and lyrics first.

This, or something close, is what many suggest you aim/train to do.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Atalkingsausage

…How do you guys do it?

Hi Ats…

I have written songs, but I AM NOT a Songwriter.

So I don't have 'a' process. More like a drawer-full of processes.

Sometimes I collect licks and eventually either put some of them together in the same key, or I get a phrase, or sometimes a melody.

So things fall together randomly for me when it comes to writing. My 'gift' is taking other people's songs and arranging/performing them. As an arranger I'm pretty good at helping others write, or troubleshoot bothersome passages (or to fill gaps) in their projects.

I have a couple friends who are really good writers, and really good writers are really good at writing songs. Thankfully neither is particularly good a performing and occasionally they need a vehicle (player/singer).

[Looburst]

Always come through a chord progression first. Later I try to fit a melody in there that compliments the progression then the words come last.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Atalkingsausage

Mine usually involves noodling on my guitar until I get an interesting chord progression coupled with a nice picking pattern. Then, usually I struggle to come up with some words to complete the idea. then I'll play/sing it over until it's smooth, and usually it will still change a little until the very end when I decide it's done.
How do you guys do it? How do you decide on words/subject matter? That seems to be my real sticking point.

For me, most of the time, the words/subject matter come first. It might be an overall idea for the theme of the song, or it might just be a single phrase that has a musical shape or rhythm.

I mean, I have no problem finding nice sounding ideas when noodling - although strong melodies are a little more elusive than chord sequences. But a "song", for me, starts with some kind of verbal idea: something that feels like it would be good to sing, or to sing about.

The problems I have are twofold: (a) coming up with a melody or chord sequence that doesn't feel like a cliche (or is not too much like one I've written before); and (b) getting the words to scan and rhyme. The latter is the really difficult part. Usually I can get parts of the song to work fine, but really struggle to get the whole thing feeling natural and smooth.

When Bob Dylan was asked what was he was most proud of in all of his work, he replied "making the words fit". I'm no Dylan, naturally (), but I know exactly what he meant. It's that frustrating carpentry, chiselling away at the language until the words slot into their places perfectly, and just roll out as you sing them with no clumsy corners. You can start off with a beautiful, simple and effortless inspiration, but then you (usually) have to sweat to make the rest of the **** thing work.

[SFCRetired]

I have used several approaches and they all work for different people. Some do the music and some do the words and some do them together.

The best songs I have written are songs that write themselves. I merely write them down on paper.

[jseth]

My "process"? Seems a funny way to name it, but I'll play...

I will take songs ANY WAY THEY WANT TO COME TO ME! There is NO proscribed method, no rigid rules or requirements... I've had songs that just "showed up" overnight, waking to find the thing fully formed in my head and I wrote it down as fast as I could... I've had others that have taken me 5 or 6 years to complete...

One thing I AM exacting with is "what" the songs say... I have never written a song that I felt was a "cheap shot", as far as rhyme scheme or lyric... I think that songs SHOULD say something, even if if what they say is obscure or difficult to grasp... it doesn't have to some heavy topic or anything, but I HAVE TO BELIEVE IN IT FULLY... I do not write songs that I think other people will like or buy or will make me a bunch of $$$... I keep it to things that mean a lot to me. The real challenge is to say something without preaching or looking down on your (prospective) audience...

Sometimes I will get a line or a phrase in my head and that translates to a song... other times, I have a musical idea or riff and I'll play it and sing over it until something pops in my head. Like I said, I take them anywhichway!

I can't begin to count the number of tunes that I've just never finished, simply because they weren't complete and no amount of "forcing the issue" on my part would get them there... others I have just realized that the thing isn't saying anything I want to put out there...

Frequently, when I've been chugging along with the composition of a new song, I'll get to a point where from then on, I'm actually making the whole point of the tune... like some "fork in the road" of songwriting or something... when I do reach that point, I take extra care with what I say and where I'm going with it. Other songs, I've known from the onset what it was to be about (although that can always change)...

As I get older, lyrics seem to be the most elusive; not sure why that is... I suspect that as I've grown, I have come to accept many things that I railed on when I was I kid... I've also realized that my opinion really matters very little to anyone but myself, and I am not as quick to pontificate about any given subject. When I was in my teens and 20's, I had a LOT of big ideas and I was very quick to "download them" to the people around me; not so much nowadays...

I would suggest that, if lyrics or subject matter is elusive for you, spend some time reading authors who are wildly different than your norm; poetry or prose, famous or not so... check out Keats and Joyce and Bukowski and Camus and Faulkner and the like... dig in with those types of writers and you'll get great ideas of different subjects and ways to approach them...

[Cameron_Talley]

I usually get the lyrics down first. Sometimes the music flows out of that naturally. Sometimes I have to sit on it and wait for something to come to me.