What is your Creative Process?

[ChrisPandora]

Hey all - I am curious as to what your creative process is when writing and producing new music?

For me, I almost always start a new idea with a simple drum pattern and work on the bass line. I have been playing bass for about 20 years so I feel most comfortable with it plus it really dictates the mood/feeling of the song. I've also been playing synth bass lately to help mix up the variety of the ideas.

Once I feel like I have a solid foundation, I start to layer with other instruments but I rarely do that until I am happy with the bass. 

What do you do?

[KUKIZOE]

I always write my lyrics first then decide on a key that conveys whatever mood I take away from the lyrics. Then I work on the background music and all that good stuff. 

[ChrisPandora]

@KUKIZOE That's so interesting! When you are writing your lyrics, do you have a melody in mind or do you come up with that after the lyrics are all done?

In my opinion, lyrics are so difficult to write. I feel really fortunate that my collaborator takes over with them hahaha.

[Thegypsycaravan]

We do a lot of free jamming and when we find a cool riff, rhythm or melody
we stop and talk about it and develop the idea. Our vocalist we throw some
lyrical ideas and melodic phrases in to help him get his flow down.
Sometimes one of us will bring an idea from home to rehearsal also.

[runner1]

i feel the same way.

im working on my first few songs right now and its honestly a pain in the **ahem** to mold the lyrics to the beats of mine.

what genre are you? im rap.

[Thegypsycaravan]

We're playing hard rock/metal with rap-scream style vocals

[MTN-Jer]

My songwriting process starts in one of four ways, and I've gotten some great results from each method, but a lot more mediocre or totally garbage results from each method, too. 🙂 

1. Get an idea for lyrical content and write the entire lyrics first. Then either I or one of my bandmates writes the music.  The inspirations for lyrics come from anywhere (a line from a tv show, something in the news, remembering something from my past). Then I work out the music and record it.

2. Playing around with synth sounds until I find something interesting, then laying down basic tracks to create a basic bed (usually placeholder drums, bass or synthbass, piano/pad, and maybe a strum guitar). Then create vocals/lyrics on the fly through doing punch-ins. For pop songs, this is probably my favorite method. 

3. Sit down at the piano, turn on the voice recorder on my iphone, and just do 100% total spur-of-the-moment songs with piano and voice. No idea beforehand what key I'll be in, what style, lyric content, etc. I just pretend I'm live on stage and I have to make up a song on the spot. For several years, I did this about 15 minutes per day on average, which was about three or four spur-of-the-moment songs, resulting in several thousand ideas over a couple of years. Amazingly, a decent number of the ideas (maybe 1 in 15 or 20) turn out to be really good songs that just need some lyrical tweaking and melodic reworking. 

4. Get partial idea from my bandmates and fill in whatever they haven't done yet. Sometimes they'll send lyrics and I'll write the music. Often, they'll send a bed (sometimes with a working title), and I write lyrics to fit the song structure using their working title, then send it back for one of them to create the melody. Or, they'll send a bed with a "la-la" vocal melody recorded and I'll write lyrics to fit their melody. We do a lot of collaborations that way, and all of those methods are a lot of fun. 

It really comes down to doing a lot of attempts, and eventually some really good stuff happens along with the junk. 

--Jer of the band Mitch the Needle

[KUKIZOE]

Lyrics are difficult! There are only very few times where I get a good product in my writing. I write melodies after as well... whatever fits the words and the mood, and the rhythm in which I plan on singing them.

Another thing I like doing is coming up with random snippets of lyrics every day and finding one's that fit together like a puzzle. When I get a basic feel/idea after a bunch of fitting lyrics, I can start a new song that way as well.

[LostBoyBam]

First I clear my mind and pray