Matt from xenolith-tunes.com wrote:

The band was pretty darn prolific yesterday, for a group that didn’t actually have a practice yesterday. I had sat down to noodle on some riff that had been going through my head all day, a vaguely Minutemen-like riff that I liked a good deal, and I may revisit – probably as a new part to the song “Number 13,” since when I was noodling on the new riff, all the other parts that occurred to me were parts I’d already used in that song.

However, jamming on that riff turned into a more general jam, I played a few songs, and I was slapping on my guitar and came up with a more chordal riff. Amusingly, it occurs to me as I’m typing this that I play guitar like Mike Watt played bass. I don’t know if that analogy is worth exploring, or even if it’s TRUE, but I know it’s true, ’cause I just made it up.

Anyway, I ended up writing a song based around the chordal thing and I’d just finished recording it when I checked my email, and Jon had emailed a riff he’d written to Chris and me. Really, it was more than a riff – there was a song-like structure, three guitar parts, and so forth. Some emailing occurred, and then I ended up going back to the practice space studio basement with his Riffything (TM) and I wrote another song based on a mashup of two of his guitar parts.

Chris and I talk on and off about songwriting, as a process, and I thought it might be interesting (to me – I can’t imagine anything I say might be interesting to anyone else) to describe what goes on when I’m writing a song. Sometimes I’ll write lyrics with an attendant vocal melody and then figure out a guitar part after the fact, but that’s very rare. Usually, it’s:

1. Assemble the germ of a guitar part. Usually, this consists of figuring out a “main riff,” and then figuring out a “chorus.” Sometimes this process occurs over a long period of time, but usually it’s when I’m just jamming.
2. Record the germ of a guitar part, or simply play it over and over and over and over and over and over and MAN, I’m glad I have recording software on my machine anymore so I don’t have to keep playing it over and over and over and so forth.
3. Listen to the recording and hum along until I have a melody in mind. Usually, I have paper available while I’m doing this, and I’ll jot some phrases that occur to me.
4. Then, if I’m listening to a recording, I’ll sing the phrases along with the recording until something else occurs to me. At this point, the lyrics almost invariably get written in one burst. The melody from step 3 is often scrapped or reworked while I do this.
5. At this point, I usually have to adapt the germ of a guitar part to the newly shaped lyrics, which means I delete the guitar part I recorded up in stage 2. Then I record the new part to go along with the lyrics.
6. Record a vocal track. A lot of the time, the melody is still fairly fluid at this stage, and I’ll record it a few times before I get something I like.
7. Play the song with the vocals until I’m comfortable with it. At this point the song is “finished.”

That’s a rough sketch of the process, and it’s rather more organic than that makes it seem, but there it is.

peace
Matt

Written by Matt at xenolith-tunes.com

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