Writing songs isn't easy. Lots of people think that writing songs is easy and comes natural. But, try writing a song. We've all seen songwriters in interviews saying things like, "I wrote that song in 10 minutes. It just came to me." Shit isn't that easy.
Considering that I've been in and out of bands since I was 16, and that I went to college for music, this should be easy – right? Wrong. Writing and composing the music and music production are my thing. For me, it's the lyrics that are especially difficult. For some people it's the other way around. The lyrics come easy, and they just can't write and produce the music.
For people that don't know what songwriting is about, or thought that it was a piece of cake, I figured that I'd give a look in to how the lyric-writing process works for me.
1) Music comes first.
Like I said, writing and composing music is my strong point, so I start with the music. Unlike with typical singer-sngwriters it doesn't start with an acoustic guitar. For me the music starts in one of many ways. Sometimes I have a beat or melody bouncing around my head and I scratch out the notation on whatever piece of paper is handy. Later on I'll open up one of my favorite programs for composing (Logic Pro or Reason) and transfer music from the paper to the computer and listen to how it sounds and build the song from there.
Then other times I will start in Logic or Reason and write notation in the program and compose. Other times I'll start with noodling or practicing electric guitar or bass, and something cool comes happens. Like with notation on paper, I transfer the music to Logic and build from there, until the music for the song is done. When is it done? The lyrics tell me that.
2) The Story
After the music is written I write the story of the song. For me each song has a story to tell. For example, the music for the song Dreaming Mona – that I wrote for Afflicted By Design – all the sounds and progression made me think of a person that was drowning their sorrows in drugs and alcohol, and eventually takes their own life. And like an author of short stories and novels I wrote out the story of Mona, an actress whose career was over at the old age of 30-something and longed for attention of the fans and the paparazzi. For South Side of Sickness, the music told the story of a kid that was bullied and picked on and was driven to kill his classmates. Again, the short story was written.
3) The Lyrics
Now that the short stories are written, the lyrics are written. I still haven't figured this part out. But one thing I've learned is that I can't write lyrics at home in the studio. I have to be out at a bar, cafe or someplace public and noisy. I read the stories over and over, and listen to the music over and over, and scribble ideas and fragments. This could take hours, days, weeks or months. In my band Atomic Brother, I would write the stories and my partner James would simply read them and come up with the lyrics fairly quickly and we'd work them out together in a couple hours or a couple days.
Here's some pics that show the evolution of Dreaming Mona.
Here's some pics that show the evolution of the song South Side of Sickness.
Well, that's how I do it. It isn't easy and it isn't pretty. It is what it is. I'd be interested to hear how other people write songs and lyrics. What's your process? Is it easy? Is it difficult?