your approach to song writing

[heath_the_great]

do you think its better to sit down and fully write out a song......or just jam it out..personally.i think jamming is the best way

[keb]

I have a huge scrapyard of bits and pieces of songs. If while I'm practicing or jamming around, if a bit inspires me (be it guitar, bass, or otherwise), I'll record it and revisit it later. So now I have a bunch of snippets waiting to find a home and be developed further. Once in a while, though, I will sit down and chart out an entire song because I have a specific thing in mind.

[alembic76407]

I sneak up on it and then pounce,
people always ask me what do I do first, the words or lyrics, and I allways say YES!!!!

this a real hard question to answer, I wish I could give you a real answer. just keep plugging away at it

[walewein]

I usually come up with some basic riffs and some lyrics, we work the whole thing out with the band later at a rehearsal...

[Not Mark Westlake]

I've got a folder where I'll just record snippets of guitar and bass riffs/licks. I generally listen to them just before we have a practise. I'll play a couple to the rest of our band, and they'll all contribute parts to go with it, suggest on ways it could go, etc. This is usually just done in a jam format. If Drummer Dean starts playing a different beat, I'll go to that and come up with something, or if Guitar Al starts doing a different progression or modulation, I'll go to that and Drummer Dean will go with us.

Seems to work. It's been pretty interesting. Wrote one piece for bass and drums and wanted to get Guitar Al to put something over the top, and it turned out completely differently (and better too...) to how I'd imagined it, just because of the different influences and so on.

Mark.

[Benjamin Strange]

I generally force myself to play something I've never played before; a chord, different intervals, time signatures, etc. I attempt to avoid the cliche as much as possible, but sometimes you just have to go with what sounds good, regardless of whether Creed has done it a million times.

Most of the time I try to make music that's interesting on it's own before I even think about vocals. Sure, it makes things extremely difficult once it comes to putting lyrics on top of all of it, but sometimes I feel it's worth it. Other times I hate myself for it.

[heath_the_great]

i shold of extemporised more...we usually just jam at band prac..improv in between songs..when ever and we usually find some really good stuff...or i use guitar pro or band in a box to put up some drum beats to just jam too..and i usually come up with some cool riffs like that

[Passinwind]

Pool A: fully written lyrics.

Pool B: Riffs, or complete jams, recorded from every practice. Since I usually play with only a drummer and myself, I sometimes get a fully realized rhythm track straight off the practice recordings. I'd include freestyle vocals in this column as well.

Recipe: combine one or more from each column, to taste. Many of my songs work over various sets of changes and feels, which is what I like. IOW, I can interpose the same set of lyrics over any number of different changes. Great fun in a club, if the audience already is familiar with your tunes.

[heath_the_great]

thats afavourite thing of carls when we're jamming..he runs to the bookshelf and picks out any random bok and raps out passages from it...a few times he's grabbed the klingon dictionary...or bourkes backyard..even a tom clancy novel

[Coutts_is_god]

For me I use a map.
I come up with an idea for a songs. Write somethings down. Then later I come back with the band or just myself and destroy the orginal song. Adding taking away.