Songwriting Process

KitWistful

Teto's Territory
Defender of Defoko
Lately I've had an unusual fear of running into a creative block, so I've been putting some thought into how songwriting works. Guys, I'm curious: when you compose a song, what do you do?

Can you make up a song in your head, or do you "play it by ear", so to speak? Do you write the song before programming/recording instruments? Do you start composing at the chorus, or the beginning, or the end? Do you follow a structured arrangement? Do you start with lyric verse, or a melody? Do you work out the song on an instrument you play, or on the computer?

I invite you to pull a tl;dr. However you like, tell me: how do you compose your music?
 

Ant

Teto's Territory
Defender of Defoko
What I usually do is whip open my DAW (Fl Studio, but some people use mixcraft, etc.) and start messing around until I find something I like. I usually (not always) start with a baseline, then fit a melody to that. I make a checklist of sorts for all the points of the song, something like this.

-Baseline
-lead synth
-Percussion (mostly kicks and claps, etc.)
-a placeholder sound (like a piano) to represent where the lyrics would go
-Automation clips and effects or certain parts of the song
-And so on. Anything else I might need would go after the main parts are done. Sometimes te song still feels "empty," so I go and switch around the instruments/VSTs I used. I need better samples. XD

Afterwards I remove the placeholder sound that represents the lyrics and render the WAV file. Then once that's done I remove everything BUT that and export it ad a midi for use in Vocaloid/UTAU.

If I find I don't like something, or if the sounds or parts of the song don't work well together, I'll go back and change it. sorry this is kinda general, but it's hard to explain the finer points. I'm curious to hear what other people do, actually, I'm still an amateur myself. :P
 

KitWistful

Teto's Territory
Defender of Defoko
Thread starter
I wonder if it's easier to compose music in a tracker or in FL Studio. I haven't purchased FL Studio yet, so all my work's done in OpenModPlugTracker.

I start from the reverse order you do, Ant. I've had the most success planning the lead first, and I find it way easier to do the bass notes after I've done the rhythm section. Do you know that drums are so, so important? Oh my god

drums are so, so important O_O

*blown mind*

I don't have the creativity/attention span/talent/willpower/skill to compose the entire song at once, so after I've burnt myself out creatively I usually set up a skeleton arrangement and proceed to fill out the blanks. Either I lose the motivation to work on the song, or it becomes an excellent fun puzzle of love and awesome.

but lately everything's gotten so hectic -- all of my 4xbar sections sound totally different from each other, and it seems I'm not as adept at c-hordinating the chords as I'd hoped. I guess at this point it's just a matter of developing my musical skill??

And oh god, instruments. Recently I found out that all the free orchestral instruments I downloaded (SSOrchestra) are way too soft to be used by themselves, so I sort of floundered in the mixing department. On the upside, I learned some things about EQ and comp?? But it kind of sucked when I just wanted to get it over with XD

I found that Aquestone is pretty great for testing out how a song sounds with vocals, but I've gotten pretty sick of the default sequence - "kokonikashirudoropu", and OpenMPT doesn't retain anything other than the tuning too well. Big ol' sigh.

Big Al sigh?

hmm