Ready?
Here's how I write a song:
I mess around on a piano, (the best instrumental tool for composing I believe) until I stumble upon something that captivates my interest (which is not easy to do). It's usually by complete luck that I'll discover something that sounds usable in a song in any given piano mess-around jam session by myself. Sitting at a piano and trying to force creative output is virtually impossible. One technique that I used in high school and that I still use today is to turn off all the lights in the room I'm in. It'll just be me, that damn piano, and pitch black darkness. Without any worry of how my fingering technique appears, the piano playing gets much more interesting. My hands will stumble across keys I may not have intended to play had I been able to see what I was doing. There's less of a sense of ego to form predetermined destination for my fingers. It's all a clean slate. I've come across really interesting ideas from this darkness method. Once I am lucky enough to find a cool sound, I'll record it as best I can using my...four-year-old cell phone. With horrible recording quality and only enough space for one minute of recording time per use, this flip-top job (which is now considered primitive, by god) is my only way to store musical ideas away from a computer. As of right now, while writing this, I have exactly 81 recordings of myself playing or singing ideas on my trusty phone, only about a dozen have I ever used for actual songs. I'll take an idea that I believe to be a good and manipulative one, we'll call it "idea A," and try to find more ideas all under the umbrella of "idea A." Once I've found another idea "B," I'll try to find even more ideas that seem to relate and work well with both "A" and "B," perhaps idea "C." These ideas will form the leitmotifs, the main reoccurring themes, of the piece. I'll chug away in some music notation software, trying to manifest the ideas visually. If they seem to work well together and pass the test, they'll stay, and if not, I'll go complain to the world on this blog about how musically inept I am. I ask myself more questions like "Does the overall sound seem to have a natural beat to it? Should it have percussion at all? Is it too catchy? Do I need an idea D to add more flavor?" Test passers get to go to the luxurious GarageBand (cue angel choir) where the real fun begins. The creation of sounds and synths that get to portray the characters, ideas A, B, and C is always a treat. I get to mix and add crazy effects to create sound that would not exist if it wasn't for me. Sometimes GarageBand can be hell when she refuses to cooperate with the sound I desire in my head. Usually, she settles down though. After last minute edits and final tweaks and touches, the work is done and I can exhale. The song in the 'video' at the top of this page represents a perfect example of a song that was made specifically using these methods. I don't usually add lyrics for my songs as they typically don't ever mean a thing, (in fact in the song-video, I scream "lyrics don't mean a thing"). All starting from a pitch black practice room and a shitty cell phone recording, it was born.
