The Songwriting Process

Mårten Hagström, guitarist of industrial/experimental metal band Meshuggah, comments on building from riffs and creating demos on the computer:

Sometimes when you come up with stuff, you can hear three riffs in a row: you’re coming up with one thing, and you’re trying to put it down, and in the process of doing it, you’re coming up with what should come next … then you build it, and then all of a sudden you have half a song or maybe even a song … most of the time it’s just like one riff here or there, but the whole process of writing it is kind of making the blueprint …

I sit down and program the drums, record the guitar and record the bass in the computer, so when I present an idea to the other guys it’s presented in band form pretty much the way I want it to be. … we might change out the arrangements over a fill or maybe a choice of cymbal or maybe moving something a little bit but we stick true to the general idea pretty much; it’s not a lot different. On some songs we actually restructure a lot, but it’s rare. …

[The drum machine] is just such a superior tool when you know how to use it … When I have an idea, I hear the drums and everything … so when you put it down it’s like figuring out how to program the drums so they sound the way you want … then you record the guitar, so it’s pretty much a demo, which makes it real easy because you can get so close to what you want to get across … even though it’s not 100 percent, it’s close enough to make an intelligent decision as to whether it’s good or not.

Source: The Metal Forge