The Songwriting Process

Trent Reznor, the man behind industrial rock/metal outfit Nine Inch Nails, comments on writing inside versus outside the studio and coming up with rules to get the process moving:

“By the time I did [albums] Downward Spiral and The Fragile I had a studio to work in, so I would write in that environment,” he explains. “What I found was that songwriting and the arranging and production and the sound design process became the same thing. A song would start with a drum loop or a visual and eventually a song would emerge out of it and that was the song. This time I got back to starting with lyrics and words and really separating the process into songwriting and arranging and production. And when I came out here I just set up a piano, drum machine and computer to record vocals into.”

… This time [for album With Teeth] he forced himself to write two songs every 10 days, and he recorded them even more quickly. 

“If I come up with rules or limitations it focuses me in a direction,” he explains. “And those rules can change if you realize it’s a dumb idea. You start to mutate it to see what fits best. In this case one of the early concepts was I wanted it to sound played. Not like a garage band, necessarily, but with computers it’s easy to fix things and make everything perfect, and sometimes you can lose an element of humanity and imperfection. And the message emotionally was to be a bit frail and unsure of yourself, so we treated things as performances.” 

Source: MTVNews.com

Joey Vera, bassist of progressive metal outfit Fates Warning, comments on stepping outside his usual songwriting formula for his solo project:

… I wanted to challenge myself to stray away from the habits I have with song arrangements and instrumentation. So, I purposely stayed away from the ABC way of writing and let the music dictate what it wanted rather than being overly concerned with song length for instance. I am especially bored with much of popular music these days, so I want to hear things that are interesting even if it’s not something I’ll ever remember. I made this record as a sort of exercise in reworking the way I work, and an attempt to make something I’d actually listen to. …

… For the most part, I like to write songs pretty quickly and sometimes the skeleton is written in an hour. But because I really tried to challenge my writing techniques, I made myself go back with an editing mind and throw monkey wrenches into to the arrangements just to see what would happen. Sometimes, it sucked but sometimes it was really cool. …

During the struggles, I often will reference other things. Sometimes, it’s other works of art such as paintings or installations with multi media.  I’ll go out to a museum, or go see a band in a club, watch a movie. Anything. I have to admit that when I was in the writing chair in my studio, staring at my guitar as it glows from the computer screen, I’ll whip out a record and analyze a songs arrangement, chord progression etc. For this recording I went to Pink Floyd’s The Wall a lot. Also Animals and Wish You Were Here. … I like to analyze chord progressions, song arrangements and production tricks and you can get great ideas from just about everything.

Source: Joey Vera’s MySpace blog

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

Ihsahn, head of legendary symphonic black metal band Emperor and now solo musician, comments on writing in the studio for the band’s final album, Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire & Demise:

I have always been very interested in arranging music. From this perspective, it was very relieving to write the music in the studio and not writing band music: drums and guitar and then adding synths, vocals etc. later as filling. I could record a riff when I came up with it, or I could write a riff to accompany a new synth passage, or vice versa. The arrangements became more complete because of this; I had much more freedom. I could delve into various elements for a mid-section of a song, and then not have to worry about the beginning or ending of the songs until later on. I think this way of working is much more interesting and rewarding. It gives me greater control over the various musical aspects. …

The writing process is also very fragmented; I always work that way. Sometimes it is just a full chaos. This is why it feels so comfortable to have a studio at home. I can document my ideas as I get them, record riffs immediately after they are developed. Later on, I can pick out elements and work more on them or change them afterwards. …

Being able to distribute tracks from the start, rather than writing the basic song first at a rehearsal and then just adding/filling synths, etc. This time I was able to write everything from the beginning at the same time. Letting the guitar lead, the melodies came naturally. Also, this is the first time we worked with seven-string guitars. With the massive platform they provide, there was no need to add that much synth tracks. The guitars filled a larger portion of the spectrum now. …

As I learned and grew as a musician and songwriter, I got a less-is-more attitude. On Anthems… [a previous album] we had the basic songs first, then I sequenced all the synths at home before playing them live in the studio afterwards. When doing this, however, you don’t get the true feeling of the music that actually is there. It drowns in all the fillings. It is no problem filling out with synths and arranging and arranging forever, until you have a complete wall of sound, but how relevant is it to do this? With such a massive fundament as we already have, and the tempo and everything, we have focused more and more on staying true to the essence of the music. Instead of adding layers, we tried to vary the different themes when they reappeared and so on.

Source: Chronicles of Chaos

Brann Dailor, drummer of progressive sludge metal band Mastodon, comments on the role of jamming and the absence of “songs” in the band’s writing process:

It’s a long, arduous process. We’ve got a skeleton for the whole record and these huge chunks of music four of five different segments that don’t have a beginning or end yet… We’re just basically in the middle of the record, adding stuff, giving it a taste then adding a little more ‘pepper’ or ‘salt.’ Once all the ingredients are in there, you have to bake it — which is just playing it over and over again until it feels right. The main goal is to get the songs right so you don’t have to think about the time changes — so you can relax with it and play it how it should be played. There’s a level of difficulty to our stuff and if you’re too wrapped up in trying to remember how many times something goes and the timing for the next riff, you can’t examine the song for being a song. So it takes a while.

Source: Rock Sound magazine, via Blabbermouth.net

John Petrucci, virtuoso guitarist and co-founder of progressive metal band Dream Theater, comments on the role of improvisation in the band’s songwriting process:

Usually [songwriting] stems from some kind of jam or improvisation.  One of the things that we’ve done from the very beginning is that we love to play together and improvise and have these long, extended jams.  And usually when we do that something will come out of it, whether it’s a feel, a melody, a chord progression, or something we can latch on to.  And then once that seed is planted, then the sparks start flying and we just kind of go off — you know, “That’s really cool, let’s move it in this direction, let’s make it go 4 more times,” and then some guy will chime in, “You know what would be cool? There’s this feel on such and such album that I could picture here.”  And there’s such a great chemistry.  And then once it starts to become a little more cohesive, we generally map it out.  We have a big, some sort of display, some sort of board, a grease board or something, and we’ll start writing out the arrangement.  And usually it’s something that’s erasable because we constantly change it.  And we develop it from there.  When we feel like it’s complete and the song is done, there you have it.

Source: Youtube

Tarja Turunen, operatic vocalist and former singer of symphonic metal band Nightwish, comments on her songwriting process:

What do you usually think when you compose your songs?

Every time I sit down in front of my piano, I like to improvise with the instrument. It depends on my mood of that day what kind of melodies and rhythms I am playing around. Sometimes, even before starting to play I already have a quite clear picture of a song I would like to compose, or at least the sound of it. Sometimes a song can be born in few minutes, if the feeling is right, some other times it can take days. I do always the music before the lyrics. The story or an idea for the lyrics appears during the composing process normally, but some other times I already have a strong idea of the story I would like to sing before any music comes to my mind. So as you can see, it really depends a lot of the circumstances. I just let myself flow free with the melodies and harmonies and then see if I can create something interesting. I am the most critical person in judging what sounds good or bad. 

Source: Blabbermouth.net

Wikipedia describes how Metallica’s hit “Enter Sandman” emerged from a single guitar riff:

Metallica’s songwriting method involved lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Jason Newsted submitting tapes of song ideas and concepts to rhythm guitarist James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich, who then used the material in conjunction with their own ideas to write songs in Ulrich’s house in Berkeley, California. “Enter Sandman” evolved from a guitar riff that Hammett wrote. Originally, the riff was just two bars in length, but Ulrich suggested that the first bar should be played three times. The song was quickly finished, but Hetfield did not come up with vocal melodies and lyrics for a long time. The song, in fact, was among the album’s last to have lyrics, and the lyrics featured in the song are not the original; Hetfield felt that “Enter Sandman” sounded “catchy and kind of commercial” and so to contradict the sound, he wrote lyrics about “destroy[ing] the perfect family; a huge horrible secret in a family” that included references to crib death.

…

Lars Ulrich described “Enter Sandman” as a “one-riff song”, in which all of its sections derive from the main riff that Kirk Hammett wrote.

Source: Wikipedia

Mikael Åkerfeldt, head of diverse progressive metal band Opeth, comments on his process of demoing songs:

I do have an input into pretty much everything because I demo the songs back home; I have a simple Pro Tools rig set up at my house. So I demo all the songs and I finish all the songs and actually have them sequenced in the same order as I want it to be on the album. So we’re listening to the album before we record it really, if you know what I mean.

I record it with like a drum machine and it sounds good but obviously it’s a drum machine. I’m very interested in drums; as far as I’m concerned drumming in Opeth is one of the most important parts; if the drums are nailed, I can just listen to the drum tracks and I know it’s gonna be a good song if you know what I mean. …

… the way I see it, writing songs and arranging [songs] as I do in my home, the way I do it they are so done by the time we enter the studio, that it’s a pre-production that I’ve been so involved in. I think writing songs and having your finger in every pie when it comes to the songwriting, you become a producer if you know what I mean. But when it comes to how to achieve the sounds that we’re looking for, I don’t know shit! I just basically tell our engineer, “We want good guitar sounds” and he’s like, “OK.” We fool around with a few amps and I tell him that’s good-sounding or sometimes I say, “That doesn’t sound good” and he says, “Well, it will sound good later.” So, I really don’t have much of a say when I’m working with engineers. But in the end, I’m always happy.

Source: UltimateGuitar.com

Niklas Sundin, guitarist of melodic death metal band Dark Tranquillity, comments on using old material:

Can you describe how the song “Nothing To No One” evolved in the songwriting process?

That was the last song written for the album. Normally we take our time with the songwriting. But just before we enter the studio, we work with the song really hard. I think a lot of the riffs on that song actually had been floating around for a while, some of them were actually a year or so. We had a chance to use them in lots of songs before. The first riff was written during the Character [album] period.

It’s kind of good working the way we do because we always have a backlog of tons and tons of different riffs. You write something that everyone agrees is good, but it might not be possible to finish it at that time. Then a few years later it might be perfect for something that’s around then. With that song, it gave us a chance to get some more of the old material that we had written. I think that melodic middle and ending part, it was a bit new and written by [guitarist] Martin right before we entered the studio. It’s a mix between new and old, I guess!

You mentioned the band has a backlog of material. Do you usually have those ideas recorded as demos?

They’re just MP3 files. It’s all the separate riffs we write, then we’ll email the song parts. We have probably more than 5,000. Some of them are total crap, of course! But it’s always good to have as much material as possible. On occasion, something that’s weird or really strange actually might work out. We tend to really come up with tons and tons of ideas.

Source: UltimateGuitar.com