What's your workflow like? (writing/recording/mixing/mastering)

Monson

Monson

Sonic Automatist
I'm sort of curious and perhaps looking for a bit of inspiration.

I tend to noodle around with chords and bits of phrases first for a couple of days. Then put the song together in Notepad. The lyrics tend to come in a manner of minutes once I have the overall structure.

Then I'll usually spend a week or two recording, mixing and mastering the track, depending on how busy I am with work/life.

The thing is, I've found that it works best for me if I'm working on 2-3 songs/projects at at time. Not more than that. If I go all in on just one song I tend to waste too much time listening over and over, and it's absolutely not very effective/productive because while I can hear it's 'wrong', it gets harder and harder to hear what is wrong.

What works the best for you guys?
 
I only ever really demo anymore, then send them to the band and we work then out for stage and record. Of course, that hasn't happened in a year, but I'm back logging for when we start back up. I peck away at lyrics in moments of down time (waiting for appointments, waiting for water to boil, etc.). By the time a lyric is finished, it's got a melody roughed in, I work out the chords, then I record vocal/guitar, and anything else I need to get across in the demo (key riffs, where the BG vocals go, etc).
 
It varies for me. Sometimes it starts with a chord pattern and other times with a lyrical idea. Once the lyrics are forming I tend to type them out on the computer and print them. Then I go to the studio and lay down the initial track on guitar or piano, sometimes with a drum machine but often without.. After that comes the vocals, then bass. I'll figure from there what else I want to add. There are times I will work on several songs in a day. At this point there is no real time lag between the writing, recovrding and mixing.
 
For me, it's almost always chord progression-vocal melody-lyrics. I'll frequently record all the instruments before I even start writing lyrics.
These days, unfortunately, the whole process seems to break down at that point, and I never get around to actually writing the lyrics.
 
Chicken Man said:
I peck away at lyrics in moments of down time (waiting for appointments, waiting for water to boil, etc.).
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Ha! That's awesome!

Gary Blanchard said:
It varies for me. Sometimes it starts with a chord pattern and other times with a lyrical idea.
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Same for me. It's like the chicken and the egg, isn't it? Somehow words trigger a melody line, and sometimes a chord triggers a word.
 
Usually starts with chord progression, then arrangement, bass, guitar, synth, organ depends...only after all is arranged to I even consider lyrics, and it prob shows...then start mixing it all...will bounce at various points listen on air pods for a day or so then go back and make corrections..rinse, repeat...
 
I've struggled a bit with lyrics too. I struggled writing melody lines as well but found that if I started with the melody and then worked out some chords, it sort of gave me more freedom to shape things the way I envisioned the final track. It's like the things you do first tend to define and even confine the rest, sometimes too much.

Therefore I sometimes skip the chords/melody sessions and start with the lyrics, or maybe just the chorus/hook and let the track take shape from that.
 
Right now I'm only making backing tracks and instrumental stuff for youtube. I usually come up with some small idea and then get some drums going either with loops in Addictive Drummer, Steven Slate drums or Logic Drummer and then try to flesh it out in the computer.
 
micwalt said:
For me, it's almost always chord progression-vocal melody-lyrics. I'll frequently record all the instruments before I even start writing lyrics.
These days, unfortunately, the whole process seems to break down at that point, and I never get around to actually writing the lyrics.
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I've been thinking about your reply for a couple of days.

Bernard Butler addresses this very issue in the first minute or so in this interview:



Perhaps it's a typical guitar player mistake - we tend to make all these rifftastic pieces that sound awesome with clever inversions, open strings and whatnot, and then we glue it all together before we even think about how this is going to be an actual song.

Then our strongest point becomes our Achille's heel and we've just set a trap for ourselves, partly because we're reluctant to step out of our comfort zone, and partly because playing guitar is just great fun!

The remedy, I guess, is to follow the instruction we've all probably heard when we took lessons; work on the stuff you find difficult, not the easy parts. So in my case, I try to get some melody/lyrics done at an early stage and then work out the guitar parts around them afterwards. Not that I in any way claim to have overcome this but it has definitely prevented me from getting stuck all the time.
 
Monson said:
I've been thinking about your reply for a couple of days.

Bernard Butler addresses this very issue in the first minute or so in this interview:



Perhaps it's a typical guitar player mistake - we tend to make all these rifftastic pieces that sound awesome with clever inversions, open strings and whatnot, and then we glue it all together before we even think about how this is going to be an actual song.

Then our strongest point becomes our Achille's heel and we've just set a trap for ourselves, partly because we're reluctant to step out of our comfort zone, and partly because playing guitar is just great fun!

The remedy, I guess, is to follow the instruction we've all probably heard when we took lessons; work on the stuff you find difficult, not the easy parts. So in my case, I try to get some melody/lyrics done at an early stage and then work out the guitar parts around them afterwards. Not that I in any way claim to have overcome this but it has definitely prevented me from getting stuck all the time.
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That’s what I was thinking but summed it up better than I would have.

When I started writing songs, I wrote them so I had something to play guitar over. I was always self conscious of my lyrics and rightfully so. They weren’t that good. I took some gigs doing side man stuff and started really working on my own lyrical chops. I did that for a couple years. I have a very distinct memory of jamming with 4 other songwriters. One of them I’d known for a long time asked me to play one of my songs and the other 3 were surprised and didn’t even know I wrote too.
 
I have never been very productive or successful at it. But the few times I was first came at least some lyrics and a melody.
I can throw a riff or chord progression together pretty fast but when that comes first that’s where it ends.
 
Another technique I'll use if I'm doing a more riff/groove/loop based arrangement (as opposed to my standard folk-based chords and melody type thing) is sing/grunt through the whole thing, including riffs, solos, turnarounds, etc to a metronome. Then I piece it all together using the vocal track as a blueprint, sometimes even learning the licks I made up in the first pass.
 
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