Song writing.

Not looking for tips but just wondering how everyone goes about song writing I.E do you write the music side then lyrics or work around lyrics and do your song ideas come from just playing around at hone or jamming as band?

I tend to just come up with song ideas and riffs when im just messing around on guitar and write lyrics after i finish a guitar track or whatever you want to call it

I wait for an idea that's really good (or one that i really like, at any rate)... it'll generally be melodic and I'll just be humming it in the shower or while I'm o the toilet or maybe while I'm waiting for a train or something. I used to record those into a dictaphone and later on into my phone once phones could do that but I find if Ic an't remember it unassisted then it isn't worth remembering. Frankly, I have no demand on me as a songwriter to crank out 20 or 30 songs a year anymore so I only bother to work on stuff that's stuck in my head. Anyway, the idea might be a vocal part or guitar riff, I don't know that til I develop it, usually at the piano weeks or months later... then stuff starts to happen. I do a little acoustic writing when the song seems to need to develop that way or I work on stuff on a classical when I need to dos tuff that doesn't work on a keybaord, but its always in conjunction with piano. Alternately I start sequencing stuff when it might be partially or totally electronic so I don't have to keep playing the parts that I'm set on and I can start thinking about other things. I haven't written anything on an electric guitar in like a decade. I get distracted and have too much fun on electric. Ic an't focus any of my ideas, I just keep riffing and riffing these days. but usually I don't touch a guitar until i'm working on parts and deciding on a structure. That falls int ehre with lyrics as last minute stuff you cna do right before you make a quick demo.

Boring, eh?

See, I follow a similar process. I get an idea (always in the shower) and I record it. Then I pick up a bass and I play it. I'm a bassist first, so all my ideas are more easily written out on bass even if it's a guitar part. So I write it out, then decide what it's gonna be. Then I play it out on guitar, decide if I like it, and then I flesh out the song from there.

Recently I've been experimenting with an alternate approach, where I just play on my guitar/bass until I find a riff I like. A big part of my music lately has been having a bass part drive the whole song, instead of taking a back seat. It's really interesting and has changed the product completely.

The stuff I write is entirely instrumental; 90% on guitar, but my last release had some programmed drums and I've just acquired a synth to go full soundscape with. I usually start with a riff or rhythmic idea (usually inspired by some funky, hitherto undiscovered setting on my pedalboard), which I'll either load into a looper pedal, or record into my Zoom H4. I'll jam over it for a while (and I mean a loooong while), and while I'm doing that I'm looking for two things: a melody line, and a second contrasting section. I'll swap between guitar and synth while I'm doing this, just to get some variety and make sure I'm not limiting myself.

Once I have at least a first section that I have a good handle on, I'll load up Garageband and start tracking a proper demo, and normally during this part more ideas will start coming out. At this point I'll slap anything on that comes out, in the order it comes out (mostly), and when I'm exhausted I'll bounce it, pop it on my iPod, and give it a listen through the next day, and takes notes on what works and what doesn't. This basically cycles until I've got a complete unit of music that I like, and then I'll start mixing and such.