I thought it might be interesting to post how a song gets created. Naturally, anybody who writes music has a different method. Heck, I don't do the same thing every time. Some songs almost write themselves. Some just become "parts songs", where you have some neat ideas but they never jell. With us, a song typically starts with a couple of guitar riffs.
Back when I first started writing, I relied on playing a part until it was burned into my memory, or recording it on a 1970s vintage GE tape recorder. Later, I moved on to 4-track tape recording and eventually to using the computer.
The computer has completely revolutionized writing music. In the past, recording consisted of micing up my amp, setting the levels on the track, making a rough plan of which part would be on which track, hooking up a click source, setting the tempo, then actually going through and hitting "Record" and hoping I didn't screw up to the point where what I had initially set out to record was unrecognizable. Roughing out a song arrangement was worse, because you pretty much needed one instrument running through the whole thing so that you could get your cues. The relative ease of computer recording has led to me creating hours of guitar riffs. This is the root from which a lot of songs start, or at least get their parts.
So, here's a guided tour through the creation of the song "Act of Defiance".
This first clip is from the "first" actual rendering of the tune. Parts show up in other demos, but this would get to be a terribly long post if I posted every little bit and piece. The big differences are the lack of "punchy" parts at the beginning and end, the length of the solo sections, an extra harmony section at 2:50 that wound up in the middle section of "Perfect World", and another harmony bit at 4:05. I play both solos, somewhat poorly, just as "placeholders". With the verses, choruses, and extra sections, the original wound up being about 8 minutes long (I trimmed it significantly for this so it'd be easier to listen through).
Act of Defiance Mk 1
The second clip is from the first rehearsal where we worked out the arrangement. Arrangement-wise, this is the first rendering that's pretty much like the eventual demo. The process was fairly extensive, but pretty simple: record, listen, change, lather, rinse, and repeat. You can hear where we dumped the two harmony sections and final verse. One guitar goes off-track at the end, largely due to the number of changes we had made to the last part of the song right before recording this. There are no lyrics. I'm babbling "labba jai, gabba flibberty-doo" and that sort of thing for the duration of it, just to test out vocal rhythms and so we know where the lyrics are supposed to go (that can be tricky when starting with a pile of guitar riffs). Recording was done "Boombox-style" on a Korg Pandora. It's no Dark Side of the Moon, but good enough for arranging.
Act of Defiance - first rehearsal recording
And here's the final "demo" version. When the time comes to do an actual album recording, I can't imagine that there will be many changes - possibly a word or two in the lyrics or a couple notes in the solos.
Act of Defiance - Final Demo
So, take that times however many songs we're doing, and that's more or less how they come together. The most time-consuming part is the second phase, where there's a whole lot of listening and discussion of what works and what doesn't. It's also the most important for ensuring that the final product is as good as we, as a group, can make it.
Back when I first started writing, I relied on playing a part until it was burned into my memory, or recording it on a 1970s vintage GE tape recorder. Later, I moved on to 4-track tape recording and eventually to using the computer.
The computer has completely revolutionized writing music. In the past, recording consisted of micing up my amp, setting the levels on the track, making a rough plan of which part would be on which track, hooking up a click source, setting the tempo, then actually going through and hitting "Record" and hoping I didn't screw up to the point where what I had initially set out to record was unrecognizable. Roughing out a song arrangement was worse, because you pretty much needed one instrument running through the whole thing so that you could get your cues. The relative ease of computer recording has led to me creating hours of guitar riffs. This is the root from which a lot of songs start, or at least get their parts.
So, here's a guided tour through the creation of the song "Act of Defiance".
This first clip is from the "first" actual rendering of the tune. Parts show up in other demos, but this would get to be a terribly long post if I posted every little bit and piece. The big differences are the lack of "punchy" parts at the beginning and end, the length of the solo sections, an extra harmony section at 2:50 that wound up in the middle section of "Perfect World", and another harmony bit at 4:05. I play both solos, somewhat poorly, just as "placeholders". With the verses, choruses, and extra sections, the original wound up being about 8 minutes long (I trimmed it significantly for this so it'd be easier to listen through).
Act of Defiance Mk 1
The second clip is from the first rehearsal where we worked out the arrangement. Arrangement-wise, this is the first rendering that's pretty much like the eventual demo. The process was fairly extensive, but pretty simple: record, listen, change, lather, rinse, and repeat. You can hear where we dumped the two harmony sections and final verse. One guitar goes off-track at the end, largely due to the number of changes we had made to the last part of the song right before recording this. There are no lyrics. I'm babbling "labba jai, gabba flibberty-doo" and that sort of thing for the duration of it, just to test out vocal rhythms and so we know where the lyrics are supposed to go (that can be tricky when starting with a pile of guitar riffs). Recording was done "Boombox-style" on a Korg Pandora. It's no Dark Side of the Moon, but good enough for arranging.
Act of Defiance - first rehearsal recording
And here's the final "demo" version. When the time comes to do an actual album recording, I can't imagine that there will be many changes - possibly a word or two in the lyrics or a couple notes in the solos.
Act of Defiance - Final Demo
So, take that times however many songs we're doing, and that's more or less how they come together. The most time-consuming part is the second phase, where there's a whole lot of listening and discussion of what works and what doesn't. It's also the most important for ensuring that the final product is as good as we, as a group, can make it.
