Writing The Sickest of Tunes

Song writing can be a hard process for some musicians, especially when first starting out. Between balancing riffs, chords, licks, drum beats, and making it all come together with some vocals that sound good, it can be a long, painstaking process. That is, unless you can develop a strategy.

Usually when we write, Eddie brings a riff to me with a little bit of structure and the idea of further. I'll put a beat to it and now the train can start rolling to bring in rhythm and leads. In about 10-20 minutes we usually have a solid intro, verse, and pre-chorus rough draft. We play through a few times and see what works and what doesn't work. Once were satisfied we move on and make a chorus that butters the whole song with a layer of sickness. Before we know it, guitar and drum parts are written in full. Next we add bass.

We typically practice altogether 2 days a week instrumentally and add vocals one day a week. It's a solid rehearsal schedule and is easy to balance. When we bring Brian into the picture, we will play the whole song out and let him noodle with it for a bit. Then we'll break it down piece by piece and in about a day's work, the bass part is written and it's time to bring the final piece to Steve and let him work his magic.

We record scratch tracks on a handheld recorder and send the tracks over Google Drive to Steve to work on outside of practice. Within about a weeks time, he will have lyrics presented to us and we will add backing vocals and a song has been prepared!

Now this is just one strategy that works well for us, this process may not work for everyone and you will over time develop a way of writing that works for you and your band!

We hope this post helps you all in your future song writing endeavors, and keep rocking on!

-Dalton