How do you write your music

hi,

I know that writing in a band really depends from band to band. Our band does a lot of jams and try to keep the best, manipulate it and transform them into themes. We discuss al lot during our writing proces. our bassist gives me tips about some drum grooves, while i reach on certain idea's for guitar/bass riffs.

Vocals is more individualy, We discuss about who will write the lyrics of a song and then to others give their comments, that way we won't get mixed writing styles.
Is this the same for you guys (well, for the new album of course...)?

greetings
Paul

Hey Paul,

Honestly, we just do whatever we think will be most productive at any given moment. Sometimes we'll all feel like jamming, and we'll crank the amps up and just...play, and sometimes a lot of good riffs come out. We're most comfortable with this method due to our jazz background which involved a lot of playing off the top of your head, with improv and such. We also sometimes just write out our music on music-writing software if we don't jam.

However, for new material, let's say we have 2 minutes of a song written. We'll play from the beginning all the way up until the end of what we have (2 minutes), and then we'll stop, and someone will simply start to improvise. By doing this, you're able to step back and look at the big picture (the part of the song you have written so far) -- and it will allow you to just "hear" what should come next. Example...if the first two minutes of the song is in A minor...we'll stop, and someone might say "it sounds like a C major riff should come next...we've been on A minor for 2 minutes now" -- and, it just goes from there. I hope this made sense...haha.

Another method is that we all sit at a piano (this is usually for the vocal stuff, so far anyway) -- and we'll have the completed lyrics, and just start figuring out melodies. As far as writing lyrics, we all sit together in a room and bounce ideas.

Good luck!

Mark

As far as myself, I'm huge on chord progressions, maybe more so than melody. I like to hear how one chord goes to the next. So sometimes I'm sitting at home behind my piano and I'll just come up with a progression. Lately I've been writing them down on sticky notes and sticking them to the piano.

I think me and Gary are very pattern based. For example, Gary and I came up with a very vital part to one of the new songs (it's pretty much the most climactic thing we've ever written!) and that was based on chromaticism. I start on F and go down chromatically to the F an octave lower while Mark and Gary fill out the chords. It's not just F Major, E Major, Eb Major, D Major, etc, because sometimes I'm on the third, fifth, or seventh (in one case). I wont reveal the actual chord progression.

Another instance of this is a progression we came up with which is based on Major 7 chords. The bass line is |C E G B|Bb D F A|Ab C Eb G|Gb Bb Db F| Basically what's going on is CMaj7 BbMaj7 AbMaj7 GbMaj7. Major 7 chords going down in whole steps.

In short, I think the basis of our writing is somehow coming up with a pattern based chord progression. I'll stop revealing vital information about the next album now!

allright, I see

well, for my own music, I also use the chord-writing way, because i can't jam with other people. I try some nice chords on the piano, search some ways to connect them all and then write the melody. It's very interesting to write both way's as i think, eventually, I'll be able to use both.

Paul