THE WRITING PROCESS AND THE POWER OF THE PRODUCER
I work reasonably quickly and have my studio set up to accommodate that necessity and so a demo may be rough around the edges. I rarely write lyrics before I write a melody, I find that the song will dictate the vocal and once the bare bones have been laid down, I will mumble sing until I find the right vocal to fit the melody. I do however have a list of subject matters or keywords or phrases that inspire the core of a song but once I’ve found both the melody and the vocal I then start to fill in the gaps with the actual narrative of the song.
This process isn’t ideal but it works for me at this stage of my writing, I guess it’s what works for you that matters?
One thing I always do is factor in the producer when I write a song, I find that it takes a weight off of my shoulders to create a fully finalised song and focus on the key elements I’m looking to convey. That doesn’t mean that I dumb down; I always try to create a fully formed song and embellish it as much as I can but I feel confident that I can take a half-finished song to pre-production knowing that there might be enough spark in it to add to the new album.
I think it’s integral what the producer thinks about the song, do they hear it in a completely different way, would they re-envision it, leave it as is or just embellish what’s already there, either way, it makes you think, discuss and re-appraise or re-assert your opinion.
You can sit with a song for months and think it’s finished and then with a good producer it jumps to a whole new level.
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