I ended last week’s post by saying I needed to tie my ideas together for my Black Sabbath-inspired song. In my initial draft (of this article), I identified a missing step in my process: I need a place outside the DAW to work through ideas so I can bring more developed ones to my recording sessions.
As I worked through my drafts, edits, and revisions, I uncovered the root problem: I’d been using the terms songwriting and recording interchangeably, but they’re not the same; they are two separate activities that need separate processes. For as long as I can remember, I’ve brought ideas to the recording process. Ideas that are not finished. Ideas that have not gone through the draft, edit, revision process. Song ideas need a writing process, just like article ideas.
I’ve been writing most of my adult life. I know that a good finished article takes many drafts, edits, and revisions. I wouldn’t publish a first article draft, so why do I think I can record a song idea right away?
The riffs I captured in my notebook last week were ideas—the first step in the songwriting process—but they weren’t ready to record. The notebook was perfect for initial capture, but I quickly noticed it lacked two things: legibility and organization. Some of my ideas were hard to decipher, and deciding what order to record them in, and which variations to use, quickly became an exercise in overthinking.
My initial idea, to record the ideas I captured in my notebook and then use copy and paste to extend, shorten, and arrange them in a DAW, also proved more difficult than I thought. Doing this without a clear plan led to unproductive sessions—enter Guitar Pro, a multitrack musical score and tablature editing software (think Microsoft Word for musicians).
This is what I did with the Sabbath-inspired song. I transcribed all of my riffs and variations into Guitar Pro—the next step in the songwriting process. I organized my ideas into A, B, and C sections in Guitar Pro and printed the score. In Guitar Pro, I could easily cut, paste, and arrange my ideas like in a DAW, but the real advantage was hearing how the parts sounded (Guitar Pro has a built-in TAB player). This helped me create an audible arrangement without recording the parts and getting distracted by tools. The TAB also provided a plan—I knew what to play, how many times, and in what order. The next step is evaluation: does the arrangement work in a musical setting?
I evaluated it in a DAW by playing the arrangement along with a drum loop. I still ran into my usual distractions—which drum loop and/or guitar tone sounded “best”—but at least I didn’t have to decide what to play. That was already decided—and that is much bigger than I realized in the moment because until now, none of my sessions had started with a plan.
The next step, revision, happened as I played through the arrangement; I quickly found flaws, noted them, and kept going, revising as I went. From here, I take my notes back to Guitar Pro, make changes, and repeat. This is the article-writing process being applied to songwriting—idea, first draft, edit, revise, edit, revise until a publishable piece is achieved.
This is a work in progress. I’m sure more steps will emerge, but for now I know what I’m working toward—a song worthy of recording and releasing because it has been through a repeatable process.