What's your typical songwriting process?

[bill5]

I thought there was a thread about this but didn't see any.

 

Some people like to "practice" songwriting on a regular basis. I can't do that, or won't. For me this is art so very much a stream of consciousness thing. When it hits me, it hits me. Often things came to me when driving back and forth to work...I had about a 40 min drive and much of it was lightly-traveled back roads, so it was a good way and time to do it. Then covid hit and that was that but just as well as I have plenty of backlog to work on. 

 

Then there's the less fun part, trying to hack it out on the keyboard as I'm much more of a lyricist than a performer...but the lyrics almost always come first. 

[Dr Nursers]

Mine too is very ad-hoc and dependent on context. I find I'll go months and not create anything at all, then knock out 4 songs over a couple of weeks

[KuruPrionz]

I have lots of "starts" or small parts of songs. 

Sometimes a song comes to me and I write the entire song in a few minutes. 

Other times, I will have everything done but there will be one word or one line that I feel could be better. 

 

I am not consistent but I am consistently inconsistent.  I would have to say that I don't have a typical songwriting process. 

[bill5]

You both summed it up for me very well   

 

On a few rare occasions, a song came to me and I wrote the entire song in a quick flurry. To me that was such a gift! I question if it will ever happen again but glad it did at least happen a few times. 

 

As for there will be one word or one line that I feel could be better, that describes every song I ever wrote lol - I am a hopeless critic/tinkerer