When I’m writing a song, the first step, is, generally, to identify a theme. Whether it be a particular guitar/piano melody, a chord progression or a vocal idea. The next thing I would do is think about whether the melody, progression, or vocal idea would be best as a verse or a chorus. My process there is essentially based on feel, there is no scientific process I would use to make the determination. The next step would be laying out the whole song in terms of identifying what will be the verse, what will be the chorus, what will be the bridge, will there be a solo, will there be an intro/outro and so on. Nothing at this stage is “written in stone,” in fact, at this stage, more often than not, I haven’t even recorded anything yet. The next stage is recording everything. The first recording is important because it gives me the ability to judge how the song really feels i.e, does the structure work, how are the transitions between parts, how do the lead parts feel, if there are any, do the vocals fit and so on. The next stage is listening to the song over and over again. It’s very much like reviewing/editing a paper/proposal at this point. You have to read/listen to it until you already know what you’re going to read/hear before you read/hear it, essentially, knowing it all by heart. Following that part of the process, my attention shifts to mixing the audio of the song. That means using computer software to optimize the sound, which is a process I will not further explain because I could fill up 20 pages and only scratch the surface. The next/last step is reviewing everything again and again. I want to make sure everything is perfect before I call it “done.”
Essentially, writing a song is the same as writing anything else, whether it be a movie script, a business email or a scholarly paper. The only difference for me is, I’m not writing much down during the planning stages. I mostly work in my head by physically playing the part(s) over and over again and trying out transitions, as well as other structural ideas in real time before transcribing or recording anything, as I find it to be more efficient that way.
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