When I write music, I generally first try to consolidate my thoughts into what style I want the song to be in, since I listen to a lot of different styles of metal.
Ahh right! I sometimes do this, like, if I'm just writing and acoustic song, or one thats just completely distorted, and from then I write riffs and stuff
Then I usually think up a (I don't lay it out, just make sure I have it organized in my head) general form for the song and layout... I'll often steal these from other songs as there's not much you can do anymore that's innovative in terms of the form of the song.
When I come to arranging pieces (unless I've arranged them as I've written them) I tend to look at other songs and see what they've done, e.g. Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus + Transposition (up 2 frets or something) then a break/interlude, solo (how ever many solos I'll write) then back to the chorus or something
Then usually the first thing I try to do that's actually writing is come up with a solid lick to represent the song. If the song has an intro with a lick, then I'll write that. If the verse is lick-based, I'll write that. If the chorus is lick-based, I'll write that, etc. I try to write the important licks first and at least get started on them (although usually I end up not liking them and changing them later) to write the song around.
Again, I do it slightly similar. If I'm just messing about and play something and think, "hmm, that'd be a pretty good chorus" or something like that, then it'll be a chorus, same for introductions and melodies.
And yeah, I will listen to the song a few times, think "wow!" then play it a bit, go back to it later and think, "what was I thinking?!"
Then I start writing the more basic stuff like the rhythm parts of the song and the parts where singing would happen if I wasn't too lazy to write lyrics.
Lyrics tend to come last for me, unless I'm in a lyric writing mood, in which case I try not to make the music simple, and just fit around the words.
Then I go back and add the bass and drum parts, and then finally at the end write the solos.
If I'm not happy with something I always add drums, as it livens the piece of music up tenfold! And I must admit, I'm pretty good at writing drum parts!
As for bass parts they are pretty simple, follow same notes as guitar, but the same rhythm as the drums. Sometimes I'll go to town and write bass melodies and walking bass lines with octave/5th leaps.
Here's a song I wrote for an example. Disregard the lyrics, I was planning on jokingly writing it about starcraft lol. BTW props to anyone who guesses which song I based the form off of (I based it almost exactly in this one... I think it's pretty obvious to anyone who's familiar with the song).
http://rapidshare.com/files/157983138/The_Away_Team.gp4.html
let me know what you think of it
I think the solos came out well... although of course I just stole almost all the licks from alexi lol (and maybe some from roope, can't remember).
That didn't work for me
Can you upload it onto
www.sendspace.com ?
And you all thought Jose was the best at multiquoting his replies
