[Zen Bones]

In the first group I was in, it was a duo and the songwriting was almost exactly 50/50. We'd sit together, he'd throw out guitar riffs (I didn't play back then) and I'd help piece the music together. Sometimes we'd make a game out of it, with each person writing every other lyric. We even had a chord chart taped to a dartboard. You wouldn't believe how many songs we wrote just hitting three chords at random, and trying to find a way to sequence them into a song. Definetly pushed us to try things that weren't intuitive.

The 2nd group we were in was a trio, and we alternated between every method you can think of. Ocassionally one member would show up to practice with a completed song and the other musicians would write parts around them, but most often the bassist and guitarist would jam out riffs and I'd hollar out "That one there, just keep doing that for a few minutes!" and I'd scramble to get something written down. We didn't have any way to record, so if something didn't end with actual lyrics and structure, we'd usually forgotten it by the next practice.

Since then I've been writing on my own. I usually write with a guitar, and it's usually some aspect of the guitar that comes first, with lyrics and melody fitting around that. If I try writing on keys everything I do just sounds trancy and droning. I don't know why, but I've never been able to write a song holding a bass. But just because a song starts with a guitar, doesn't mean that they all end up "guitar songs". I had at least one song that I wrote on guitar, recorded guitar and vocals to a click track, and by the time I'd layered all the other instrument tracks, I ended up removing the guitar altogether.

~Zen