how i write and record my songs

i write songs as simply as i can because of three fundamental problems: 1) i can barely remember how to play my own songs 2) i basically know like five chords 3) i can't remember lyrics, my own or anyone else's. this is good because i end up writing the chords and lyrics really fast and then have a lot of time to focus on melody which is the thing i like the most about pop rock music anyway. i think the reason i remember melody is because it is so tied to the tone or feel of a song which is the only thing that really stays with me.


ugh. everything i just said are all half-truths. there are plenty of songs for which the lyrics are everything or the five seconds of gospel organ make the entire song. so melody/tone isn't everything. its hard not to be a revisionist in a post like this because the process itself makes almost zero sense. i've heard a million analogies regarding songwriting by professional songwriters and they are all differently ridiculous. i think johnny reznik from the goo goo dolls once said in an interview that he would write song ideas on post-its and then follow up with them up later. if i did that i would lose the post-its in seconds so i never do that. the most pretentious thing i have ever heard was when i saw billy joel play live once and he described song-writing as being analagous to "giving birth." i've never given birth, but i've seen my daughter being born and i've helped deliver births in school. i don't think he knows what its like to have a human rip out of the vagina he doesn't have. but that's neither here nor there.


back to songwriting: i just think about song ideas, try and remember them, eventually forget them, semi-recover them randomly and if i'm holding a guitar, capture some element. but in the end the product itself is really just whatever i'm able to catch and never the entirety of the initial idea. its like being in one of those old school game shows where they pump dollar bills and wind into a tube and you jump around inside and you get to keep what you catch. whatever i catch ends up in the lyrics and whatever i miss is on the floor and that's basically it.


so i write these chords, hum a melody over them, sing the words that make sense to me at the time or somehow catch my ear (it could just be one part of one verse or a main line of a chorus) and then build the song around that. so as you can imagine, there's a lot of changes from how i initially forecasted the final product. this process reminds me of an interview with rob mcelhenney, lead actor and show runner of the tv show 'it's always sunny in philadelphia' who said that when he wrote the pilot he meant for it to be set in LA as a single camera sitcom about struggling actors. FX picked up the series but said it was now going to be set in a philly bar. and not about struggling actors. and not single camera. He just said, "ok." I don't blame the guy one single bit. He ended up making a good product even though it probably smarted at first to have to kowtow to some know-nothing media flunkie who was thinking about how he could weave a Coors Light sponsorship into the show. he just worked with whatever bizarrely manhandled clay he had in front of him and did great.


ok well that's the songwriting process. now on to the recording. i don't usually use a mic. i turn on garageband, put on headphones, and sing the song really quietly while recording the guitar acoustically straight into the computer. this prevents popping p's which, if you've ever listened to amateur recordings of myself or others, can make you crazy. if i'm feeling really fancy i'll use the panty-hose pop filter i made in school and sing through my pc richards microphone. i do a couple of takes, use the ones where i don't get mad and cuss, fuck up the chords or both. then i do some adjustments with regard to instrumental vs. vocal balance and then put it on this website and that's it.


now, i don't want to give the impression that i think i'm some sort of indie-tastic recording artist. the truth is that i'm lazy with regard to recording and production and am unable to sing while anyone except the cat or my daughter are in the house (which means i have to really rush sometimes which frequently leads to extremely diminished returns). if i had someone produce my music in a way that was disciplined in terms of helping structure arrangement, instrumentation, punch-ins, harmonies, re-writes etc., i'd probably jump at the opportunity. but then i'd have to pay them so that would never happen. however, if you do get this far into this post and like to produce simple songs for free in your limited spare time, send me an email because we might have a low-yield non-profit opportunity on our hands.