Writing Music

I was rewatching "A Year & A Half In the Life of Metallica" last night ...

It's so interesting watching things multiple times ... particularly now that I've had the experience of playing frequent gigs & writing songs & have a bit more maturity and self-awareness to go along with it.  I can watch the vids. with more understanding and less romanticisation (while still getting the inspiration from them) ... anyway, at one point Kirk & Lars & Jason are talking about the songwriting process & explaining riff tapes ... you know, when you're on tour you record riffs at 3 in the morning or whenever on whatever instrument ... (which we now do to cell phones half the time)... It got me thinking about my own writing process...

I tend to write acoustically a lot (usually more as a default than on purpose), and I sort of expect a song to just come out on the spot & be amazing a lot of the time... I end up rejecting a lot of ideas, a lot of riffs ... a lot of things that sound "whatever" acoustic sound worlds different & more exciting when you plug in and put some gain on, or fuck with the sound a little bit.  This sort of judgemental approach in early stage writing is really not a good thing ... guess how many songs I've written like this ... wait for it?  None.

What does work though is when I just jam & record & loop and get excited & don't necessarily expect perfection, but instead follow things where they go ... even then I get stuck at times, but that's how it's got to work ... you just flow first, and then you can be all cerebral and analytical after (at least that's how it goes for me) ...

On top of that, I tend to write best when I'm practicing 3 hours a day & watching vids & listening to cool music & messing around on different instruments ... in short, having fun (through working).

It's good to keep this all in mind ... On a not so positive note ... My hard drive just died, and I've probably lost everything I've written for the last year or two (most of it anyway) ... back to the chopping board!