What's your method of composing?

Well, I’m in a lo-fi dreampop band, so I guess that counts as composing.

I usually start with either a riff or lyrics, and my method differs based on which of those I start with.

When starting with a riff, I usually play it for my singer/rhythm guitarist and she will make suggestions about what to add music wise. Then we record and I go back and listen to it over and over again and sort through my poems to find lyrical material, or I just make stuff up. Then we record again.

When starting with lyrics, I show them to my singer/rhythm guitarist and tell her how I want them sung. She will sing and play guitar, and I’ll come up with variations and fills, and then we record.

Rarely, I will use Guitar Pro to come up with musical ideas and write them out in traditional notation or tablature.

I have never in my life been able to write my music down on paper. I have this knack for remembering exactly what I do, which really annoys the other people I play music with.

For lyrics, I just write them down as they come to me. Usually I write the music before I even come up with the lyrics.

I’m totally ass backwards.

I use a digital 8 track recorder or in a pinch a video camera. I still have so many riffs on my cell phone I have to transcribe!! Yikes!

I sing or hum a song into a recorder, so I have the original concept, then I begin just riffing on it during the day. When I have it organized, I write it at the piano.

I don’t stick to a single method. I’ve written aleatoric music, and I’ve written serial music. I’ll work out something at a piano, or I’ll just write down what I’ve been humming. I even wrote one piece without any previous music in my head or a piano. I just sat down with a pencil and some staff paper and wrote whatever came to me. Everything is subject to revision, however, no matter what “rules” I may have started out with.