A Quote by David Bazan

On past records I usually did start with a story or an idea for a song and then write around it, but on Achilles' Heel I would just start writing and try to let the song and my sub-conscience determine the direction. which is a goofy way of saying I tried not to decide before hand what the song and or the characters would do and be like.
Advice? Focus on the craft. Study the greats. Try and understand how and why they made the writing choices they did. Then, start by copying them...just as an exercise. See if you can do similar things. Learn how to write a song like so and so. Then, when you've done that, write a song like yourself. Learn to color within the lines before going outside them.
If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.
If I come across an issue, or something I feel strongly about, and I happen to think of a song that would go in that direction, then I do it. But that's not what I start out, necessarily, to do. Sometimes I may have an idea for a song - "Well, I'm going to write about a thing.
Personal relationships are usually my biggest inspirations for writing my songs. The best way for me to write a song is to visualise the story in my head, and I start humming a melody, and before you know it, a song is born.
When I first start writing a song, I usually write the title first, then the song, and I'll sing the song in my head and think of a visual of the song. If I can't think of a visual behind the song, I'll throw the song away.
I don't start a song with an idea of what ingredients are going to go into a song. It's not like a recipe. I will normally either talk from personal experience or I'll make a character and then try to allow that character to behave the way he or she naturally would.
When writing I just go with the song. I go with the song and try to tell the story. So the story may be "Wonderful Baby", which is a little song. Or it might be a gentle song, "Empty Chairs". Or it might be a rock and roll song like "Prime Time" or "Run, Diana, Run", or "American Pie". I don't know where it's gonna go. I don't have any idea what I'm doing. I just do it. I just keep doing it. I keep taking adva
I have a notebook that I take with me everywhere. I free-write in it when there are situations that I know I can write a song about. I will just start writing everything that I can think of while trying to write some things that are kind of poetic or sound like they could be in a song. Then, after the music is written, I go back and look at my subjects to see which one I think woud go with what music. Then, I formulate it into a melody and get the song.
It usually takes me 20 to 90 minutes to write a song because once I start, I don't stop. If I start writing a song, and you try to have a conversation with me, you're a bad person.
The song could start with a riff that I base the song around. Or a chord progression or a melody I have, I just write a story about it. Lyric-wise, it's cool to have someone else's input too.
I'm one of those people that I make a song... then I write another song and then I'm like, 'But this song is so much better than this song,' and then I kind of ditch that song. It's a long process.
There are no limitations with a song. To me a song is a little piece of art. It can be whatever you like it to be. You can write the simplest song, and that's lovely, or you can just write a song that is abstract art. ... A lot of my songs are very serious, I'm like dead serious about certain things and I feel that I'm writing about the world, through my own eyes. ... I have a love for simple basic song structure, although sometimes you'd never know it. ... Most of the songs I wrote at night. I would just wake in the middle of the night. That's when I found the space to write.
When I start to write a song, I have the words and I have the melody, and then it's just a matter of making it to the end. I think if I have something that I could identify as a talent, it would be that I can finish a song. I kind of know intuitively where the melody should go.
My favorite performance would definitely be "Toxic," which was my blind audition song. It was the start of it all and it was a song I had been covering before the show, so it was very dear to my heart.
In the past, my process would start with a sample of another song, and I'd chop it up and use that as the basis of the song that I was making.
When I write a song, I always start on acoustic guitar, because that's a good test of a song, when it's really open and bare. You can often mislead yourself if you start with computers and samples and programming because you can disguise a bad song.
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