New Music Video

Idea Farmer

My songwriting process could be compared to what a farmer does. I am constantly receiving tiny bits of inspiration from above, like a field of grain constantly receives sunshine to make it grow. Just like a farmer harvests his grain and refines it into flour to make bread, I have a method of harvesting the small bits of inspiration I receive into a finished product.

My songs usually start late at night. I open up the text editor and imagine myself having a guitar in my hands and, as I play my imaginary guitar, most of the time I’ll come up with a chord progression that ends up being the backbone of a new song. Then, I turn the chord progression into a piano part by, first of all, deciding the rhythmic expression of the chords, and then decide on the voicing of the chords so that I have an effective voice leading in the right handed part of the piano line and colorful expression in the piano part. Then I add the bass and the drum parts to the section.

Very often, I will write the music for the verse to a song one night and the chorus or bridge the next night. A lot of the time, I have to make small changes to the end of one part or the beginning of another to make them sound cohesive. Once the piano and drums are arranged, I work on writing a melody. Writing a melody is kind of similar to the way the chord changes come about. At this time I have the rhythm section to help inspire the melodic phrasing. I play one section of the song again and again until I’m able to sing a melody that comes to me and then I write it down and listen to it again. Sometimes I end up needing to make changes to the rhythm or pitch of the melody, but most of the time the inspiration of the melody provides a satisfying result.

My lyric writing also has a farmer-like method to it, but the process involves gathering and refining small inspirations that I harvest once a week by following Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way.” The first thing I do every morning is write at least ten stream of consciousness short sentences. At the end of the week, I condense all of the morning pages into a single document. Then I take a song with a completed melody and decide what the rhyme scheme will be for it. I try to see if I could use any of the short sentences in the song. Very often, using just one of the short sentences in the chorus will make me decide what the song will be about.

When writing the lyrics, that is the time when I feel most closely connected to my source of inspiration. Once I decide the title, most of the time from a sentence in my morning pages, I use it in the strongest part of the melody in the chorus, sometimes more than once. Then I decide what points I’m going to make in the verses. The verses are really where the magic happens for me. I usually write the first line of the verse and then the last line and then the middle two are dictated by the rhymes being called for by the melody. So the first line rhymes with the third and the second with the fourth. Sometimes it happens differently, but that’s usually how it goes. Then I use the rhyming dictionary as a catalyst to fill in the middle, and as soon as I see the word I want to use I get an instant inspiration as to how to use it. So it’s when I’m writing my lyrics that I feel most connected to my muse.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a very analytical and formulaic method of writing my songs, but the most important thing to keep in mind is that everything I do, from the chord changes—to the harmonization—to the melody—and to the lyrics, all come to me like a gift from heaven.