Scott's Songwriting Process Dump (Patreon)

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Hi Everyone,

One of my main goals for this Patreon is to promote creativity. You've probably heard me say this a hundred times in various contexts throughout my videos: writing music is one of the best ways to learn and understand music theory.

This is a vulnerable look at me in a recording software songwriting session - not polished, not perfect, just tinkering, practicing, working things out. The goal is to show you this process so you have questions and curiosity about writing this way!

This video is a pared down version of a songwriting session of mine. If you'd like to watch the full version, click here. 

You've probably also seen my Songwriting Challenge | Ten Turds lesson. While that is an excellent way to practice getting ideas down quickly with just a guitar in your hand, this is a way of writing everything all at once while working on your recording skills. Instead of rapid fire, you're taking your time with it a little more. Granted, doing something like this in an hour may seem like a very short amount of time for some of you, but I assure you with practice you can get faster and faster with it. (Recording software lessons are coming soon.)

The point of this video is to:

a) drum up interest (and hopefully inspiration) for writing music with recording software

b) invite more music writing questions from my patrons

c) give you a sense of what you can do with all the things you're learning here

and most importantly 

d) to be vulnerable with you and put my cards on the table

Down below you can see a list of dates. These are other songwriting sessions. Sometimes I had a good day, sometimes I didn't. This is normal for everyone. Sometimes I wrote something I thought was really cool! Other days I was not so excited about my ideas.

Writing is a process. That doesn't mean each song is a process, that means the whole lifestyle of learning how to make music is a process. It takes practice even just to learn how to get into the groove of writing.

Professional poker players use something called "Expected Value" which is basically the idea that, on average, every time you check, raise or fold you can calculate the expected value of your choices. As long as you are always making decisions with a positive expected value, you'll be profitable in the long run, EVEN IF you lose big every once in a while or lose a little bit frequently. Read more about it here if that sounds interesting.

The songwriting process has a similar vibe. As long as you're setting aside time for mindful and deliberate writing, thats going to make you a better songwriter over time. It doesn't matter if you write things you don't like or have difficulty figuring out "where to go from here." The more time you spend sketching out ideas, working on interesting melodies, chord progressions, beats, rhythms, etc, the more you'll get the hang of the whole concept and the easier it will be to write a whole song.

You don't have to learn how to write this way, and the ten turds method is preferable for a lot of people (including professional writers,) but for those of you who like this kind of thing, I'm working on a GarageBand series to guide you into the software writing world.

Ask your songwriting, recording, writing, etc questions on the community forum. 

My other writing sessions:

(these are linked to the end of the session so you can see what the final product sounded like, from there you can watch from the beginning or scroll around to find something you're interested in - they are not lessons so don't feel obligated to watch the whole thing - they are literally just videos of me writing music.)

Also, if you like having these, I'm continuing to recording my writing sessions and will post more in the future.

2.3.21 

1.30.21 

1.27.21 II 

1.27.21 

1.17.21 II 

1.17.21 

11.28.20 II 

11.28.20 

11.27.20

11.24.20 

3.24.21

Check out the Lesson Archive for more Songwriting lessons