Song writing

How you write songs? Do you have a fixed pattern? Lyrics first? Tune first?

I'm a bit haphazzard but finding I'm writing more and more as I've got back into this after taking the plunge late last year and getting back into live playing via R-T-Y-D and recording see my previous post. And writing music is great for me, it's a creative outlet that fulfills me in a way most of my life doesn't. Whatever I write musically and lyrically is unique to me, my creative outlet and in some way a spritual connection for me. Not that my songs necessaryily have a big sprititual component but just that I feel that connection in creating something musical, something unique, something totally me.

I do find with me though that the better things I think I'm wrting at the moment do start with me working around the chord sequence or riff. I like to get things that have either some symetry or pattern to them or that have something odd about them to me. I have a chord sequence in Em that goes Em then Cmaj7 - some friends raise eyebrows at this but trust me I think it works! Probably since the B in the Cmaj7 is the 5th in the Em triad - whatever I love that transition.

Actually slightly odd chords are another thing - I try to expand out of the normal shape if I can, maj7ths are a favourite at the moment and also sus4 or sus2 added to something. Occasionally a G6 might appear rather than a straight Gmaj for example. Confession time - I'm a big Rush fan and if you know Alex Lifesons full guitar sound where he has those kind of embellishments I suppose I'm influenced by that kind of sound.

Lyrics - mine are rubbish. I've decided not to worry about it, often I inwardly cringe at them but some people who've listened to my stuff at www.reverbnation.com/grahamhunt say that they think the lyrics are good. So what the hell, I know what they are about and what the thinking was behind them so what does it matter.... although my wife won on a recent song and I rewrote the line "Get any bloody thinner you'd pass me a pie". Yes she was right that was rubbish and the new line is much more in line with the feeling beneath the song for me.

Often I scribble lyrics in a lyric book I carry with me. Then I find some time later I'm sat with the guitar and think about some pattern idea, try something, listen to it, look at it, alter a chord, try another, try to hear in my head where it should go... then there is a beginning of something and I pull out the lyric book sometimes as something it there already formed or something that acts as a prompt. Recently a whole lyric was re-written and re-written until only one line (the title) stayed. Still I'm proud of that one so why worry about the cost of the process... does the sculptor worry about the shards of disgarded marble? Do lyrics have to mean something? Most of mine are about me and about emotions within my life if I'm honest - the odd one is more flippent but most of them have some quiet deep meaning behind them even if that isn't obvious to the casual listener. Ages back a lot of mine were fantasy stuff when I was in a prog rock band influenced by Arthurian legends and Rodney Mathews paintings - seriously! But I had little life experience to take from then and no capability to translate emotions into a verbal lexicon that even I'd have made sense of.

So - how do others write? You never know sharing our processes might spark new creative ideas for others.