The path is often long and narrow. On the long march between initial inspiration and polished product, there are numerous waypoints – signs that a song is going in the right direction. I’ve already documented some of the processes.
I’ve been laying down the conceptual tracks for something that has been building up over a couple of years. This follows my usual workflow of figuring out the melody, basic rhythm and chord structures and I do this for segments such as verses, choruses, pre, and the anthem separately. Usually, I just use piano, a standard kit, maybe strings and other general midi sounds just to get the thing down. When I have these chunks recognisable for what they are, and with some fiddling I put them together in a short sequence without any repetition of sections, and without intros or outros: verse-pre-chorus-anthem.
This is when I know I’ve got me a boom! Its a significant waypoint and a time of selection pressure. If these core elements work together then I know the song might be going somewhere. Beforehand, they are just isolated blocks, but in sequence, they form a whole from which I can get a picture of how to progress.
From then there is of course much more fiddling, getting away from the GM sound fonts, and forming the overall structure. I am currently onto those stages and so will document them later.
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