How I Write Songs.

A dive into artistic creation from start to finish.

My musicianship.

Well hopefully if you’ve been reading my Substack for any length of time, you’ve come to familiarize yourself with me enough to know that I play in a band called “A Common Crown”. If you don’t know us, fair enough, let me show where you could start for your most relevant listen for what current and future music will sound like.

So hopefully you’ve listened to my band and can at least respect it, if not enjoy it. That hopefully establishes my credibility on this subject, as the entirety of my substack should as well. I started playing guitar as an 11 year old kid who played guitar hero and saw all his friends do the same thing, which I do have another substack for.

When you play guitar and spend enough time around other musicians, you’’ll eventually get that itch to color outside the lines and try for yourself what you think sounds cool. I know I recently referred to a Dimebag Darrell monologue of “What Makes You Cringe?” in another Substack, but to that exact point, you may hear something and feel like you could make something a bit more beautiful.

And that’s where the spark of creativity starts.

Photo of me circa 2024 at the Millvale Music Festival. Also, my expression literally every time I get to share music with people.

The Spark.

I can’t really cite one specific thing that encourages me to start going to town on guitar. I honestly don’t even know all the chords on a guitar. I know the pentatonic, phrygian, and major scales. Those do me well enough that I can somewhat play. You be the judge on that, though.

But where said spark starts for me is usually a noise, an idea, or another song. I try to not always take inspiration from songs because that can lead to attempting to rewrite another song fast, but it can be useful to get inspired. So things usually start there. Inspiration that turns into a riff. It hits when I’m just kinda noodling around on guitar. Once it hits, I start playing it over and over again. Now that I’m an adult, I do like to bust out the metronome as well, which if you told me I’d be busting out a metronome with any frequency when I was a kid, I’d tell you you’re full of it…

But here we are…

So usually the riff begets another riff. Two riffs beget a chorus. This is where I’ll gladly admit I have a rough time in songwriting. I am not the hook guy. But the beauty of being in a band is that you got other people you can toss things off of to see what they think or come up with.

This for me is where the magic generally happens. I’m inspired by the NWOAHM, Pantera, and all the greats of metal. My drummer Matt is a big hair metal guy. My singer Jen is pretty all over the place but she gravitates towards more punk and 90s alternative. My bass player Steve likes a wide variety of music. The other guitarist B likes a lot of the same stuff as me, but he also likes some older stuff too.

Now, in a vacuum you’d look at all these separate interests and think they couldn’t possibly work together.

But that’s the cool part. They do. And well!

So I’ve often referred to my drummer as a Lars Ulrich type drummer (No offense intended, although I realize my audience may laugh at that). He is excellent at writing a song and pointing the song in a general direction. That is VERY important to have when trying to make something. Jen as a singer is great at melody, and singing (obviously). She always knows where I need to go for back up vocals. B and I’s tones are very different but very complimentary which makes the live and studio sound a wall. Steve is very song oriented as well. No one in the band thinks they’re any better than they are and that keeps us focused towards writing good music as we see it.

I’d be a liar if I said we had a specific aim or genre for what we were aiming to write. I call us Alternative Metal, as that seems most appropriate, but people may call us rock of metal. I’m pretty indifferent to genres just because there are so many bands and so many micro genres that sometimes tying to yourself to a genre hurts more than it helps.

But that’s also the beauty of it. We have a song that we’re going to release eventually called “Light Me Up” and the way I envisioned this song was a slow stoner metal style jam. I brought it to practice, and my drummer heard something completely different. By the end of it, I think it now sounds sorta like Godsmack and Guns N’ Roses. I was sort of bothered at first with the direction Matt wanted to go, but now that it’s together? I love the song. It’s driving. It’s grooving. I can’t wait to share it with you.

In Summary:

It all starts with a riff for me. The riff sounds cool. I sometimes write another riff or two, I sometimes just come to practice with a riff. I let everyone know, and play it. Once I play it, Matt usually tries to follow along. Not always perfectly but his gears get going. Once we got that established, we start to build on top of that. Jen is last to come in, but she’ll usually try to get in before we wrap one up because she can help steer us in the direction that compliments the melody she hears.

Now it is not at all lost on me how blessed I am to play with awesome musicians and even more awesome people. I have seen, and if you play music, I know you have to, people who just can’t work together. I’m sure I have been that person for someone else. But if you get that group, count your blessings and hold onto it because it is RARE.

Hopefully my ramblings of songwriting were fruitful, enlightening or at least entertaining. As always thank you so much for reading. I appreciate you and your time.