The Making of a New Song (Part 1) by Zak Claxton

The Making of a New Song (Part 1)

by Zak Claxton 

 

I've had a lot of people over the years ask me about my songwriting process, and I never feel like I have a good answer for them. I'm also not at all sure that my process of writing a song is like anyone else's. Songwriting is kind of a private affair, and it seems to me that even in the great collaborative teams (Lennon/McCartney, Jagger/Richards, Rodgers/Hammerstein and so on), you have one guy who's the lyricist and another guy that does the music. In cases where both people do both jobs, they rarely do them together. I know it's neat to imagine multiple people assembling this audible work of art, but even in those Beatles tunes that John and Paul actually worked on together, almost all of them had Paul writing the verse and chorus, and John contributing the bridge, or vice-versa. It's not like they were sitting together saying, "Ooh, make the next chord a G minor!" and so on. Ultimately, creativity is a solo gig, at least in the initial stage... a one-person deal.

Anyway, since I'm in the process of writing songs for the next album (even though the first one hasn't hit the streets yet), I thought I'd share what my version of songwriting is all about. By the way, while I hate the fact that I have to write this, everything you hear here is copyrighted by me, Zak Claxton. This blog post is date/time stamped, obviously, so don't get any funny ideas about borrowing this little tune. I do like to share; I don't like to get ripped off. Enough said.

1. The Idea...

[READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY ZAK CLAXTON HERE] 


Zak Claxton : Demo Song Video