I’ve tried a variety of different songwriting methods. I’ve written a set of lyrics and then tried setting them, or been handed a set of lyrics and told to make them work. I’ve come up with melodies and then set lyrics to them, found chords for them and so on. I’ve worked out basslines or chord progressions and then built on top of them. I’ve worked stuff out on paper, on instruments or in my head. I’ve moved the entire process into the computer, building tracks out of loops and MIDI sequences, sometimes playing stuff in via the keyboard but more often just drawing stuff straight in with the mouse.
My preferred method the past few years is to record some improvisation over a beat, and then edit the high points together in the computer. I also like to take samples, slice them and see how far I can get rearranging and pitch-shifting them. With vocals, I like to sing wordlessly or scat nonsense syllables, and then fit lyrics to them later. I learned a lot of these methods from working with hip-hop and electronic dance-pop artists and they’ve done a lot to freshen up my writing, make me take chances, and not be too precious about my ideas. When I’m doing work for hire, of course, I have to follow to the client’s process, and that can be a drag, but I try to adapt to whatever the method is.
If you’re immersed deeply in music, ideas will just pop out of your head continually. He’s wise to carry a recording device with him at all times. Paul McCartney famously kept a tape recorder, notebook and guitar or piano in every room of the house. “Yesterday” came to him more or less fully formed in a dream, and when he woke up, he just rolled over and recorded it before it vanished. These sorts of bolts of inspiration don’t just come out of nowhere. You need to feed your brain a lot of raw material. Listening isn’t enough. You need to memorize and perform other people’s material, and play around with it. Try extending or dropping sections, try combining parts of different songs together, try altering a chord here or there. Your brain will take in all these chunks of music, digest them and recombine them while you go about your day (and apparently also while you sleep.) When something hits, you need to be ready for it.