How to Write a Song When You Know Nothing About Songwriting

In this Corpse Diary entry, I explain how the first song came together despite the small problem of me knowing absolutely nothing about songwriting.

After my drumming career came to a very sudden and well-deserved end, I was bored again. A friend encouraged me to keep going, write a few more riffs, and actually try to turn something into a song. So, I plugged my brother’s thirty-year-old Jackson Dinky into my computer and started messing about.

GarageBand has always been my DAW of choice, mainly because it’s simple and I know just enough to get by. At this point I had one riff for an intro, reused it as a chorus, and quickly realised I still needed something for a verse, and of course, a bit in the middle. Once those parts were recorded, I threw some very bad GarageBand drums underneath.

That’s when I remembered EZdrummer. Using its labelled loops, I built a full drum track, exported it, dropped it into GarageBand, and played guitar over it. I added vocals, and just like that, the first demo — There’s a Body in the Tank — was finished.

Mission accomplished.

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