Today, I had the opportunity to participate in another group songwriting session with Mountain Springs church! This was an incredible experience, and I was happy that we were able to create a song we were all happy with at the end.

For this writing session, I tried to act as the producer as best I could. I brought in a few reference tracks that we listened to, and we also took the time to reflect on what we were going through before we started writing. Articulating these emotions out loud in a group setting made us inspired to want to write a song about staying focused in the midst of a world full of distractions.

After writing these points down and referencing a few scripture verses, Claire strummed her guitar and came up with a pretty strong chorus quickly. I usually like to start with writing the chorus, because it helps lay a good foundation that everyone can sing along to.

I was surprised the first verse came to us pretty quickly as well! While Claire and Anne-Marie were brainstorming lyrics, I was helping them come up with a progression for the verse. Once we settled on this, we had an extra line we wanted to incorporate into the song, so Claire suggested we add a short Pre-Chorus. I liked this idea, and came up with a chord progression to help support the idea.

A few weeks ago, Claire spoke a sentence one Sunday morning which I wrote down. It was “I will choose you again and again and again”. I loved this line and thought we should use it in the song, so we decided to put it as our bridge!

After the bridge was written, we were ready to record a work tape from start to finish. A work tape is a rough voice memo recording that can be used to help remember the song. The next stage for me is to do a rough demo production of the song, so we can play it in a few Sunday’s from now!

Being able to participate in this songwriting session reminded me of how much I enjoy the process of production. To me, songwriting should come before you begin the preproduction of a track. If the song itself isn’t strong, the production will help cover it up, but it is better to focus on making your song strong right from the beginning!