[budda]

in my last band, we would get together and be like "ok, lets come up with a song" (unless we had a gig coming up, in wihch case we learned a cover or tw).

anyway, waht would happen was this. i'd ask what the feel for the song would be, and come up with a simple 3 chord progression for it. the bassist and drummer would join in, and the vocalist would start doing his thing. we'd jam on it for about an hour, see how it goes.

then we'd discuss what we did and didnt like, tweak, and keep workin at it until everybody had their parts memorized. worked really well.

mind you it doesnt work that way for everybody, but we churned out a good 8 songs in about a year as well as our list of covers.

jamming really helps with songwriting. i am aiming to use my ear, not my minor scale knowledge to write these days. I just rock out in the living room, and try to remember the riffs that sound good. I dont have a band, and dont record often enough to write whole songs by myself.