Song Exploder Ep. 70: Weezer
Rivers Cuomo discussing how he comes up with a lot of vocal melodies for guitar not by playing the guitar but by singing:
If I just go to play a solo on a guitar, often it turns into just a wank fest and, you know, like the same old muscle memory licks you’ve heard a zillion times and it’s not interesting. But if I sing it, I’m much more restricted in where I can go and how fast the solo will be, and it’s going to have space in it because I have to breathe, and it’s going to be something you can sing along to because it was created by a voice.
Constraints!!!
Also, I liked Rivers’ perspective on how the band works together as a set of varied, diverse individuals (instead of from the perspective of, say, a tyrannical lead singer/songwriter):
I really appreciate the power of democracy. The songwriter, in this case, me, with the best of intentions, can limit the creativity of the other members of the band, because you’re attached to your original demo, or you had this vision for how you thought it was going to go. [But] you’re just one brain, and you just have this one limited perspective, but politically, in the room, you have more power than everyone else, even with the best of intentions. Other people are going to think like, “Well, I guess he wrote the song. So if he doesn’t like what I’m doing, then maybe I shouldn’t do it.” So it was very helpful for those guys to get time in the studio with our producer without me to come up with their own parts. And I don’t hear it until they’re done with their parts. Then I get to listen back, and, in most cases, I’m just blown away by how cool, and fresh, and layered, and complex everything has become.
Also, Rivers says he gets along songwriting by using a “spreadsheet of song title ideas” (and he admits he has another one serving as ideas for lines in songs). So yeah, your app could’ve been a spreadsheet.