Complete Metal Songwriting Process Guide (& Recording in Your DAW)

This is your complete guide for metal songwriting to help you not only start and arrange your music, but to follow through and complete every song.

We take you through a step-by-step process that will help you be more productive in your metal songwriting and will keep your workflow simple.

We also go behind-the-scenes into the recording process in your DAW in this songwriting-recording guide.

***Take your metal songwriting to the next level with our course Metal Songwriter’s Forge. Learn more here:

***We also mentioned our metal mixing course, Metal Producer Overlord. When you’re song or album is complete, this is your next step:

Video Timeline:

00:00 - 01:22 - Intro
01:23 - 02:20 - The Riff
02:21 - 06:23 - Tempo & Beat
06:24 - 10:09 - Extending Riffs & Progressions
10:10 - 14:14 - Lyrics & Vocal Melodies
14:15 - 16:23 - Bass Track
16:24 - 18:57 - Solos
18:58 - 20:26 - You Next Step

We hope this metal songwriting and recording guide helped you. Please give this video a like and make sure you’re subscribed to the Metal Mastermind YouTube channel.

Also, leave us a comment if you have any questions about the video.

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[royallib]

Short, sweet, to the point and massively useful ;)

[ripperthecrooks]

very cool video its nice to see your workflow in these situations, I can see here you are clipping all your tracks, I assume it was for the point of the video which is how to be creative with songwriting ideas because otherwise you wouldnt actually clip those tracks right, anyway nice job of the video it was very inspiring!

[Mister_Knorke]

Amazing video, it helped me a lot to get some of my ideas on paper 🎉

[darrylanderson]

Dude, lol, i did not expect your singing voice to sound like that! Ha ha! Not in a bad way at all! Just unexpected! Actually it was pretty good!

[steveblasier]

Yes! I would love a 2 hour video! I love your teaching style and how it fits in to newbie recording and songcrafting. Now that I've got neighbors all around, I gotta learn how to use my headphones and this lends in to that process. Keep up the great work.

[Tom_Vince]

A very informative and helpful video for some of us trying to figure this out. I have, I must admit, been a little intimidated with the idea of recording with a DAW/MIDI but you made it seem very easy. I am sure it is not, but it helped build my confidence to a higher level. Now I am beginning to realize that it is an essential, powerful tool that will enable me to achieve my music goals. I know I am little late for dinner on this video but Thank You so very much for taking the time to create these videos! Oh and BTW you made a subscriber out of me this morning with this one!

[Emily_M]

Ooh, this is basically a distilled short version of Metal Songwriter's Forge to get the basics down. Very nice, and also concise and important: Just get going. Put the part down, next. Don't agonize and just have fun with it. As a Type A perfectionist that was a hard lesson lol.

Lol yesss Jason let the bass fills flow through you. Bass players, Audio Assault's Duality bass rig is on sale for $10 atm, this is June 26th 2023.

On the Discord I posted some audio of BIAS FX 2's new guitar modeling turning my 7-string Schecter guitar into a 5-string P bass, and I approve as a bass player. And as someone with three basses with P pickups lol... So if anyone reading this uses BIAS FX 2, give it a try for laying down basslines. It didn't work so well with my Legator so your mileage may vary.

[maxfreniere]

Sweet. I got pretty much the same order, except I write bass before lyrics/melodies... I will try to switch them just to see..Rock On🤟

[christopherpaul]

Awesome formula. I retired from the metal scene at the turn of the century and am just getting back into it as a solo artist now that I'm middle aged & crazy. I like your approach to instruction it can't get any more straightforward. Keep it coming.

[iduncanw]

Awesome video, I got half way through this on my Sunday afternoon and was inspired to just have a go. Thought if I watched to the end, I'd be more likely to just watch another video.

Ended up making a small piece with all the "ingredients" here. Really happy with how it came out. Didn't worry about settings, just quickly picked a preset for each guitar/bass part and let EZdrummer 3 do it's part. Thank you Jason 🤘🤘🤘

Don't worry, I finished the video in the morning 😎

I've got Song Writers Forge and will gradually work my way through it. Really looking forward to the lead and bass courses 🤘🤘

[granthelas]

That was surprisingly beautiful considering how you just slapped it together thumbs up 👍.

[RodneySagorScreams]

great video..inspirational and educational at the same time!

[GamingWithHasty]

Hi Jason, awesome video as always! I have written some BM songs and the question here is in terms of song structure. Let's say, I have an intro riff that plays two times then comes the second riff that plays 4 times the changes to another one that plays 5 times, and then back to the second one but now it plays 2 times instead.
Do you think one should stick with what sounds good or try to have rules regarding riff structure ?

[justcallmedomi]

would like to use the ezdrummer 2, but I think you can't download it anymore 😥