[muso] How do you write a song?

[Neil]

As in how do you write one in general, and how do you do it, please explain in as much detail as possible the creation of a song.  How do you start, do you dick about on your guitar until you come up with a riff that sounds good, and then what do you do with that.  How do you decide on what structure the song will have, how do you decide what it's going to be about?!  

As I say, as much detail as you can muster please, I'd be fascinated to find out and I'm sure it could be an interesting topic.

[Garfield And Friends]

Since I can't sing or play proper instruments, I generally fire up a notation editor on my computer and place notes on a bar, play it, re-adjust it all, replay it etc. until it sounds good. Once happy with the multiple 'voices' I save the file. I usually end up humming the thing in my head and some lyrics might come to me. Then it's just a case of writing down the half-assed lyrics in notepad, seeing what fits and what doesn't and either adjust the music again or adjust the lyrics.

Surprisingly simple, but the results are usually of a 'pleasing just myself' level. But since that's what I'm aiming for then that's fine.

There are other times that a lyric just comes into my head and I take a note of it. It'll stay unused for ages until some tinkly midi I've created pops up that is suitable to match with the lyrics.

[Jemble Fred]

Before the proper musicians start in, here's the non-musical way to write a song. I've written about sixty so-great-I-can't-be-arsed-to-be-humble songs – original lyrics, melodies etc, although I can't play anything but the kazoo. Each of these songs has a rhythm, a bassline, counter-melodies, everything. But I start with lyrics and tune at the same time, never deliberately setting out to write a song. But songs can attack you when you least expect it, although washing up is a typical time. Let out a sigh, and before you know where you are you're singing a strange new lyric to a tune which you've definitely never heard before. If it's any more than bollocks, you then have to develop the idea lyrically, seeing where that takes the tune. In fact, the problem with 99% of songs is that people beging noodling about on instruments befor ethey even know what the song's about, and it can come out technically perfect, but as a result, uninspiring and derivative. Lyric and melody are all that really matters, and everything else stems from that. Once they are firmly in place in the eight-track of your mind, then you begin to hear the bass, then the drums, and, er, so on.

Now over to those folk who can play more than one chord, but have never written a song about how fun self-harm can be, or how birds deal with neuroses.

[Rats]

I do it different ways but at the minute I'm just making a quick drum loop in fruity loops and improvising over the top of it, then singing gibberish over the top of that until I'm making a tune I like and then changing the gibberish into proper words. It's the musical equivilant of throwing paint at the canvas just to see what happens. I don't know if I'll be able to go back to sitting down and working out a song now because it's much more exciting.

[Jemble Fred]

I have to admit I agree with Paul Macca, that anyone who sits down to write a song is on a hiding to nothing. Songs either enter your head or they don't, as if they're already written, floating around in the ether BFG-dream style, and whether you like it or not, they're going to drift into your head and never let go. The only way to prevent going mad is to record the tune.

[Neil]

The initial creation is what puzzles me, how it starts from nothing. I was noodling on the guitar last night while watching Letterman, and came out with a couple of things that sounded nice, but then what?  

Oh here's the thing that I really can't understand, how do you write a hook, how do you know if you have a good rhythm, how do you know you've just made a catchy guitar part that's worth keeping?!

Here's what I think the possible answers may be:  

Play something over and over again until you either find it sticking in your head, or find yourself whistling it.

Record everything you do, then listen back to it a few times at the end of the day.  I recall Chuck D saying this is how Public Enemy worked when they started out.

[Jemble Fred]

To be honest, if you have to perform or hear it more than once before it sticks in your head, what's the point? Hooks are supposed to hook from the start. As I say, a song has to be something you literally can't avoid writing. In fact, the idea of trying to come up with a tune is a really depressing one, to me.

Unless you're getting paid for it, I suppose.

[Gazeuse]

I don't write many songs 'cos I mainly do instrumental stuff. I can sit down and write something from scratch, but the best stuff just seems to drop into my head without much work...The work comes later when you bash it into shape.

Basically, the music seems to happen in all sorts of ways so there aren't any rules for me. Perhaps if I describe how I wrote one particular song, it may be more helpful. It's the All About Me theme.

After getting a brief about the show, I had a tinkle on the guitar and immediately found a couple of things that I really liked and which would be suitable for the song. I was in the key of D and I really liked D C# D A as a hooky melody idea and wanted to work C7 in towards the end of the chorus...I just happened to find it and could tell that it would make a nice unusual change and  that it would be right in the right situation.

I worked on D C# D A and added D C# D D to complete the main chorus melody with D Em9 and A (sus)7 underneath. I got these mainly by finding nice chord shapes (Which played on the D and C# on the second and third fret of the second (B) string). After a couple of repeats, I managed to work in the C7 chord and then resolve back up to the D.

I then .mp3'd everything over to my mate Nick who was going to write the lyrics. He very quickly came up with the hook line...Our Brighter Day. That was when I knew that we'd get the job. It was such a fantastic line which encapsulated the feel that I was trying to get. Nick is a great vocal producer too and he had a few suggestions about the rhythm of the words and the melody line  to make them more singable.

With a bit of playing about, I came up with a verse and then realised that it needed a bridge to take it into the chorus. For a bit of a change, I went into the relative minor (F#m). I think that that was also when I found a nice little guitar fill which features in the intro and chorus.

Nick and I then got together to record a demo and after changing a few lyrics and notes we found that we'd finished!!!

I hope that makes sense. I think that it is generally the way I work..ie. Get the original inspiration and then gradually knock it into shape. I tend to jot down or record little nuggets for later use (Jotting down is better, because I'm more likely to come across it again!!!).

[Mr Colossal]

Well i usually start one of two ways:

Im just fucking around with the synth setting until i get a sound I like, then i start 'synth jamming' , similar to what you are doing on a guitar, changing  notes and the duration until i get a bars worth of melody that sounds good.

Then i either  progress by perhaps extending it to 4 bars and changing just a few notes usually toward one end of the pattern, or 'mutating' the meldoy and making it more complex.

Sometimes i just do it completely freestyle, its hard to explain, i will just have some sort of idea where i should be heading melody wise in my head and just go with my instinct on what sounds right.

My other method is more an 'imitation' . If i hear something I like the sound of i will first try to recreate it as best i can myself, then i will go about putting my own spin on it using the above methods.

I usually always start with the main riff, or bassline, then work backwards. A lot of my tunes start off like 'introductions' and a few i've decided were stronger  that way.  Im also a fan of writing music to suit a particular emotion- (e.g. the Life song on my featured website) When writing something like this I kind of play out a visual sequence in my head, like an epic shot of the earth  from space, and kind of write a piece that would suit. A sort of mental soundtrack if you will.

Ive not really worked much with vocals before. But am starting to undergo some side projects. If the vocals were intelligent and brilliantly written i would write the music around them afterwards to compliment them... if the actual melody itself was the strong point i would add the vocals later around the music.

[Des Nilsen]

When it comes to knowing whether a riff or bit or piece is any good, I just find that it keeps on turning up when I'm playing. Several times a day I plug my beat-up Ibanez GSA60 into my cheap as pish DigiTech RP50 multi effects unit and slip my headphones on.
I invariably muck about with my own preset sounds and just throw ideas about, trying not to think too much about it, but letting my subconscious suggest things.
Like when you hear a song on the radio and think ''why didn't they do this, instead?'' - The stuff that presents itself is all my own doing, despite the fact it requires no effort.
Doing this on my 4-track I've pieced together a big bunch of rock songs that I'm happy with. Though, I do wonder whether they're accessable to other people's ears; especially as I like unusual and angular changes.
I play fast, jumpy blues riffs and Curtis Mayfield-style embellishments, so a simple enough chord progression sounds none too bad.

Earlier I happened upon something - I was playing some chugging delayed clean tones and started playing in time with the delay and came up with an odd, baroque-sounding thing. I know I'll use that, because as I played it, it seemed exciting and new - it was different to the usual riffing & mucking about.

More often than not I have riffs and chord progressions I like, and each cues something atmospheric or sensual in my head, so the ideas that have a similar 'feel' go together.
Sometimes a whole tune just leaps out of my hands and I'm slightly suspicious that I may have ripped something off. That's probably my mind working by some set of harmonic failsafes. Poppy stuff, really.
It's rare and suprising when that happens; it's like for a moment I'm actually being purely creative rather than piecing things together.

I use Guitar Pro 3 (I can't be bothered with their latest versions) to check whether the things in my head track up properly.
I get the drum, bass, keyboard and guitar parts tracked up and saved into groups of songs that fit together. So, though they're poor quality, I have full plans for studio recordings or full-band transcriptions.
I tend to write for either band or studio recording, because I enjoy it. Building one idea atop another and tweaking like mad until things cannot be made any more pleasing to me.
I'm my own audience, because I don't plan on making a career of music, so I just know when something's worth my bother because I'd love to hear it on record.

Vocal melodies are a no-brainer for me, because I think they ought to be simple, but expressive. This is for the simple reason that  I'm not too great a singer; all I can muster is a Lou Reed/ Roger Waters-style speak-singing. Perhaps a gruff Hendrixy growl as well. I sort of know what I'll sing, but ambition fucks it up because I have too bassy a range.

The whole songwriting thing - I love talking about it, but I'm quite indistinct. I hope some of this is interesting. ;)

-

[Ambient Sheep]

Before the proper musicians start in, here's the non-musical way to write a song. I've written about sixty so-great-I-can't-be-arsed-to-be-humble songs – original lyrics, melodies etc, although I can't play anything but the kazoo...songs can attack you when you least expect it, although washing up is a typical time. Let out a sigh, and before you know where you are you're singing a strange new lyric to a tune which you've definitely never heard before.

You have a wonderful gift, and I'm deeply envious.  Many of the great songwriters have been like you: the people like McCartney (or Bernard Sumner or Kristin Hersh or Lisa Gerrard) who say that songs just drop out of the air - nay, sometimes FORCE their way out of the air - into their brains.

Me?  I had five years of music theory with a few iffy exam certificates to prove it, five years of guitar lessons, am self-taught piano to a reasonable standard...and despite (or perhaps because of, although none of that educashun started until I was 11 years old) I've never once in my 39 years had a tune just drop into my head.  I just don't have a creative brain.  :-(

</self-pity>

You should do something with your gift.  Maybe find someone who can put those ideas down into technology?

[Jemble Fred]

Well, TotalNightmare and I need to sort out proper music, when we finally get round to it, especially for live shows and so on.

To be honest though, I think we're usually talking about a very different kind of music to the rest of you – our stuff is nearly purely swing/cheesy, catchy tunes, whistlable.

[poison popcorn]

how do you know you've just made a catchy guitar part that's worth keeping?!

heh, you'll know if it sounds good! (that'll be the pixie dust bit)

i generally mess around with chords and rhythms, finding sequences that work together. sometimes i'll be thinking of a melody for a vocal bit at the same time which can influence the choice of chords. actually i think every part of the creation process influences every other part. there's loads of ways a piece could go from the outset, it's quite weird to think how unlikely it is that a piece turned out the way it did.

if i've got a few chords that work well, i sometimes pick notes out of the chords to use as a melody and play around with it from there. maybe make a few drum patterns in fruity loops, stick them into cakewalk and record the guitar over it. then maybe figure out a bassline... of course these things can happen in any order which can also entirely change the way a song goes.

words i find quite difficult, i'll write something and ignore it for a month or so, read it back and bin it. or if it passes the cringe test maybe use it. sometimes i'll take a common phrase or saying and fuck it up and see where it goes from there.

so to summarise: no rules at all.

[Mr Colossal]

I've never once in my 39 years had a tune just drop into my head.  I just don't have a creative brain.  :-(

</self-pity>

You should do something with your gift.  Maybe find someone who can put those ideas down into technology?

Don't you ever whistle or hum anything randomly? Since ive become more musical orientated i find myself doing it without noticing when im bored, concentrating and whatnot. I've cursed the number of times i've just come out with something by accident but not been near anything musical to get it down... the completely forgotten anything to do with it,

A few times i've done it and unintentionally ripped something off, or mixed the melody of two well know tunes together  without realising though. I think its something to do with the subconscious mind throwing a jumbled mix of something you once hear and liked back at you.

I read about evidence in a court case where somebody wanted to sue a recent  artist for plagiarism, but they wouldn't allow it as music has been around so long that it was impossible to rule out  that this mans melody could not be in something else previously; and that he copied it in, or unintentionally himself.

[Jemble Fred]

Aye, if you're stuck, it's often quite a good idea to come up with a different tune to someone else's lyrics – the phrasing etc is already there, you just have to make the notes sufficiently different. Then you change the lyrics, and hey presto! I've only done htis the once (with 'The Lady Is A Tramp') to see if it worked, and I was quite pleased with the results.

[Des Nilsen]

words i find quite difficult, i'll write something and ignore it for a month or so, read it back and bin it. or if it passes the cringe test maybe use it. sometimes i'll take a common phrase or saying and fuck it up and see where it goes from there.

Me too.

I notice that a lot of lyrics are straight and to the point, but I get bogged down in cryptic garbage. I wrote a whole load of them a month ago and read them back last week - for the most part it's useless bilge, repeating the same sorts of similies and metaphors, the same words and the same themes.

I try to write lyrics that are vaguely poetic - no rhyme structure, though with the odd unconventional rhyme and colourful words - but can't write anything truly poetic. It's always like really bad gothic poetry that anybody in their right mind would destroy to save massive embarassment.
Ho-hum.
I can always edit myself though. Sooner or later I think I'll happen upon something interesting.

-

[Jemble Fred]

God, I would hate to even consider writing serious lyrics. Admittedly, good comedy lyrics are even harder, but I'm usually happy to settle for complete nonsense, as long as it makes me laugh*.

*Well, smile.

[Rats]

I've cursed the number of times i've just come out with something by accident but not been near anything musical to get it down... the completely forgotten anything to do with it

god, yeah, that's awfull. Or if you're just fannying on and it sounds great so you keep going and then go "aaaargh, I've forgotten the first bit! Was it ... no, what about ... no, that's wrong. Aaaaargh, now I can't remember the second bit! Aaaaaaaaaaargh!". I bought a dictaphone for about a tenner so I can turn that on while I'm fannying, that way, I can rewind it and remember what I played if I fumble across something I like.

[Peking O]

For some reason this brings to mind one of my favourite Morris radio sketches, where he assumes the guise of an instrument shop employee and says something like "I was laying down a walking bass riff similar to Matthew Wilder's "Break My Stride..."

I've probably horribly misquoted it there, but that's the gist.

Anyway, sorry about that, as you were.

[Ambient Sheep]

I've never once in my 39 years had a tune just drop into my head.  I just don't have a creative brain.  :-(

Don't you ever whistle or hum anything randomly?

Yes, all the time, but only tunes that other people have already written.  Lots and lots of THEM.  I'm just one of nature's parrots.  A biological iPod, if you will.

I tell a lie...I think once, maybe twice, I have randomly whistled a new tune, but not for many years.  Perhaps that could be cultivated, I suppose, but I doubt it.

[chand]

Usually I just come up with stuff while I'm dicking around, and then if I like something I video myself playing it on webcam cos it's easier than proper recording and I can also see how the fuck I played it. I used to note stuff down in tab form but when I came back to it I could never get it right.

But, cos my stuff is intrumental it's all about little touches so my actual tunes are fairly basic and I record them and play along with it til I come up with something nice. Those bits you come up with on the spur of the moment while improvising are usually the best.

[Neil]

I don't write many songs 'cos I mainly do instrumental stuff. I can sit down and write something from scratch, but the best stuff just seems to drop into my head without much work...The work comes later when you bash it into shape.

Basically, the music seems to happen in all sorts of ways so there aren't any rules for me. Perhaps if I describe how I wrote one particular song, it may be more helpful. It's the All About Me theme..

Yay, very helpful.  I was hoping something would try and pick apart something they have made, perhaps at some point someone could do like a song diary thing when they're making a new one?

Thanks for the replies so far, they've been extremely interesting.  The idea about using GuitarPro is a good one, I have been writing down little chord progressions and licks, but yeah, you do forget the rythm when you come back to them.  So I've borrowed my sisters puter mic, and have stuck it in front of the amp, and will record any ideas that I have, so that I can see how the tab works.  GuitarPro seems more complicated than it should be, I was hoping you could just sort of drag chords into the timeline, but it seems like you have to paint in each note?  Am I missing the obvious?  I'll have to spend more time on it today, I've seen some great tabs in it which have downstrokes and upstrokes marked out etc.  I'm also going to install Acid Pro again and try to combine guitar tracks and maybe download some drum loops as well.  I figure the only real way to learn this stuff is to roll up the sleeves and get stuck in.

I'm still unsure about song structure and stuff, i think I need to read up on it again, and maybe take some simple songs (e.g. Nirvana stuf) to bits and see how they work.  Beatles tunes might be good for this too, as they have interesting stereo separation, so you can move the balance and see what each channel is made of.

Maybe I should start by trying to come up with a verse, chorus and intro/outro, slap them together and see what I can add on?

[Des Nilsen]

GuitarPro seems more complicated than it should be, I was hoping you could just sort of drag chords into the timeline, but it seems like you have to paint in each note?  Am I missing the obvious?

I don't know of any other ways to tab stuff than just writing it all up. Actually, I know you can import MIDI as a tab, provided the file isn't too polyphonic. Thing is, I've been using GuitarPro for an age now, so the awkwardness of rhythm and phrasing seems a lot easier than it was.
There's the occasional bit of 'odd time' trouble. I have a drum pattern I keep knocking out on my thighs that I cannot transcribe properly. I think it's 3/4 with a bar of 2/4. Pain in the arse to work out.

When I get the proper adaptors (the simplest thing to do!) I'll be using Cool Edit for demos, at long last. GuitarPro keeps me ambitious in the mean time.

-

[MrManson]

Play guitar, over and over, until you find something you like.

I may be technically wrong but it works for me

[oceanthroats]

well i envy most of you all because i have no music programs on the computer and am completely unable to make mp3 files of my songs and have no money to buy anything and bla bla bla....
but anyway, the way i write my songs changes all th etime. i might start with a phrase. i might hum that in my head for a period, or sing it in my head as i walk about the place doing things. it could last a long time, i coul dhave it hanging around in my head doing nothing in particular for a long point, and at some point it will either grow or it will be replaced by another idea.
one of my better songs came quite a few years ago now with the title. i then, in my head, sort of tried to find out how the music might get to the music i was hearing propping up the title phrase. then i tried to hum what might happen after the chorus/title phrase. and somehow over about a week or so they all merged together into a very very nice melody, still maybe the nicest melody i've come up with. at that point i couldn't actually play the guitar and figured out the chords afterwards.
nowadays i do play the guitar and perhaps regretably i tend to write on that a bit more, although i suppose there are other advantages.
with a recent song i came up with the first part of it, the first 3 or 4 chords out of thin air. and initially hated it. it floated about in my head for a few weeks while i tried to come up with a few different ideas. at some point it suddenly came back to me and i somehow understood where i wanted to take it, or rather whereabouts it wanted to actually go. often with songs i find that i'm not quite in control of it, although there's sometimes a certain amount of guidance involved.
with this song it just seemed to grow, usually while i was walking to the train in the morning and from the train in the evening. it would grow and change, and there would be a few different paths it might want to be heading down and eventually one path would present itself as being by far the better one and i'd soon forget the other idea.
i should point out at this point that quite a few of my songs are much more 'jugband blues' ish than say, i don't know, verse chorus verse chorus.  so many of them have their own peculair terrain and their own universe of dialects and forms and so on. this might osund very wanky, and possibly is, but its often what seems to happen in my head so right or wrong i go with it.

anyway, with one song i basically started playing an elliot smith song which was basically just a fairly regular country sort of styled series of musical ideas, and then changed it over a few months til it became something completely different.
with another song i was playing on a keyboard, on one of those casio chord thingy devices and i guess my fingers found an interesting little pattern, and an interesting series of words automatically stuck themselves to it and although i've added parts and bits and segments on guitar the main intial spark has stayed.
i would have to say that all the best songs of mine come from sparks, and somehow during the process of turning them into songs, better songs, which i often have to do, its vitally important that that intial 'spark' that lit up my head in the first place is retained. if i go too far away from that the song just seems to die, and this can be an incredibly painful thing to experience. another reason why its important to make little recordings of your early ideas and save them. i lost the original demo recordings of this songs i'd written and at some point found i'd spent to long and gone too far away from the spark that had made the song interesting and had given it life in the first place, and it just died. heartbreaking.

i don't think i can say that any song has just fallen out of thin air fully formed, but usually the idea, the spark, has to fall out of thin air into my lap. i can't write a song by sitting down and working at it. you almost have to be doing something else, and that little sing song demon has to just appear. from there i can usually make something, and i'm getting better at making something out of those ideas too.
the last few months i've probably had ten or fifteen little ideas pop out of nowhere. i'd say i've just about made good songs out of two of them, with another few just not quite ready to be dealt with right now. and of those two one of them still needs work.
its a very strange sort of thing really. i play the guitar and scratch around on the piano a little bit. i've found that songs come in different ways all the time. from trying to do things in different ways, different approaches, any approach that is new and that i don't quite understand a little series of chords, a melody fragment will appear and i might hate it at first but if its good it'll hang around and won't go away and almost force its way to life. and as much as it makes me sound like a real shit i do tend to think there's some sort of 'life' in th ebest of them. then again maybe its just my sweat, i don't know. maybe th elife of ideas or again, that word i'm always using, spark. for me that has to be there. and it has to come without you looking fo rit, when its ready to. there's an awful lot fo waiting around for me when it comes to music. its terribly frustrating but it just seems to be how things go for me.
hopefully one of these days i'll actually figure out how to make mp3 files of some of these tunes and pester some of you with them.

[Almost Yearly]

As in how do you write one in general, and how do you do it.

Addressing the latter - a short piano chord progression and an accompanying melody sort of evolve together, usually with words which are rubbish but fit the tune and then prove bloody hard to shake off, until later when I end up substituting better ones with similar vowels. Then bits get tacked on fore and aft; perhaps bits which already exist and have no mates. If this sounds like I'm Phil Collins, yes, that is something I worry about. :-)

Haven't done it for a couple of years though. Apparently if you don't rate your stuff, just take heroin and carry on. Personally I preferred to just drop it and think of new stuff another day. The unused stuff will keep coming back until it fits something in the end. Maybe years later.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I have no preprepared method for coming up with songs. Generally 2 things happen:

-I get a tune whilst fiddling around on my guitar, and write lyrics for it. Generally these lyrics don't have as much meaning, and sometimes the song can seem one-note because it was based around a single idea.

-I write song lyrics around a tune or snatches of lyrics I have in my head- sit down with my guitar and write some lyrics, see how it sounds, and work from there

---

As for my electronic music creation, that almost always comes with a preset idea of the type of song I want to produce, and then changing things as you want to go along.

There's no one way of doing things- particularly in creation- movies, songs, design, anything. There's techniques to help yourself become better, but no wrong way or right way of doing things.

As Arthur Koestler once said- "Creativity is the defeat of imagination by originality".

[Neil]

Right, I'm trying to knuckle down this year and write/record my own stuff.  Over the last year or so I've had a few attempts at writing, which have never really got further than coming up with some chrod progessions that I like and the odd riff.  Now I am at the point where I want to start recording this stuff so I'm more intimidated than I've ever been.

I'm not too used to using a metronome, and need some tips here.  I mean if I'm making a backing track out of my chord progressions then has it all got to be in time with the beat?  Say I take one bar, I'm used to going "1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &" and then missing out bits there (i.e. lifting my pick away while my wrist keeps swinging) to make a rhythm/strumming pattern.  Now how strictly do I have to keep to the beat when I'm doing stuff like this?

It's hard to explain what I mean really but I hope someone gets the gist. m It's just this thing of having to fit in with a metronome now that is confusing me, surely it all can't be totally rigid, can it?

EDIT:  Am I just worrying too much?  I've been thinking more and am wondering if I'll be fine as long as I keep things inside their own bar, so to speak.  I just can't understand how to take the things I've been fiddling with and record them.  I want to make sure I do it right as I intend to (eventually) stick drum tracks and the like on top as well.

[mrpants]

I'm not too used to using a metronome, and need some tips here.  I mean if I'm making a backing track out of my chord progressions then has it all got to be in time with the beat?  Say I take one bar, I'm used to going "1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &" and then missing out bits there (i.e. lifting my pick away while my wrist keeps swinging) to make a rhythm/strumming pattern.  Now how strictly do I have to keep to the beat when I'm doing stuff like this?

I don't think it matters too much as long as you stick to the tempo given by the metronome.  As long as the rhythm sounds good and you're in time then that's what matters - if that's what you're asking...

[Gazeuse]

If you're multitracking, you have to make sure that all instruments are in time together, or you'll get a 'flappy' loose sound. So, if you're playing to a drumloop, then everything has to be in time with it. It is difficult to do this with feeling, but it can be done with practise.

I always keep strict time according to the time sig and stresses within the bar and get the emotion through by feel, phrasing and volume. Things disintigrate into a mess if you're not fairly meticulous with this (eg. I had to re-record a couple of guitar parts yesterday, because I'd recorded them first (Before the kit) and once the kit was in, it showed up a lot of timing problems).

Some people use 'grooves' which are pre set 'bars' of music which are designed to have a natural/slightly off the beat sound, in order to mimic a 'band' feel ('Cos if you're playing with other people, you can be looser as the other band members will adjust to fit you). I've never really got on with these and stick to the strict beat all the time because it saves a LOT of mucking about and often just sounds nasty.

It might seem strange, but classical musicians are a nightmare to record to a strict metronome beat. This is because they use rubato (Speeding up and slowing down) as a major element in their 'feel.' When you tell them that they have to play strictly in time with the beat, they're often flummoxed and produce a very 'flat' performance...Thank goodness for audio editing, I say!!!

So yes, if you can play in time with the beat but still keep it fun, you'll be quids in...But don't forget, if you add a drumloop later and the guitar timing is off, you always have the edit option on a computer!!! (Although personally, I'd record the drums first).