I said on here recently that we’ve been getting down some ideas for new material, and perhaps this is a good opportunity to explain how we work.

The writing process for our next album is already differing hugely from everything we’ve done before. Our first two were composed on guitar, and by the time Dan got round to demoing the songs, he already had a pretty good idea of how the final piece would sound. This time, though, we’re aiming for an all-round more collaborative effort, and all we started with was a small collection of riffs. Here’s three of them from an as-yet untitled song:

Riff 1

Riff 2

Riff 3

(If there’s a big gap or unintelligible code above, try here instead.) So, what hi-tech piece of equipment were these fragments recorded on? I’m almost embarrassed to say, but… Music 2000 on the PlayStation.

One.

The PSX.

Yes, with all the powers of modern laptops being able to run a full studio, Dan’s preferred method of making sure he doesn’t forget riffs he comes up with is Music 2000 on the original Sony PlayStation. Still, whatever works for him. (It’s a pity he didn’t use a Sega Mega Drive, because then the headline of this article would have been a lot cleverer.)

Anyway, once I heard the riffs, I figured out the notes on a keyboard and played them onto a MIDI track in Cubase:

Riff 1 (synth)

From here it’s easy to copy, paste and otherwise alter the individual bits, fiddling around until we’ve strung them together to form some sort of structure. To help, we programmed in a simple repeating drumbeat:

Riffs with drums

At this stage, verses and choruses are beginning to take shape. There’s a vaguely Eastern flavour to the sound, so we decided to play on this a bit when figuring out the best chords to suit what we have. We also gave the tempo and key careful consideration.

Here’s a full mix of the song as it stands – although when we say “full”, we accept that there’s currently no guitars, bass, vocals or percussion, and it’s only a minute long… This is just us sorting out the basics using only MIDI instruments:

Full mix

And that’s a very early snapshot of a Home Guard song in the making. As you can hear, the main riffs are now on piano; ultimately, they may be the vocal melody, or return to synths, or become guitar or bass lines… Who knows? In fact, nothing at this point is considered “final”, but hopefully this post has been an interesting insight into how we work.