The following content is related to the January 13 issue of Guitar World. For the full range of interviews, features, tabs and more, pick up the new issue on newsstands now, or in our online store.
This month, I’d like to address the sometimes tricky process of songwriting. Most of my songs start as a germ of an idea that comes to me during an improvisation. I’ll have a cool little nugget of “stuff” that catches my interest enough that I am inspired to investigate it further and perhaps forge a composition from it.
I think that for many of us, a new song idea springs from a moment of improvisation. From there, it becomes a question of how to take a cool little riff and expand it to something that can actually be played by a band. That’s the challenging part.
“There’s amazing players like Josh Smith and Eric Gales, and I thought, ‘OK, I’ve been missing out. I’m learning the blues’”: Tosin Abasi said he wanted to release a blues album – is it still on the cards?
“Kurt launched into that track and totally went off. In the middle of the song, he smashed his guitar to bits”: The making of the album that virtually invented a new genre, sold 30 million copies, and changed rock forever
