Metal Turtle

rest of the comment haha:

I learnt most of what I know through internet and playing with bands and other musicians. Been to lessons once, but it didn't really pay off for me at that time. Maybe I should find a teacher, since I'm worried about my picking technique haha.

Good luck on your musical journey by the way!

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Working with other musicians is very important step to progress as a guitar player and songwriter. Listening to lots of genres and not only the one you wish to play. I put together elements from electronic and blues and rock into our metal songs, and without it I'd be all out of inspiration and ideas.
I play in two bands, and hearing what they think at the rehearsals helps as well. We are playing at gigs every now and then, and get to meet new musicians there.

And about us having three guitaist; haven't you heared of Iron Maiden?? They are the most famous I can think of, but Periphery and Radiohead etc. has a guitar trio too. It allows us to recreate what we do in studio without backing track, and also gives us powerful sound live. Female bassists are here and there, but they such small hands so it's odd that they want to pick the bass which have wider frets than guitars.

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Got a little carried away with the writing, but I hope you got the idea!

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Part 3
It is indeed nice to be in charge of the writing, but I think I got to explain how it really works. Whenever I come up with an idea, I ask everyone in the band for their opinion. They're welcome come up with ideas for the song, but during the writing of "TSOG" all my riffs on the end result was accepted. If the other came up with something everyone agreed to be better then we would use that instead/too. Democracy is important in a band. True justice doesn't mean that everyone must have equally much of their ideas in their songs, but that the writer gets everyone's concent to have the idea in the song.
Lately my other guitarist and I have been arguing a bit over having a solo in our song or not, and we'll vote during our next rehearsal, so that's how we deal with disagreement. I haven't experienced real conflict in the band yet. At least not related to the songwriting. Me taking care of the majority of the songwriting seem to be positive to the other bandmembers.
Hope I answered your question

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Part 2 of the comment:

What all the members of my band has agreed upon is that bringing an old riff to a new song is almost never a good idea. Building upon an already existing idea usually works alot better, since it will be designed to fit to the feel of the riff. So if you think you got a sweet riff in your head, don't put it into a new song that was written without connection to the sweet riff. You should rather make a song based on the sweet riff.

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Part 1 of comment:

Well, several ideas had been in the back of my mind for a while. Some of them simply sounded natural and fitting in the song, yet the verse is very unusual. Verses are the hardest to write in my opinion, but I think I managed to pull off something nice with the key change from Em to F#m in the song. Several ideas for the sections was considered before the final result.
Even a key change down a whole step plus a transition to 4/4 was experimented with haha. But everything evolved from the harmonic guitar part in the chorus. Everything except the verse and breakdown is very similar, and that is no coincidence. I did it to glue the song more together, but still have some different riffs to add variation. The Breakdown riff was actually a mistake, since I played unintentionally the notes in wrong order, but it ended ut being the riff I'm most satisfied with yet. When I wrote it I just wanted much power and concentrate to land the important notes on the important beats.

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Not sure of what you mean by "part" but I'm one of three guitarists in the band. I'm taking care of most of the songwriting. On "Thousand Shards of Glass" I wrote all the riffs and all harmonies. The basslines was my work as well, and I did in fact play the bass in studio. I even wrote many of the drum beats, but that was only suggestions, since our drummer is perfectly capable of coming up with cool stuff.
I didn't take any part in the lyrical side though, but I wanted my bassist (female singer as well) to take a bigger part in the song. Our vocalist had a different idea in mind so it didn't end up like I wanted.

It's gonna be different on our upcoming song. It was already half way done in the writing process when I joined the band early this year, so the all the members in the band has taken part in the writing much more than in our first demo.

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