BASIC SKETCH
Sure, many painters begin a painting by just blotting their favorite medium onto a canvas and have fun exploring what "speaks" to them to end up with a finished product, but we are going to try a little more organized approach, here. Think of the basic size of your song: how long, how many verses? Do you want an intro, ending, bridge or other instrumental sections? Write down the basic parts, and about how many bars you expect each to be. You can then take other pages and even sketch these out by putting down actual vertical bars on each page with plenty of room to scribble in each instrumental part as well as the lyrics with room to scratch things out and rewrite these if you aren't using a computer. If you are, it's pretty easy to do this on one of the freeware programs like Finale Notepad or, if you don't mind getting just a written page and no sound so you can play them manually, just cut and paste pre-made shapes and lines onto your machine's Paint program and play them off your computer screen one page at a time until you are happy with them before printing them out. Think of setting this all up as part of your sketch, along with the instruments (colors) you want to "mix" together and where they could enter and leave each part of your current work. Then we can get down to more detailed placement.
THE BACKGROUND
Another approach some painters use is to take the central element, draw it in total detail, then work the background in around it. This can work, but then the main subject almost seems out of place. It's usually just as easy to start with the muddy, distant bits, then work up to sharper and sharper focus, and the same goes for sound. Musically, you can do this by thinking of what sounds you want to be faintest or fuzziest in your final mix. For many, this will be the drum track, because drums not only help provide the beat everyone else needs to follow, but muddying it up by adding more reverb or echo can actually make it sound richer than if you add it later. If you don't use a drum machine, sometimes the best way to do this is to put the drummer in a booth with headphones on, listening to the other musicians while you run through the song, allowing him to place his work on a separate track, then cleaning it up later with drop-ins if desired. If you are using a single-track recorder, you can place this basic track on it and record it onto a tape or CD, then play it back loudly while you record it and the next layer, usually the bass or keyboards, and, just like paint, recording each succeeding track over the one before will push the previous one further and further out of focus to our ears.
