Analyzing songstarters is a great way to spend time creatively – especially if you only have 20 minutes left after work and all your chores. More importantly, it can actually motivate you to start creating, especially during a creative block or when you’re staring at the dreaded blank page… or in our case, the Empty Project in Logic Pro X :)
Splice offers a huge variety of songstarters. I just pick whichever one appears on the main page – no searching, no sorting, no “finding the perfect sample.” That hunt is time-consuming, mentally exhausting, and almost always leads to procrastination.
Here’s my step-by-step process
- Pick one songstarter and drop it into Logic Pro X.
- Guess the instrumentation — pads, guitars, keys, bass, etc.
- Try to transcribe each part by ear.
- If I get stuck, I simply right-click the track and use Stem Splitter.
- Logic Pro X gives me six stems: vocals, drums, bass, guitar, keys, and other.
- The tricky part is figuring out what lives in the other stem — or distinguishing multiple guitars.
- Once I have a “blueprint” of the songstarter I like, I can build my own version by creatively changing:
- Harmonic Rhythm
- BPM
- Key (transposing to another key)
- Instrumentation
- Topline melodies
- Chord choices (adding/omitting chords)
- Meter (switching 4/4 to 3/4 or 6/8 drastically changes the energy)
- Additional layers of instruments
- I usually extend the loop from 4 bars to 12–16 bars, and then every 2 bars I:
- enrich the harmony
- adjust dynamics
- add or remove instruments
- add or change toplines
- add FX
- shape the song’s energy through the form (intro, verse, chorus, bridge, outro)
- refine transitions (intro → verse, verse → chorus, etc.)
And of course, I don’t force myself to follow all of these steps every time. Sometimes I just split it into stems and stop there. After all, you can’t be David Beckham every day :)
It’s not only Splice that I use as a source of songstarters. There are plenty of talented Instagram and TikTok musicians who share short sketches, and they can be incredibly helpful to learn from.
Here’s a short video on what I was telling you about