The Anatomy of a Song

When writing a song, it's good to dissect it into its various parts: lyrics, musical composition, arrangement, recording and mixing/mastering.
Everyone has a different method of coming up with a finished song, and there really is no right or wrong way to go about it, but I will share my tried and true way of writing and recording a song like this one.
Lets dive in.
Lyrics and musical composition:
These two usually come hand-in-hand. There are occasions that a verse, hook or lyric will come to me before I even have the chance to pick up the guitar...my best examples of this are usually the strongest tracks in my catalogue because my mind is sharp, focused, and has a message that is bursting from the seams. The song weatherman is a strong example of this. Inspiration struck, and I kept having the lyric and melody "hardened hearts don't change the weather, why don't we find somewhere better?" come to mind. I had just left the city and was on a small retreat with some great friends in the Catskill mountains, sipping beer on a lake when the lyrics came to me. I worked to match the verse to the chords on my guitar, and the rest followed in a landslide. Another song that was an exception to the rule was the track "From the tree." In writing this song, I would be riding my bicycle to my train stop (about a 10minute ride) and the verse built itself through humming the melody. Strange indeed! I think because I was riding through the city streets, I became inspired by what I missed most: uninhibited nature.
Til the dawn and Old Souled Ramblin Song are other such tracks that basically wrote themselves, creating lyrics before a real guitar part was written. This gives them the hookyness that they have because the lyrics are very direct and in your face.
In contrast, songs like Tree of life and Moses were written with a musical composition also in progress. This gives them a more delicate sound. The guitar on Moses has a very rhythmic "what goes up must come down" quality to it, which inspired the first lyrics of the song "I climbed a mountain then I turned around..."
Musical composition doesn't need to be inherently complicated to be beautiful. Some of the most haunting songs ever recorded are often simple. Case in point: any of Johnny Cash's final albums. Sparse music is good music if it is recorded properly with the correct instruments placed well in the song. Low piano notes work exceptionally well to get a haunting tone. I used this technique in the ukulele version of winter jamboree, which gives the track a totally different and cool vibe.
Arrangement:
It's is a relatively simple process, but with such powerful recording software available these days, it's actually easier to get carried away and create too many parts that compete for the same space in a song. Think about led zeppelin while recording; they had maybe eight tracks tops to work with while recording their debut album. Use limitation as an ally.
Most albums that legendary producer Rick Rubin works on don't say "produced by Rick Rubin." They say "reduced by Rick Rubin."
The less tracks you have, the stronger they need to be in order to sound good. Don't bury your first guitar with 3 other guitars! The same goes for vocals! It's easy to skate by with extra reverb and 4 vocal tracks, but most good recordings have a max of two vocal tracks. Instead, use double vocals to enhance the powerful sections of the song, such as the chorus and certain bridges.
Also, have highs and lows. Record to a click track and don't leave out the bass guitar!
Recording:
Recording music these days is getting easier and easier. I used to record on a Tascam 8-track, and before that it was a 4 track that recorded directly onto a tape. Talk about analog. Nowadays if you have an ipad you have a fully functioning studio with very little investment cost. I've recorded all of my eps since 2011 on an ipad. The Mountain Sons ep was recorded in GarageBand which I bought in the App Store for $4.99! Add to that a $150 Alesis io dock and a $100 microphone from musicians friend and you are in business. Make sure you have a pop filter in front of your mic, and don't record input at more than -12db. That is to reduce the number of "pops" every time your voice is raised on the recording. Check out coursera.org for some free online Berkelee music classes.
Drum loops: always record your music to a click track to stay in time, or better yet a drum loop in GarageBand. It might take some extra time initially but it's paid back a hundred fold in having a song that is on a nice rhythm other than the one in your head. I still enjoy an Duse GarageBand drum loops and smart drums. I use smart bass, smart strings, and smart drums to fill songs out once I have them recorded. It's an amazing program for the cost of a Starbucks cappachino.
Mixing and mastering:
Eventually you will want to extend yourself beyond the confines of GarageBand, which is where a program like cubasis comes into play. With unlimited tracking, great plugins. Midi synths and loops, as well as a smooth interface and great wav, m4a, and flac rendering, it's a $50 program that is worth every penny.