panup
........ It’s good to have a deadline; otherwise the mix would not become ready until year 2080…
 

Well, at least if you have a lifetime licence for Sonar, it won't run out if it isn't  :)
 

My process has not changed for years, and has worked out well for me.
 
The process begins with acoustic guitar.  I begin to flesh out ideas.
 
As soon as I have decided on a basic chord pattern, I create a song in Band-In-A-Box.  I enter the chords and choose a style that comes close to what I am hearing in my head.  I stay with acoustic guitar and BIAB, making chord changes and adjustments until I have the song essentially complete.
 
If I decide that the song is worthy of making a demo, I move the BIAB files to Sonar.  
 
I record a guide vocal track.
 
Then I start replacing the BIAB tracks with my own recording.  Sometimes, but seldom, a BIAB track actually makes it to the final mix (the BIAB Realband acoustic guitar tracks are often quite nice).
 
I replace the guide vocal track with the keeper vocal track, then add additional vocals (harmony, back-up).
 
Re-do and/or tweak as necessary.
 
One advantage of using the BIAB tracks is that it allows me to record my own tracks along with "the band."  For example, if I am recording a guitar track, I am playing along with a full-band arrangement of the song, and not just a click track or a drum loop.  I find this process to be quite satisfying.
 
Another advantage is that listening to and singing along with the BIAB tracks allows me to make smart tempo decisions early in the process.
 

Hi,
I like this thread,full of ideas and insights.
It is allways surprising when a song is " finished" to wonder where it came from,I often have the feeling that it has allways been here but ,who knows..
Anyway as far as I work most part of the time by and on my own and I don't properly make a living with my songwriting ,my way to create has no time restrictions.
It starts from an idea,whether it is a riff on a guitar ,or a midi piano or humming a melody while waiting my car to be fixed or anything else.
Then I write the song,as far as I am french ,lyrics are important because they do not sound the same way as in english and there is a kind of balance to find between meaning and sound.
Once the song is built I learn it in a way that I am able to sing it along with the guitar from start to end.
In this process I don't go close to the computer except to get a rest and create kind of video games tracks..
At this point I can lay down a guitar-voice track ( two tracks with an sm58 as if it was a live performance)
Then I can extract the tempo find a basic drumbeat and then learn the bassline .
Once this is done I moove forward to other parts and spend quite a long time editing the drum part in the piano roll view.
Then come my attempts to make a decent mix and use plug-in to make it listenable on some different systems.
At this time ,normally,my mind is set on another song.
This is my way to process,but after reading all theese interesting posts,I thinkI can let myself try other options.
All the best.
Olivier

SvenArne
Anything I ever came up with that didn't start with a sung melody always turned out stupid. Sometimes amusingly so, though...

 
I'm a melody person as well.

mudgel
Start with acoustic guitar which gives me basic rhythm, tempo and dynamics.
Hum along to get the basic melody and the tonal structure of the song.
All this is recorded of course if not in Sonar then at least to my Zoom H4.
If not yet in Sonar, now's the time. Doing all this in Sonar let's me cut and paste song sections which at different stages of development could be anywhere on the time line.
I continue to complete the arrangement of verse intros, chorus etc with acoustic guitar and additionally record any lyric phrases that happen along the way.

I collect all the hooks both musical and lyrical that are recorded then arrange them appropriately till the song and lyric content is defined.
Then I clean up the structure which gives me all my song parts, intro, verse, chorus breaks etc. Once I have that locked in I begin recording the instruments I want.

The acoustic guitar rhythm will suggest which midi loop I use as drum accompaniment through Sup Drummer rather than the metronome .

I start fleshing out the drums for bridges, fills, buildups etc and getting the kick and bass line in the right place along with general dynamics.
I'll replace the acoustic guitar now if it's not staying and make decisions about the instrumentation at this point. Once all the parts have been recorded, it's time for polishing the arrangement as it will affect any mixing.
Only once I have the arrangement down pat will I start mixing.

Exactly me.  I still struggle with drums, but many times that process makes the song better.  After all these years I still find it hard to "groove" with myself, which was always easier with a band  (if you were recording everything to cassette (sigh)), but every musician actually feels something different with every piece of every song and I miss that. 

 
This is such an AWESOME question, Craig... and the diversity of answers is amazing...  A man of many words said a lot in just a few:
 

bapu
For me it all starts with words.
 
Don't need SONAR for that.

 
I agree! Often I start outside of the studio/DAW land... a lot of what I do stems from focusing on an issue... sometimes a podcast dealing with a particular climate situation or solar/technology thing, a twitter link or study or ... I'll be driving and listening to some sciency thing and finally pull off the road, wip out Evernote, and start writing, REAL TIME, while listening.  Hook lines, many are there in what people say... and I've been swept away into a writing frinzy more times than I can count...listening to an amazing human discussing something that I feel is crucial to understand.
 
I have 20 or so themes active at any time.  Actually, this number continues to grow... As a vocalist I'll then reflect on a subject matter and how I emotionally react to an issue and bring up some rhythmic/arp/multi package(s) that  seem to fit the picture I'm feeling, and then just vamp... often with words on a separate monitor, Often with a drum underpinning that I just select from the endless pile I have, always with headphones, mic on and... away I go.  I may do this with a variety of starting points, and may vamp on several possibilities before I start to flush things out for a word package... Of course, I sometimes just fire up a new instrument or "package", like the Guru's new Kreaturesque package... and just start there, with absolutely NO idea of what I'm gonna do... That is just as fun and the spontaneous combustion which results is often a reward in itself... When Airwave and Skippy came out with their O2 masterpiece I spent ALL NIGHT writing... totally extemporaneousa but powerful songs, singing/playing real time, not knowing where it would go next, moved by the multi itself... a dozen songs, several very good, in an all night "holy SHEEEET" session... I love a number of those moments, like "are we a virus" which TOTALLY flowed from the power of others gifted into my hands and daw...
 
My mood or state of mind generally moves me in a direction... whether emo, country, new age, rock, orchestral, angry screaching or plantively calling out or whatever... I'm never in a box...well, I AM in the box of saying something that needs sayingt...  Indeed, sometimes I'll just fire up a vst...an OT guitar, an Albion patch, or guru Omnisphere multi... and let the muse take hold.  Often with NO predetermined melody... even though I feel melody and hooks are key to a song that communicates.
 
I go thru phases... on my last camping trip, armed with just my acoustic guitar and a smart phone, I vamped dozens of ideas I would NEVER have come to in my studio setting...words, riffs, rhythmic foundations... I was like, "WTF!!! where'd this come from???" Being able to live capture these days is HUGE.... I remember the day when I had to concoct my own system to remember an idea, before the digital age.  We are SOOOOOO lucky at this moment in time to have the tools we have.
 
Like my gardens, I feel songwriting is an artistic adventure and I try to avoid rules for what first flows.  Sure, after I come up with something that excites or brings tears to my spirit, I'll do the tear down, edits, and redos/harmonies/overlays... the boring but necessary piano roll tweaks...
 
But mostly, it's art... and it is soooo amazing to be able to wield someone like Airwave's art as a foundation for my own unique feelings and perspectives...It's like being IN a band without dealing with the challenges of BEING in A BAND!  Every patch library is a creation lovingly put together by another human... and THAT sound, which I WOULD NEVER find on my own, rocks me into directions I NEVER anticipated...
 
I own ALL the costly tools but rarely use them, due to lack of time and general overload. I don't redo as often as I should.  Indeed, part of why I'm relocating up north is to have way more time to devote to honing my often crude emotional appeals... Excited to see where THAT leads.

I start with a click track. Then I play chords on a guitar. Then I write lyrics on a piece of paper.
Then I play over the clicktrack and record bass, guitar and vocals. After that I turn to keys.
 
I would like to integrate writing lyrics in Sonar. But I haven't figured out how to line up music and words.

Another BIAB user here.
 
Usually I work out the chord sequence (and lyrics) with a guitar, then the structure of the song in BIAB (if the song sounds good there, it might sound decent elsewhere, too ). Then I export the song to midi and import it to Sonar.
 
I usually end up using the BIAB drum track and a one or two other tracks, assigned to completely different (sampled) instruments the BIAB style makers intended (that’s why I hate all the RealTracks). After I have groove quantized, edited, transposed, cut and pasted to my hearts content and probably added a couple of (looped) African/Middle Eastern percussion tracks, I bounce the midi/sampler/synth tracks to audio tracks. (The drum track gets broken apart as several audio tracks: snare, toms, cymbals, kick drum and kick drum doubled with a synth kick drum sound for extra oomph.) Some of the other (originally midi) tracks serve mainly as guides, some are supposed to survive until the mix.

Then I add a couple of guitars, bass and vocal tracks, not necessarily in that order. Then mix. Then take a break and later on listen to what I have with my iPod and/or with the home stereo. Re-record and re-mix if necessary (as it usually is). Go back to the beginning a few times and start the song anew with a different tempo, different rhythm, different instrumentation, whatever...

MondoArt
This isn't related directly to using Sonar, but I co-host a weekly streaming radio program about songwriting, and we talk quite a bit about process, how songs begin, ideas, etc.  We have a songwriter guest every week.  Check us out:
www.songtalk.ca
 

Just checked out your Blog.  Very Cool!

 
I have a project template with AD2, two guitar tracks, a bass track, two for keys, and three for vocals. This is my basic working setup.
Inspiration can come from anywhere; noodling on guitar, hearing something on the TV or radio, something I read, or even a random thing I think or someone might say.
If it's an idea from playing guitar (my main instrument), I might immediately record the basics of it just so I don't lose it. Then I find a suitable basic beat in AD2 and layout enough of it to get me started (usually about 100 measures). I work on the chords and arrangement, including choruses and bridges as applicable, over this basic beat.
When I have the arrangement I record a scratch rhythm guitar track. This might be a keeper or might not even be included in the finished song. Then I do the bass track. When I track these parts I almost never comp, I'd rather do an entire track in one complete take. To me this lends more of an "organic" feel to it, or at least as much of that feel as you can get when you're doing most of the tracks yourself with computerized drums. If it's a particularly difficult part, especially on bass, then I will comp it.
Simple keyboard parts I do myself, but anything more than just block chords is way beyond my skill set. If I can make it work I'll use EZ Keys, it's an amazing program with enough midi loops to cover just about any basic (and some not-so-basic) songs. Luckily I have a couple of friends who are great keyboardists that are willing to help me out if EZ Keys won't work. I send them a basic mix of the arrangement and they record their parts into a midi file which they send back to me to use in the final mix. That way I can use whatever instrument I have that will work in the song.
If I haven't written the lyrics by now I'll record a scratch vocal track with random words or nonsense syllables, sometimes not even melodically, just searching for the right cadence to work with the music.
After the vocals go down then I'll do the ear candy; BG vox, guitar solos, percussion, etc.
Then I get to the REAL fun, mixing it all down and gluing it together. I think I actually enjoy that part of it the most, the pressure to try to create something worthwhile is mostly gone, it's just a matter of getting it to sound as good as possible.
That's the usual basic process, but of course there are times when it's completely different.
Sorry for the long post, I get a bit carried away.....