For me personally, I'm always writing from what's happening in my emotional life. Even without thinking about it a lot of the time, it comes out in the songs that I'm writing.
I have a little basement studio set up here at my house, and I do probably 80 percent of the recording here on my own. With multi-tracking technology, I can play various parts on top of one another.
There are certain sounds that have a loaded past. Like the sound of a harp, if you go back to old movies, represents a dream sequence; it transports you there.
The thing that's good about music-making software like the DAW-kinda systems is that they're all generally the same; the kind of interface is normally laid out in a similar way. Depending on the program, the sounds might be quite different, but they tend to all have a drum machine or synthesizer or a sampler.
You hear ten seconds of a song, and you know it's OutKast. There's a strangeness about it because it's catchy, but it's not just pop for the sake of pop. They're pushing the envelope.
If a band or artist isn't tweeting or writing posts on Facebook every day, there can be this kind of mystique built about them, and I find myself retreating from the spotlight more and more.
