Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 13,320
My process kinda depends on the song. On a lot of the songs, I just pick up the melody by ear, and come up with some sort off arrangement, that brings out the original rhythm of the song, whether it is by "strumming" the full chord, or doing arpeggios. I've always played some stuff like this, even as a kid, when I mainly played classical, so I think I've just got good at it, and it comes instinctively. You give me the chords to a song I know in front of me, I'll play it out and get a decent version out immediately.
When the songs have something important, like a piano intro, repetitive riff, etc, I'll start working from there. Often piano based songs cause more trouble than others, because I can't play the piano part fully while playing the melody, so I'll have to come up with a way to make it sound similar to the original piano part, but so that I can play it with my left hand alone.