About This Wiki
Welcome to the Greg Kocis Music Wiki.
I’m Greg Kocis, a songwriter, music producer, musician, and drummer. I’ve spent many years writing songs, producing music, experimenting with recording technology, and studying the craft of songwriting and music production.
I created this wiki to document that journey.
This isn’t intended to be a traditional biography or a collection of generic songwriting advice. It’s a record of the courses I’ve taken, books I’ve studied, techniques I’ve learned, equipment I’ve used, songs I’ve written, and the different approaches I’ve explored throughout my development as a musician, songwriter, and producer.
Why I Created This Wiki
Over the years, I’ve accumulated a lot of information about songwriting and music production.
Some of it came from formal courses. Some came from books. Some came from studying other songwriters and producers. Some came from experimenting in the studio, and a lot came from simply making songs and figuring out what worked — and what didn’t.
I’ve taken courses specifically focused on songwriting, lyric writing, music production, and related areas of music education. I’m documenting those studies here because I think they provide an interesting record of how my own songwriting process has developed.
I’ve also collected a number of books and reference materials that have become part of my songwriting toolbox.
The goal is not to say that one particular method is the “right” way to write a song.
Quite the opposite.
I’ve come to believe that songwriting is a collection of tools and approaches. What works for one songwriter may not work for another, and sometimes a technique that doesn’t make sense to you today can become extremely useful years later.
My Background as a Drummer
Before I thought of myself primarily as a songwriter or producer, I was a drummer.
I started getting interested in drums around the age of 12. In 1984, I joined the North Hills Buccaneers Baton & Drum Corps, beginning five years of intensive percussion training and performance. I worked my way through several instruments — cymbals, bass drum, glockenspiel, triple toms, and eventually snare drum — and became drum captain during my final season in 1988.
I also became heavily involved in school music. I played first-chair percussion in concert band, performed in marching band, played drums in high school musical productions, participated in talent shows, and performed at the Mid-East Instrumental Music Conference. By the time I graduated from high school in 1990, I’d already had a surprisingly wide range of live-performance experience.
At the same time, I was teaching myself drum set and spending countless hours playing along with records.
Rush was a particularly important influence, and I spent weeks and sometimes months learning songs by Neil Peart. I also studied and played along with records by artists ranging from Metallica and John Mellencamp to Pink Floyd, Yes, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Van Halen, and many others.
My drumming influences eventually expanded to include players such as Neil Peart, Phil Collins, Bill Bruford, John Bonham, Kenny Aronoff, Chad Smith, Stephen Perkins, Stuart Copeland, and Dave Weckl. I was never interested in staying inside one particular style of drumming. I liked taking ideas from different players and incorporating them into my own playing.
From Drummer to Songwriter
Drumming was my first serious musical identity, but eventually I wanted to do more than play other people’s songs.
Around the age of 16, I started experimenting with my own songwriting and recording using a Tascam four-track cassette recorder. I was recording drums, keyboards, vocals, and other instruments while beginning to write my own melodies and lyrics.
I was also teaching myself guitar, bass, and keyboards because I wanted to become more independent as a songwriter.
That transition was gradual.
I didn’t suddenly stop being a drummer and become a producer. Instead, drumming, songwriting, arranging, and recording gradually started becoming one connected creative process.
My background as a drummer has remained an important part of the way I approach music. Rhythm, groove, arrangement, dynamics, and the way different instruments interact are all things I naturally pay attention to when I’m writing and producing.
My Songwriting Education
One of the things I want this wiki to document is how I learned to write songs.
For example, around 2015 I took Pat Pattison’s Songwriting: Writing the Lyrics course. That course was an eye-opener for me and changed the way I approached lyric writing. It helped me finish songs such as “Could Have Been So Easy” and gave me a much more deliberate process for working through lyrics.
That course was only one part of my education.
I’ve taken many other songwriting and lyric-writing studies over the years, and I’ll be documenting them here as I work through the history.
Some of these studies have focused on lyrics. Others have dealt with melody, song structure, production, arrangement, recording, or other aspects of making music.
I don’t consider any of these courses a magic formula.
They’re tools.
Songwriting and Production
My interests have never been limited to writing lyrics or melodies in isolation.
I’m also interested in the entire process of turning a song idea into a finished recording.
That means songwriting, arrangement, instrumentation, recording, production, mixing, and the technology used to make the record.
A lot of my production work is done in Logic Pro, and I’ve spent years experimenting with software instruments, effects, virtual amplifiers, recording equipment, drum production, vocal production, and other studio techniques.
I’m particularly interested in understanding why something works, rather than simply knowing which button to press.
That philosophy carries over into this wiki.
The Songs
The songs are ultimately the reason for all of this.
I’ve written songs across different styles and genres, and I’m continuing to develop and revisit that catalog.
Some songs begin with an acoustic guitar. Some begin with a lyric or an idea. Others develop through production.
I’ve also been documenting the origins and evolution of individual songs through my Song Stories series, where I talk about how particular songs came together and how they’ve changed over time.
Songs such as “Nobody Knows Me Now,” “No More,” “Days Like These,” “Beautiful Day, Beautiful Life,” and others are part of that ongoing story.
I want the wiki to eventually provide a deeper history behind those songs — not just the finished recording, but where the song came from, what I was studying at the time, how it was produced, and how the song evolved.
AI and My Songs
More recently, I’ve also been exploring AI-assisted music production and performance.
This is an evolving part of my work, and I’ve been particularly interested in what happens when human-written songs are recreated or performed using AI technology.
My position is fairly simple: I want to clearly distinguish between the human songwriter and the AI performance or production process.
When I use AI in this way, the underlying songs can still be my own human-written compositions. The technology becomes another tool for exploring what those compositions can sound like.
I’ve been documenting this work through my Songs by Greg — Official Bootlegs project, which features human-written songs performed or recreated with AI.
I’m interested in the creative possibilities, but I’m also interested in the questions this technology raises about songwriting, recording, performance, copyright, authorship, and the future of music.
Those discussions will become part of this wiki as well.
The Studio and the Gear
Another part of my musical history is the equipment I’ve used along the way.
I’ve accumulated experience with guitars, basses, recording equipment, software, plugins, virtual instruments, amplifiers, and other studio tools.
Some of that equipment has been modified or upgraded along the way. For example, I’ve documented my Fender Bass VI and the Staytrem bridge upgrade I made to it.
I want the wiki to preserve some of those details because equipment is often part of the story behind a recording.
What You’ll Find Here
As this wiki grows, I’m using it to document several areas of my musical life:
- My musical timeline and history
- Drumming and percussion
- Songwriting courses and education
- Lyric-writing studies
- Songwriting books and reference materials
- Song Stories and the history behind individual songs
- Music production techniques
- Recording and mixing
- Logic Pro workflows
- Studio equipment and instruments
- Plugins and music-production software
- AI-assisted songwriting and music production
- The evolution of my songs and recordings
- Experiments, lessons learned, and things that didn’t work
Some pages will be educational. Others will simply document my own experience.
I don’t expect everything here to be universally applicable to every songwriter. That’s not really the point.
The point is to document what I’ve learned and how I’ve used it.
A Personal Record
In a way, this wiki is also a musical archive.
Songs, recordings, courses, books, instruments, software, production techniques, and experiments can easily become disconnected from the circumstances in which they happened.
Years later, it’s easy to remember the song but forget what you were studying when you wrote it.
I want to preserve that history.
When I look back at a song, I’d like to be able to see not only the recording, but also the education, ideas, tools, and experiments that influenced it.
That makes this wiki a work in progress.
There are many courses I’ve taken, many books I’ve studied, many songs I’ve written, and many production techniques I’ve experimented with that still need to be documented.
I’ll be adding them over time.
The Bigger Picture
I don’t believe there’s one correct way to become a songwriter.
Some great songwriters never take a songwriting course. Some learn entirely by writing songs. Others study music formally. Some learn from books, teachers, records, instruments, or years of experimentation.
I’ve done a little bit of all of those things.
The more I’ve studied songwriting, the more I’ve come to see it as a toolbox.
A course might give you one tool. A book might give you another. A producer might show you a technique. A songwriting exercise might unlock something you couldn’t figure out on your own.
You don’t have to use every tool.
But the more tools you have available, the more possibilities you have when you get stuck.
That’s ultimately what this wiki is about.
It’s a record of the tools I’ve collected, the songs I’ve made with them, and what I’ve learned along the way.
— Greg Kocis