Snow Patrol frontman wrote 220 songs on his Mac

Snow Patrol: loving their home recording.
Snow Patrol: loving their home recording.

Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody has revealed to MusicRadar that he wrote more than 200 songs on his Mac prior to recording of the band's most recent album A Hundred Million Suns.

"I had about 220 songs in GarageBand by the end of the Eyes Open tour," he explained. "We narrowed it down to about 30 songs and then we recorded about 20."

Lightbody says that he's a "big fan" of Apple's entry-level DAW, and that he takes any opportunity he can to use it as a songwriting scratchpad.

The prolific star told MusicRadar: "I'm on GarageBand every day just making noise really, be it on the tourbus, in the hotel or at my house - I just try and do as much recording as I possibly can.

"I'll use either a keyboard or my voice to simulate the other instruments that I imagine hearing on the songs."

If you want to hear Gary Lightbody discuss Snow Patrol's recording process in greater detail - and find out what he thinks of Leona Lewis's version of Run - be sure to check out MusicRadar's full Podcast interview.

Ben Rogerson

I’m the Deputy Editor of MusicRadar, having worked on the site since its launch in 2007. I previously spent eight years working on our sister magazine, Computer Music. I’ve been playing the piano, gigging in bands and failing to finish tracks at home for more than 30 years, 24 of which I’ve also spent writing about music and the ever-changing technology used to make it.