how many people write their songs on another instrument and translate it to a DAW? do you work with a MIDI controller and find a chord progression or melody by playing it, or do you write in MIDI notes until something clicks?

for me personally, it's a bit of both. interested to see what everyone else thinks.

Yeah, pretty much same as you. I do both. I play Tenor Saxophone in addition to keys, and it sometimes helps to come up with bass notes to support the pads.

A large majority of my sketching happens in MIDI w/ Ableton's Grand Piano preset if I'm at a loss for ideas or at the very beginning of a track. Otherwise i kinda just start with a plugin and start futzing with waves and roll with it.

I use a midi controller to get a certain chord progression going then I play around with inversions of the chords on the piano roll. You can get great results playing around with it!

I mostly start on the piano, sometimes on guitar. I write a basic chord progression and sometimes an ostinato or arp to go with it. Then i take it to Logic and fix it up in there.

Piano piano piano. The piano is honestly your best friend when writing for any genre. Personally I sit down at the piano without anything in front of me and just start coming up with ideas. It's way easier to sit down and write an entire tune and then (using a MIDI keyboard) translate that into MIDI to work from your DAW. Even if you don't have a piano, it's always good to have some kind of instrument around to help with hearing new ideas and experimenting with your song.

I almost always start my production cycle on the computer. Sometimes I translate things to instruments later, but the first draft is almost always on a piano roll.