A Malta-based composer explores songwriting, psychology, originality, and the musical moments that make listeners want to press play again.
There are plenty of musicians who can tell you what influences them. Serag Baddar is interested in going a step further and asking why certain musical ideas work in the first place.
The Malta-based composer describes himself as a philosopher who happens to be a musician, and that perspective appears to shape the way he thinks about creativity. Rather than simply accepting conventional wisdom about songwriting and artistic behavior, Baddar seems interested in questioning it.
One of the ideas at the center of his approach is what he calls “writing for dopamine.”
It sounds more complicated than it actually is.
For Baddar, writing for dopamine essentially means creating music that he himself wants to listen to recreationally. Whether it's a riff, a section, or an entire song, the goal is to make something he would want to return to in the same way he returns to music by his favorite bands.
“Create new music for yourself,” he says.
It's a straightforward philosophy, but it says something important about where Baddar's priorities lie. He's not trying to reverse-engineer music for a market or chase whatever happens to be popular. He's trying to make something that satisfies him as a listener first.
Philosophy helps me question certain common censuses about what people think of certain things such as listening to your own music. A lot of people consider this to be an arrogant thing but I believe it entirely depends on the reason.
That philosophy becomes particularly interesting when applied to “Limerence (Demo).”
The song has an unusually long history. Baddar says its main hook contains the first riff he ever wrote as a teenager. The instrumental originally went by the name “Lotus” and remained with him for more than 15 years, evolving through different versions before becoming the song it is today.
At one point, “Lotus” spent several years in Drop B tuning. Eventually Baddar returned it to D tuning and completed it as “Limerence.”
The title came later still.
Baddar experienced limerence in his own life and ultimately named the song after that experience. He is clear that “Limerence” isn't simply an abstract exploration of obsession or romantic fixation. It is for a specific person.
“You could say the song is a message to that girl,” he says.
The artwork makes that message difficult to miss. A phone displays “Please talk to me,” followed by “Seen 3 weeks ago”—a small but painful representation of the silence and ghosting that Baddar associates with the experience.
Interestingly, however, the music wasn't constructed specifically to imitate those obsessive thought patterns.
The song's repetitive, hypnotic quality emerged naturally from the musical ingredients. Baddar attributes it to the delay effect and the kinds of riffs he was playing rather than a deliberate attempt to make the listener experience limerence through the music itself.
That distinction says something about his creative process.
Baddar typically begins with the guitar. The riff comes first; the meaning comes later.
“I don't envision the meaning before I have a solid foundation for a song first,” he explains.
It's an approach that runs counter to the common assumption that a songwriter begins with something they want to say and then finds the music to express it. For Baddar, the music itself is the starting point. The meaning can reveal itself afterward.
His influences help explain the musical territory in which he operates.
Opeth and Tool are particularly important, although Baddar says what he admires most about both bands is their standard of quality. He sees them as excelling in different ways, with different approaches to songwriting, but both demonstrating what can happen when musicians commit themselves to creating exceptional work.
Opeth has also influenced the evolution of his own sound.
Baddar's music began in a more groove-heavy, metal-driven place, but over the years he became increasingly interested in the cleaner passages found within heavy music. That interest gradually pushed his work toward a more atmospheric, post-rock direction.
He still thinks about accessibility, though.
For Baddar, accessibility doesn't mean watering down progressive music. It means creating music that is easy for almost anyone to digest and get into quickly, rather than something that requires a listener to acquire a taste for it.
That combination—originality alongside accessibility—is one of the things he continues to pursue.
“You don't have to sound like everybody else to write accessible music,” he believes.
It's a philosophy that also connects to one of his more provocative ideas: that music is mostly objective rather than subjective.
Obviously, individual taste is subjective. But Baddar argues that the underlying structure of music is objective, and that understanding those structures means creativity itself can be improved objectively.
That's a fairly philosophical position for someone who insists he is ultimately just writing music for himself.
And perhaps that's the point.
Baddar isn't trying to turn his project into a career. In fact, he explicitly intends to keep Serag Baddar as a personal creative outlet.
“My writing is too slow for that,” he says with a laugh.
That freedom may be part of what makes his approach interesting. There is no label deadline forcing him to manufacture songs at a particular pace. There is no career strategy dictating what comes next. He can spend 15 years evolving a riff if that's what it takes.
And “Limerence” is the result.
The song's closing section may be the best illustration of how Baddar thinks about music. Rather than simply ending the track, he demonstrates the construction of the hook piece by piece: the main guitar riff, then the bass, then the second guitar part, and finally all of them together.
Each piece works by itself.
Together, they become the hook.
It's almost a miniature demonstration of his broader philosophy. Music doesn't necessarily need to begin with an elaborate concept. Sometimes you start with something that simply sounds good to you, keep working on it, and discover what it means along the way.
Baddar's answer to what he's trying to accomplish with music is characteristically blunt.
“Addiction to the product,” he says, laughing. “It's funny because with music it's completely harmless.” That might be the simplest way to understand his approach: Make something you want to hear. Make it good. Make it original. Make it accessible.
And, ideally, make people want to hear it again.