Songwriting Basics: How To Manage Your Muse
If you are a musician who writes, we might have something in common other than being musicians -we have zillions of half-finished songs and grooves laying around that were going to be your very next project, but just when you fire up your recording setup to do just that, another fit of inspiration strikes, so you strike while the iron is hot so as not to forget it. Repeat about 100 times per year. Multiply by 5 years and I’ve got way more stuff that is still technically in the “potential” category than I should. See, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s “gold in them there hills!”. And since I’ve set myself up like this for a number of years, I figure I owe it to myself to sift through the rubble (this time) to see what’s there. Here’s what I’ve come up with to help manage my creative output to help me save time and hopefully not lose track of the work that deserves more attention.
- 1. Every time you are about to close a writing session, render an mp3 of your mix, such as it is, before leaving. Take it one step further, and put all of these renders (or copies if you’re a completist archivalist), into a DEMOS folder or something like that. One spot shopping. This way you don’t EVER need to open the project again if you decide it isn’t going anywhere. Depending on how your projects are set-up, that means you won’t have to wait for VST’s and VSTi’s to load. OR go finding samples that you’ve moved or lost….all that fun stuff. You can just cruise your mp3’s to find stuff that catches your ear. This one technique alone, which I have just employed by going through all of my 2006 projects to find out what they were, would have probably saved me 5 hours had I done it all along. Suffice it to say, my witty and super-awesome working title system doesn’t illuminate ANYTHING for me after the project becomes more than a few weeks old.
- 2. Depending on your style of writing, you might find some benefit in separating types of work into different folders within your DEMO folder. I.E. folders for Loops, Themes, and Songs. I begin writing from lots of different angles, and it’s just as likely that I’ll spend an hour or two programming a drum loop instead of strumming my guitar or playing keys. Often I don’t get back to those loops, or I can’t find them…so by following step 1, but putting the loops into the Loops folder…easy. No more lost moments of brilliance!
- 3. Use these “slush” folders as creative seeds for when you can’t seem to think of anything to do. We’ve all sat down in front of our recording setup, only to suddenly feel completely at a loss for musical output, even though this is the only hour we’ll have to work on music this week! Don’t sweat it, just do some listening in your DEMOS folder and choose any project not yet finished, that also grabs your attention, and move it along a bit. Going through the exercise of recording and creating, even on older “cold files”, is a great way to improve your technique and results so that when true inspiration hits you, you’ll do a better job capturing your performances.
More later….
Happy Musing!
Comments
Oh, I hear you…
I’ve got an mp3 player full of musical fragments and a book full of half-written lyrics that I can never seem to do anything with.
It would be great to have some software that could manage the pieces of ideas so you could search for them when you want them… I vaguely remember some nice ideas that I had, but can never find them, because I have the same problem that I can never be bothered to name things properly…
Yep…that’s why I spent all that time rendering mixes out. I burned them to a cd, loaded them onto my mp3 player, so whenever I have idle audio time, I can listen, take notes, hum melodies, try to move things along a little. So far, so good. It’s a great way to get a little excited about stuff you forgot you had done.
Thanks for the comment!
So true. Just came across your stuff Googling for “collaborate music online”. It’s really interesting to hear how other people do it (Des’ article over on Hometracked.com really appealed to the geek/muso in me too).
Do you have any good ideas for sharing chord sequences over the web? The guy I write with and I both have “chord books” of 4,8,16-bar sequences from all over the place that we whip out in moments of need (as well as books of lyric fragments, song titles, etc.).
I’m trying to figure out a way of notating chord changes easily. The old | C | F | G | is fine for simple stuff, but the ones you want to write down are almost always moving around more, and it gets messy.
Anyway, great site - I’ll go listen to your stuff now and leave you alone.
Thanks for the comment. As for sharing chord sequences over the web, I guess it would depend on what instrument you’re speaking about….for instance, sharing MIDI files is pretty easy and they’re very small in terms of size. Email would be no problem there. But if you are talking about guitar, maybe some kind of simple notation system that works for you, along with an attached mp3 of the part you’ve notated, as a guide track.
Agreed, Des’ article is great. Gert is a fun project, and while the logistics of 6 of us getting involved seem complicated, they aren’t that bad. FTP is your friend!
Cheers!
-thc
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