A few people have been asking me lately about how you get from an idea for a song to the fully formed, produced, recorded track. So I thought I’d write a few blog posts helping to unlock the very humble creative process that I go through when writing and producing music.
Colin and I have lots of ideas for songs…lots of ideas generally, with a mixture of good, bad and ugly, but before we can filter out and categorise our ideas, we have to capture them. From my experience this is one of the most critical points in the Creative Process, because as soon as you have an idea, there is a fairly short window of time to capture it before it is distorted or lost forever (and that’s never good :))
As a closet geek, I’m always keen to find techy solutions to this problem so if you’re interested I have a few reccomendations to help in this area.
Firstly, Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/ is a must for anyone who is collaborating whilst writing songs. Share your files easily and with the 2GB free space, there is a fair bit of scope.
Secondly, I use Dropvox http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/dropvox-record-voice-memos/id416288287?mt=8 which is available on itunes for £1.49, this will record straight from your portable apple device (ipod, iphone…) to your dropbox folder, so you can capture and share an idea with ease.
Finally, if you’re stuck in the middle of a field and the wifi/3G signal is pretty dodgy then the Voice Memos app built into the iphone/ipod touch is great, and it even syncs with itunes so you can grab it straight from your music folders. http://www.icreatemagazine.com/tips/iphone-tutorial-use-the-voice-memos-app/
So first step is don’t lose your ideas, when you have it – capture it and share it with a discerning ear.