Im trying to get a bit more organized, since I dont have much (any) finished product to show for my thousands of hours of musical effort
I write a lot of lyrics at work, so they end up on folded pieces of paper. I just went thru a few that were laying on my bed and I entered the lyrics into notepad into a folder called (drum roll) Lyrics. But that was maybe only 8 songs. Just on scraps of paper I’d bet good money I have 50 just from the last 2 years
Lets not get into many notebooks and yellow legal pads collecting dust. Pretty sure I have some written down from 1989 lol
So, how organized are YOU?? Do you have any type of central repository for lyrics?
I guess i have to ask myself am I willing to start going thru the effort to copy all of mine from notebooks over to notepad or whatever. In the end, they arent doing much good sitting in notebooks up on a shelf. They need to be more at my fingertips if there is any hope of them being used
I used to use notebooks, but now i just use notepad on the computer. It’s easier for re writing and tweaking lyrics since I don’t have to scribble anything out on paper. It’s also easier since I am usually writing lyrics to music I’ve roughly recorded on the computer, so it’s nice to have it all in one spot. If I come up with an idea when I’m away from the computer I just use a notepad app on my phone to get it down.
I think songwriting is a process that starts with inspiration and ideas. Not all will get used, nor do they need to. Sometimes one song idea sparks another song. See it as an evolution rather than scraps of paper with (sacred) gold dust on them.
When I was doing lots of cover songs for vocal practice, I kept those lyrics (off the web) in Notepad files in one folder so I could find them easily. I also have stacks of them I printed to use at the mic.
What I usually do now is place a Notepad file of the lyrics inside my DAW session folder. In other words, until you have actually started recording the song there isn’t much point in archiving past lyrics unless you really feel there is some benefit to it.
Per above, that may just be avoidance of actually writing, composing, and recording. Do what needs to be done (Essentialism) and not focus on minutia and perfectionism. Of course, it would be nice to have that stuff on the computer and not taking up space on a shelf and collecting dust. But my thought for you is to input the lyrics from a note when you actually take action on it and do some recording. Per my understanding of brain mechanics, your memory has all those old lyrics still in it somewhere, and the creative process isn’t about dredging all that up again, but tapping it in new and fresh ways to craft something in the moment that is relevant to you NOW. Personally speaking, lyrics lose meaning over time if I don’t act on them in the moment (or day/week, as soon as possible).
For me, it is all in my head until I record it, which can be a long time. I feel that if I can’t remember the lyrics for my own songs, that they aren’t good enough. The only time I write them down is when I start to record them so I can get the details of the cadence down.
wow, so you guys just chuck hundreds of lyrics you wrote previously just because you didnt use them right away? So what was the point of writing them down then?? lol
I guess id rather look at it like if a friend handed me his notebook and said “can u use any of these?”. It would be the same as me looking at some of my old stuff.
I cant remember lyrics I wrote last week, let alone 10 years ago. Doesnt mean it isnt good stuff though
same with music. I run across stuff I took time to record that I have completely forgotten about and usually its pretty good lol
Im actually quite prolific but its massively scattered all over the place. Im trying to go from shotgun to rifle or even laser but the laser might be out of reach lol
I probably chuck at least 40% of everything I write, music too. If it doesn’t all come together into a finished recorded song it doesn’t count for me, so there are a lot of variables and hurdles for every song. Also a lot of half finished and crap ideas for songs sitting around taking up space on my hard drive.
I keep snippets of song ideas in Neat (the CMS app). I digitized all my old notebooks. If I need to access any of it, I can do so with my Tablet, phone, or laptop. I use Sheet Music Pro to help organize songwriting materials as well. For distributing drafts of charts to band members, conductors, and directors, I use dropbox, google drive, and the MS office cloud.
this is sort of what im thinking of doing…or at least making some effort that way. It doesnt take THAT long to throw lyrics onto a notepad file
Then they are there to sift thru. I can envision sitting and listening to the hundreds (lol) of guitar/drum jam tracks I have and thinking of a feel and then glancing through existing lyrics for a subject etc that might fit that feel
for me I guess id place as much value on assembling older pieces as I would on coming up with more and more new stuff. A song is a song is a song…
I’m all for being organised, but I’m just gonna throw this out there anyway… Obsessive organisation can be just another form of artistic procrastination.
And here’s another possibility to make your dis-organisation more complete…
Yesterday I discovered that my Windows laptop has a good speech-to-text functionality built in. All you have to do is go to the Control Panel and set it up. It works really well. So now when I hang out in the sofa and read a Kindle book or an article on the big screen TV (which is hooked up to the laptop) I can scroll the text by saying “scroll down” - and I can also dictate text to documents. it works well.
The Google Drive has a speech-to-text function that seems to work even better - this is the one I would use if I am "taking down a letter…"
All this worked well with the in-built microphone in the HP laptop. Impressed.
I hear something like “hump day” on the TV and grab my acoustic and start writing a children’s song about riding a camel. Then start a catchy guitar part. Then start singing some lyrics. Then a chorus “up and down and down and up and up down we go” Then of course the bridge when we reach the oasis…(one of my first songs) Another was my fav about the things I like most…sunsets, rainbows, and kisses ha ha I wish i did have some lyrics to start with.
I am half assed organised…I mean, I try to be, but I struggle a bit.
I have thousands of songs and song parts that I’ve been compiling since the early 80’s…Even some garbage that I wrote as a kid in the late 70’s. I’ve got cassette recordings, 1/2 inch, 1 inch and 2 inch reel to reel recordings and for the last 10 plus years, digital recordings. I also have endless volumes of songs ideas that I recorded roughly to mini cassettes in the 90’s (that was my method of archiving song scraps in that era). For the last 8 years or so, I’ve been using Audacity to record any initial song ideas I come up with. I just spent a few hours the other day listening to some of the stuff I have in my Audacity files…there’s a shitload of tunes. It’s mostly guitar and vocals but some are piano and vocals, …also a few with just vocal or bass and drum ideas.
As far as lyrics go, …well I’m not really a “lyric” guy, but I’ve got a book of lyrics for most of my old songs that were written before 1988…I also have thousands of notes, pages, pieces of paper with lyric ideas, scattered, unorganized …, almost forgotten, lying around my house, in boxes dressers, cabinets. I also like to write down song title ideas, because it sometimes can create a catalyst and inspiration for the song topic and even the music. Mostly though, I usually start with a guitar or piano and write a vocal melody…lyrics usually come later.
Organization is hell ! I’ve been meaning to start a thread to discuss how people archive and organize all their files…WAV’s, MP3’s, Videos, Pics, …etc…etc. It’s so overwhelming.
You hear hump day and write a kid’s song? I’d take it into a much different direction. Must be the generatonal gap. I’m not organized at all, but it all works out for me. Imagine having vomiting onto the bathroom walls and that would be more consistent than my musical organization. If I can find it the next day it’s goor enough for me.
I understand the sentiment but I dont really look at it that way. To me anymore its as much about practicality and being pragmatic as it is about divine inspiration or muses visiting
for instance I have dozens of guitar/drum jams that were written on work nights when I was dog tired and there was that moment of choice where it was like “do I lay down and rest or do I drag myself to the recorder and lay down some tracks??”
Some cool stuff has been written that way and if I didnt sort of force myself then it simply wouldnt have gotten written. In that way I see the whole process as practical like washing the car or cutting the grass
also, there is that old “musicians prayer”…“Lord, please let me remember all of the riffs that went thru my fingers that i DIDNT record!” Nope, a lot of times if u didnt record it then its gone
Not putting you down because im the same way. I have a decent amount of 4 track cassettes and also went thru a phase in the late 90s with a Roland digital 8 track which is now boxed up with songs saved on zip disks.
But WHY does it have to be that way??? lol With THAT amount of output, why dont we all have 4 or 5 albums finished by now??
I guess its like people who go on and on about the greatness of the Beatles or LedZep. Yes, I agree and they are some of my faves, BUT, I am trying to do what they ALL did by MYSELF. I dont have John Lennon to sing harmonies and George martin to patchwork all my ideas together while I go to the pub
One can say, “what about Prince, didnt he do most of it by himself?” and my retort would be “lets see him do it in his spare time AFTER working a 40 hr work week”
Anyway, yeah its crazy how we can do a huge sheer amount of work yet its just pieces that mean nothing
I guess the Bible is true. “The end of a matter is better than the beginning”. Im good at beginning them lol, not too good at finishing
btw, I saw a documentary the other night and it said that Beethoven had thousands of scraps of music laying around and that he lived in squaller lol. Of course at some point he realized it and took major steps to get a little tighter. I guess we all inadvertently document our growth process on scraps of paper and cassettes lol
I put stuff in or on whatever is handy… pocket recorder, phone, paper, pizza box, etc. Then, I go back and transfer it to computer, and store it in an external drive. It may be song ideas, a few lyrics, a chorus, or a complete song if I’m lucky and inspired. I have to grab the moment, or it’s forever lost.
From that, I will revisit the snippets to finish, edit / rewrite, and play around with rhythm, inversions, and such. I usually don’t scrap stuff… I try to re-examine it for it’s usefulness.
Oh damn! You just reminded me that I have a bunch of songs on a pile of ZIP disks that I recorded with my BOSS BR-8, a few years ago. Thanks a lot! Now I have even more stuff to organize and catalog!
I think it can be done alone…,but you’re highly unlikely to get the sheer volume of good material, mostly because you only have yourself to do it AND you have other priorities like paying your bills and putting food on the table. BUT, you can still focus on one song at a time and every once in awhile you can hit a home run…, or at least get to third base.
That could be prevented if we didn’t stray from our focus…Like I mentioned above. Just focus at making one great/ very good product at a time…Forget “mass production”. I know it’s a slow and somewhat painful process but it can be done.
Yeah, the initial spark/ idea is the easiest part…It’s all the production, arrangement and fine tuning that requires the work ethic. The work ethic is what separates the success stories from the failures. Some of the most talented people are absolute failures. Check out youtube…, there’s endless amounts of talented, aimless people that don’t direct themselves in a productive manner…That’s the problem that I’ve been trying to cure in my own behaviour. Creativity is easy…hard work and focus aren’t nearly as easy for me. I can work hard for awhile but I eventually start to drift from that.
Now I have even more stuff to organize and catalog!