The amazing app Evernote has really helped to centralize and simplify my songwriting.
I suggest you give it a try. If you do creative work, flow doesn’t always strike when you sit down to work. You could be in your car, at church, on a plane, in a movie, and you need a tool that is with you where you are.
The best part of Evernote is that you have access to it everywhere – on your phone, on your desktop, and online. You never have to be without your ideas.
[tentblogger-youtube BgWc7kyhE90]
Glorious.
Now it’s your turn. What are some tools you use to write songs or be creative? You can leave a comment by clicking here.
Thanks for sharing…to answer your question:
I have just used my brain and my guitar! 🙂
Dude, thanks for the tutorial. I’ve had this app for a bit now but haven’t used it much. And of course, I failed to download the desktop version.
Also, how did you get your dock group apps like that?
Yea, bro. I use it all the time. For my dock spacing, I used this tutorial: http://tentblogger.com/dock-spacers/
Let me know if that works!
I love listening to a lot of bands that are doing innovative things and are on the forefront of creating good art in music. I get inspired by that a lot. Also I love writing songs on my guitar in different locations and times of day. I find I write different when I’m in my house than when I write outside at night on my deck. Sometimes I’ll write in the church sanctuary or in the sun in my yard. I also write by messing around with different instruments like drums, banjo, ukelele, or keyboard. Sometimes just putting a drum loop on and then riffing over that can be productive. Sometimes finding a good song title or lyric first can inspire a song. The best thing is to be constantly writing. Lately for every 5 -10 ok songs I write there might be one good one that makes it to the recording studio. I usually throw out a lot of songs but it’s good songwriting practice
Brad,
Thanks for the comment. There’s a lot of great ideas here. Do you have a ukelele? I’ve been thinking of getting one soon. I think your statement to be “constantly writing” is the key. Don’t get too discouraged with bad ideas. A lot of bad ideas will soon equal a good one. So good, man. Thanks.
Dave, I think this blog post puts you over the top in the stratosphere of “nerd blogging songwriters”…giving a video tutorial including your mac book camera, iphone & desktop interface skills – I’m blown away. Wow. Haha. Good work. I think I will try Evernote. 🙂
OK Dave, how do you record audio from your laptop (no iPhone) on Evernote? I can’t find info on this anywhere.
I was gonna combine this idea with your latest post on songwriting and record 20 new song title ideas…
Rob, that is a great question. This feature is not available (yet?). I think they should really replace the iSight option with an audio recording option. A workaround would be to use Quicktime (or some other audio recording app) and then simple drag it into Evernote. In Quicktime, just go to File > New Audio Recording.
Dude that is exactly what I just figured out! I guess the QT audio recording is fairly new. Sounds great – amazing.
awesome
Sometimes I pretend that I am a songwriter, and after I read this a couple months ago I downloaded Evernote. Seriously awesome… I have actually written a couple songs using this, and used it for my blogging… thanks for the tip.
No problem, Jimmy. Though it took me a while, I now use Evernote everyday for multiple things. Don’t know if I could live without it!
My android phone is a cool tool for writing songs too!
http://goo.gl/azIu3
I spend time just looking at nature and enjoying nature and do as much traveling as I can, to keep my creativity alive. I also make sure to stop my mind from getting cluttered (brainpower), meditate (Headspace app is nice for this) and focus on the right things. My main creative source is the Spirit of God, especially during deep worship. I just really enter in and sometimes when I don’t plan to write, I get songs.