capturing ideas easy.
How I Use Evernote for Songwriting
Personal pride requires that I start this post by saying: yes, I have done music professionally (= for a living). I’ve done my share of writing, recording, and touring and I’ve opened for a few names you’d probably recognize. I’ve also burnt myself out.
One of my motivations for moving to this small corner of Oregon was to get away from routines that were draining my creativity and to reinvent myself musically. California is likely the next stop and as long as I’m here, I’m going to write.
That where Evernote comes in.
I record nearly all my music ideas directly to Evernote with my iPhone via the voice option. With recent changes, it’s pretty easy to save multiple ideas to the same note and that’s saved me a lot of time sorting. Adding lyric ideas and other notes is as equally easy.
Since Evernote is a cloud service, these ideas get backed up and synced with my Mac where music notes become project files. Anything digital associated with the song gets saved here: mind maps, next actions, final lyrics, whatever. I can always take pictures of anything that’s not easily made digital (think: hastily written lyrics on a napkin).
As you can see from the screenshot above, you can playback audio clips that you recorded on your iPhone right from the note on your computer. Multiple files are treated like a playlist. Nice.
My audio clips often include alternate parts – intros, bridges, melodies, etc – which I didn’t used to do so much, not till I began using the Evernote + iPhone combination. I guess the ease of saving my ideas has encouraged me to get more creative.
Pardon the expression, but I’ve kind of got my rhythm now in writing my new CD and Evernote is a big part of that. I’m aiming for September to release, but if you’re interested in hearing a bit now and don’t mind the fact that what’s posted is little more than an audio sketch, visit Weszt.com and go to the Lab. For a taste of the music that put me on tour, see the music section.