Don’t put barriers to ideas

songwriter
pic from Rochester Contemporary School website
Sometimes we just forget why we’re all so excited in music production: at the end of the day what really matters is music. Too many times we struggle thinking about everything around this business but we’re quite missing the point: it’s just music, not a car or a blender. We’re talking about business, ok, but if you don’t write good music you’re not going anywhere (even if media and tv tell you something different…).

Songwriting is a precious process, when you have the right feeling you could write songs and riffs for days. But sometimes we’re not always ready to write something, just because we’re not at home or we’re so busy that we have just half an hour or some minutes spare. Anyway, there are some tips we can follow to optimize the process, I use to follow them and I can say that my songwriting got a sensible boost.

  • Any time you got an idea write it, record it, take a note: I understand that we have not always a staff ready to be compiled (by the way I’m not a champion in writing on a staff). And, in the worst case, we don’t even have a pc with us, so no Cubase or other DAW and no Guitar Pro or anything like that. These days you can use just your smartphone. Go on your app store and find an app to record from your smartphone mic. Sing your riffs to the phone! Then, when you’ll be at home, you can listen again to what you noted, otherwise the idea is gone. It happened lots of time that I was in a meeting at the office and in the middle a really good riff rised in my head: how many riffs lost in the oblivion! 😉
  • In your home studio, your gear MUST be always ready: some times ago, when I had a very good idea to record, I used to follow these steps: take my audio interface and unbox it, connect to pc and wait to be recognized by the system, meanwhile get the guitar case in the corner of the room, take the guitar out, tune it, find a jack cable in a messy drawer, connect the guitar, start my DAW and…ops…the riff was just gone. It happened really lots of times. Everything must be always up and running: audio interface always connected and set up, guitar besides the desk with a jack always ready, a shorcut on your desktop to your preferred DAW with a template project inside, with all the tracks you need already armed to record your riffs. When it’s time to record you just have to focus on the riffs, not on the set up of the gear…otherwise you’ll waste time and ideas.
  • Even if you have just 5 minutes, record yourself: I don’t think you have to record the best song ever necessarily in few minutes, sometimes you have a river of ideas, sometimes you don’t, you just have a riff. Doesn’t matter anyway, just press REC. Lots of these “on-the-fly-riffs” could be your next song!

Don’t put barries to your creativity, be always ready to write down ideas and riffs: what really matters is music, anyway 😉

Leave me a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Hi! I'm Santo Clemenzi.

Software engineer, music producer and bass player (From The Depth, Mindohm, Outerburst). Welcome to my blog! I (rarely) post about music production but sometimes I also rant about anything else.

I'm a Solar Guitars Artist! Check out my page and follow Solar Guitars.
Angle Room Studio logo
My home studio!
My Bands
www.fromthedepth.it
mindohm.netlify.app
www.outerburst.com