Getting music out of my brain away from home.

February 22, 2008 5:13 AM

How do you, fellow musician, capture musical ideas when you're nowhere near a recording device?

I'm the chief songwriter for my indie-rock band. 95% of my ideas hit me when I'm not around an instrument or recording device. Usually something like this will happen:

• I'll get an idea for a melody, rhythm, chord progression, whatever.
• I'll let that part roll around in the back of my mind for a while.
• Complimentary parts will sort of build themselves around the original idea

until I have a nice little full-band thing going on. But, of course, if I don't get it out of my head pretty quickly, it's gone by the time I get home.

I've used a digital voice recorder, but just going "dah-dah-DAH-dah-dah" doesn't do much to capture the idea. Plus it's a drag to listen back to. I've tried various forms of notation, but it's not fast enough.

Ideally, you're going to point me at this awesome multi-track sequencer that plugs directly into a jack implanted in my skull (and costs under $200). If we can't achieve the skull-jack part, a device would honestly be preferable, some sort of ultra-portable...multi-track...sequencing...I'm having trouble imagining what something like this would look like.

Apart from that, though, what method do you use? I'd like to hear about it even if it's something I've already mentioned. Maybe if I got better at the voice recorder or written notation thing it would suit my needs fine.

posted by 2or3whiskeysodas to media & arts (15 comments total)

Personally, I write ideas down on staff paper (or lined paper, if it's lyrics). But I have a degree in music, so musical notation is practically a second language to me.

To get things down quickly, I do what Mozart used to do. Start sketching in the structural details of the music - bass lines, melodies, and rhythms, then fill the rest in later.

I'll be interested to see what other people suggest as well!
posted by LN at 5:37 AM on February 22, 2008

You could try a Zoom PS-04. It's got bass and drums sounds/patterns built in so you could program a rhythm on it and then sing the melody over the top. And it has a built in mic and multi-tracking so you could also just sing all of the various instrumental parts if that's easier.
posted by gfrobe at 5:39 AM on February 22, 2008

If I'm not near an instrument (which, for me, is necessary for any kind of musical notation or tablature), I'll just write, in words, a detailed description of what I've thought of. It's kind of annoying to try and decipher the often vague descriptions (extreme specificity is helpful, but tricky), but it sometimes works, and when it doesn't, it usually spawns other ideas that I can immediately put to use.

(As far as portable sequencers, the Yamaha QY-10 was designed for this very predicament. They're on eBay all the time for pretty cheap.)
posted by Sys Rq at 5:43 AM on February 22, 2008

I'm not a full-time musician of any sorts, but when i get a mystery earworm, or a melody of my own, I dissect it until I know exactly what notes, in terms of if it were in C, the entire melody is. Having the notes, and maybe some gibberish lyrics to flesh out the rhythm, is all it takes. Chord progressions? Think in terms of I-IV-V-VIm-V#dim etc.
posted by notsnot at 5:49 AM on February 22, 2008

If I am nowhere near a recording device, I have been known to call home and leave my ideas on the answering machine.

"Okay here's part one: la laa la, dooby dooby do, and the refrain goes la la la la, bowp bowp, and the bass plays the third and then the fifth."

My girlfriend usually checks the machine so she has amused herself sometimes by hearing these strange messages from me when she gets home from work.

If I have paper, I will write it out assuming I can figure out and hum the root, 3rd and 5th of the key it is in. I will them hum out the parts and transcribe it, not with musical notation, but with my own notation that I can understand.
posted by chillmost at 6:13 AM on February 22, 2008

I've used a digital voice recorder...

Have you ever tried two digital recorders? If you give yourself a 123 count-up for timing, it's possible to use them for low tech mixing by playing one over the other as you add a layer. The result will sound progressively uglier for noise, but you'd be able to sketch out an idea with at least four parts, surely.
posted by zennie at 6:13 AM on February 22, 2008

Sorry, all I do is use the record button on my cell phone, then get home as soon as I can and hit my keyboard. Usually that is enough to jog my memory for the rest of it.
posted by konolia at 6:28 AM on February 22, 2008

Personally, I write ideas down on staff paper (or lined paper, if it's lyrics). But I have a degree in music, so musical notation is practically a second language to me.

This. It's not as simple an answer as "use this voice recorder," but learning to notate well will be useful for the rest of your life and make you a better musician in the process.
posted by ludwig_van at 9:27 AM on February 22, 2008

If you know musical notation (you have to be really fluent), jot down notes, phrases, etc. with plenty of annotations.

Else, I suggest a multitrack digital recorder like, for instance, this one or this one. And having at least a small mic handy. Foldable keyboard, perhaps?
posted by _dario at 10:16 AM on February 22, 2008

For the record, I do know musical notation. Had many, many years of musical theory training as a kid. If needed, I could use it as a method to jot this stuff down. I'm just hoping for something a little more...instantaneous.

Great insight so far, all!
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 11:36 AM on February 22, 2008

If you have a Palm or similar PDA there are tons of programs out there can do multitrack recording and mixing. I used this one and my kids absolutely loved it...it has built-in mixing, sequencing, effects (delay, reverb, filtering), sampling (record your voice, then do overdubs), a keyboard that's driven by the hard keys...I LOVED it. The same guy makes a virtual Rebirth-style 808/303/303 callled Microbe with effects and all that. Which is a super-fun drum machine / acid loop type deal.

Then stupidly I upgraded to Windows Mobile because apparently PalmOS doesn't do HDPSA. Whatevs. But I totally miss it.

Probably by now there's something that does this (simple sequencing/drum machining) in Java Micro, if you have a more basic (but recent) phone. Or there are little mini-micro take-anywhere multitrackers like the above you could use..

Well damn. You just inspired me to go and look for a new Windows Mobile-compatible sequencer/sampler/tracker/etc/etc/etc.
posted by ostranenie at 12:20 PM on February 22, 2008

HSPDA not HDPSA. mmf.
posted by ostranenie at 12:21 PM on February 22, 2008

At one point, I relied upon sheer memory to compose and write songs. But, since this ability didn't come naturally (I'm aware some lucky people can do this without consciously training themselves to), I had to invest a lot of time and effort in developing that skill.
I basically: 1) improvised a lot, for many hours at a stretch, and sort of allowed songs to "form themselves" - after improvising for some time, some musical themes would reoccur and sort of... develop themselves into a song. A lot of repetition involved. Later on, when I was less of a snooty purist about songwriting, I would consciously decide and attempt to remember the musical themes I came up with that I liked. Again, a lot of (this time, conscious) repetition involved... 2) trained myself to learn songs by ear. ...a lot of repetition involved here, too. I would listen to little segments of a song again and again, until I figured out how to play it, segment by segment.

So for a few years, I barely notated or recorded songs, and somehow stored them up in my head. This is actually a pretty good skill to develop if you can spare the time to do so... I've found that I can (well, heh, duh) remember and perform the songs I wrote/learnt from that period much better than any songs I wrote/learnt after that, even if I've gone for years without playing those songs.

After that memory-thing, I just relied upon various types of recorders (the computer's "sound recorder", cellphone voice recorder, minidisc recorder, etc) and various types of notation (regular staff notation, my-own-notation (a mixture of: a description of what the music sounds like, images/smells/tastes/etc that serve as keywords to help me remember specific ideas/themes in the song, chords (either guitar chord notation or roman numerals), melody (usually written using the alphabet format (e.g. "E D C D E E E"); somehow i can generally remember the rhythm and chords once i've written down the melody... but if the rhythm/chords are a bit complicated, then i write those out as well), different instrument parts written out vertically - a bit like they would be in a regular orchestral score, except with the alphabet-melody or guitar chord notation replacing the staff notation), etc). Uh, sorry if the parentheses have made all of that really hard to read...

oh! It also helps to have some other music-ish person around. When I co-wrote songs with my best friends, we would sing/hum our song ideas to each other. It was (among other benefits) a useful back-up to have; if I forgot a good song idea, there was a good chance my friend still remembered it. Sometimes we had a sort of Broken Telephone situation going on, where we would sort of pass the song back and forth until it became quite different from the original idea not so much because of any deliberate choice on our part, but because of slip-ups in our memory... Somehow songs seemed to become more melodic or radio-friendly that way, too; I think perhaps people tend to remember songs in the easiest, most melodic way they can... hence the subconscious erring on the side of melodic caution. Rhythms tended to become simpler, too...
Anyway that was a bit of a digression but I hope some of that helped. :)
posted by aielen at 12:27 PM on February 22, 2008

For the record, I do know musical notation. Had many, many years of musical theory training as a kid. If needed, I could use it as a method to jot this stuff down. I'm just hoping for something a little more...instantaneous.

Well, the point is that there's knowing how to notate and knowing how to notate, if you know what I mean. I studied composition, and I'm pretty good at writing stuff down, but the jazz fiddle guy I play with is much better at it than I am, although I'm always working on it.

Doing sight singing/sight reading exercises and melodic/harmonic dictations are probably the best way to develop those skills. There are lots of books with the former, but to work on the latter you'd probably need a friend.
posted by ludwig_van at 4:38 PM on February 22, 2008

Oh man, I always sucked sucked sucked at sight reading.
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 6:09 PM on February 22, 2008