Make sure you have a keyboard available!

This is probably something that I’ll keep going back to often, because I think keyboards offer a wide range of uses to songwriters… especially those who are trying to stretch their musical creativity a bit.

My advice to you, if you don’t already have one, go buy a keyboard. I’m not talking about the high end Roland or Korg synths that cost hundreds of dollars. I’m talking about the kind of Keyboard you can pick up from your local Target or Best Buy for somewhere around $100 or so. Something that may look like this…

There are lots of reasons that I am very much a fan of having something like this around, but we’ll just go through one at a time.

Reason #1 – Easy Instrumentation

One of the biggest hurdles to songwriting creativity in my mind is not being able to express your ideas (which is why I’m such a big fan of Recording Everything) Having this style of keyboard around helps with that tremendously. Let’s say that you are writing a song, and you envision a horn section…. but you don’t play any horns. If you have a keyboard like this, you can dial up several horn sounds, and lay down a respectable part… it’s true that it won’t sound completely like a real horn section, but it’s better than trying to just imagine it’s there as you go on. With a keyboard like this, you can get down ideas for dozens of instruments… horns, pianos, organs, stringed instruments, percussion, synths, pads, etc, etc, etc.

The great thing about it is you don’t really need to know how to play the piano to make it work. In fact, you’re probably not going to play a horn section part anything like you’d play a piano anyway, since horns don’t really play chords… or even two notes at once.

And besides, didn’t we talk about how valuable instruments could be, even if you don’t know how to play them “correctly”?

Not only that, I’m sure many of you could say this same thing: There have been many occasions where I’ve been inspired for a new idea by a sound or tone that an instrument makes. Having access to dozens of sounds with one machine is going to spark some creativity in you at some point. Sometimes just sitting down in front of a keyboard like this and cycling through it’s sounds is going to inspire you to something new.

It’s definitely worth having it available to you.

Always record.

That is my motto…  I’ll say it again…

Always Record.

A lot of you might already live by this motto, but for those of you who don’t, recording is the greatest tool available for people wanting to explore creative music.  The great thing is, these days if you have a computer, you have the tools necessary to begin recording… and I’m going to guess that most of you reading this blog have access to a computer.

There are a couple reasons why recording is important when it comes to writing creative music:

-Creative inspiration is often a sudden thing.

How often have you been fiddling with music in some way, and you come across a great idea… a guitar riff, a piano chord progression, a drum beat, a great lyrical hook… but by the time you get around to trying to write down your idea, it’s gone.  It’s happened to all of us, and the sad thing about it is trying to recreate the idea later rarely leads to an idea as great as the original.

If you get used to the idea of recording your ideas rather than just finished songs, you’ll be more likely to get your ideas down when inspiration hits the first time.

I have my computer set up so that recording is an easy task.   My instruments are plugged into my computer at all times, so if I’m playing and I come up with a good idea, I just have to open my recording software, and I’m ready to go.  Convenience is the key.  The reason that I always have my gear set up… if I had to put down my guitar or get up from behind my keyboard, just so I could take the time to hook up some stuff to put down an idea that I might not ever use again…. I probably wouldn’t do it.  But since everything is hooked up all the time, it takes hardly any effort at all to hit record and lay down my ideas.

-You never know when you’ll come back to an idea

Just recently I’ve finished a song that I started over 8 years ago.

The main riff of a song was… well… it was weird.  I was messing around with my guitar, and kinda came up with a technique that was out of the ordinary.  I didn’t really know how to use it in any song that I was already working on, so I recorded it as a stand alone riff.  I put a simple chord progression after it to serve as a second part, had some canned drums from my keyboard behind it, and set it aside.

It sat there for 8 years, because as I was trying to write songs with bands, my bandmates and I always agreed… it’s just too odd.

Several months ago I decided I was in the mood to mess around with some “outside the box” (that’s my new favorite musical term) ideas,  and I started looking through old ideas of mine.  I ended up finishing the song, even though I hadn’t touched it for almost a decade.

If I wouldn’t have recorded that idea, I would’ve forgotten about it a long time ago.

-Sometimes it takes musical layers to get that creative sound you’re looking for

Sometimes a guitar chord progressions seems very ordinary…. until it has a harpsichord melody and a pan flute harmony over top of it.

If you’re a musician who writes by yourself, it’s hard to pull that off all at once.

But if you record the guitar part, it’s easy to play the other parts over the top of it later.

It’s that kind of creative layering and building that isn’t possible for solo song writers without the option of recording parts.

Okay, so I’m interested, but I’ve never recorded before

For those of you who haven’t messed with computer recording before, you should give it a try.

I’d start by going to http://www.reaper.fm.  Download Reaper.  It’s a GREAT recording tool… in my opinion it does everything that the big boys (like Pro Tools) does.  When you download it, it’s fully functional.  Try it out, play with it, and if you like it, it’s very cheap to register it.  I think it’s $60 (instead of hundreds of dollars like other software packages).

Then poke around the website.  Read the documentation, then head to the forums.  There is lots of easy to understand information that will get you started.

And honestly, if you have a computer and any kind of instrument and/or mic, you’re on your way.

It’s definitely worth it.