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17th August 2016:

Being a songwriter is a tricky business; you never know when an idea is going to hit you, and if you don't have the presence of mind to make a note of it, the thing is lost and gone forever.

Something I have done over the years is to either record ideas into my phone, or if I'm at home, grab a piece of paper, and write it down, either in guitar tab, or standard notation, depending on what mood I'm in. By doing this, I have scraps of paper I can return to at a later date, and if I still understand what it was I was trying to communicate, I can more objectively look at it, and see if the idea still has any merit.

A few years ago, I invested in the fully functioning version of Guitar Pro, which is a very inexpensive bit of software that makes it really easy for guitarists with some notation skills to document their ideas. The major plus point of doing it this way, is that you can play back the notated idea, and hear what it sounds like, and then start composing other parts to go with it. It's quite sophisticated, in that it's capable of notating and playing the sounds of a plethora of other musical instruments, (albeit in a very computer simulated fashion).

As a direct result of this, I can gradually accumulate a back catalogue of ideas that I can (when the creative urge strikes) put into action in my little home studio setup.

I now record directly onto my pc via an audio (usb) interface, and this has made recording and editing my music a much more immediately enjoyable process.

Well, as Frank Zappa once said "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture", so I'd better sign off, and get on with the business at hand.