As a songwriter that always used a portable cassette recorder (and sometimes a micro-cassette recorder) along with pen & paper for writing down lyric and chord ideas, I found that trying to organize all these snippets into some coherent system for later use and reference was laborious and incomplete. Even today there are song ideas that I know I captured somewhere at some point, but I don’t know where they are, and my mind is of course too feeble to remember how the songs went after an often surprisingly brief passage of time.

The iPhone has streamlined this process for me, in both the capturing of ideas and in their organization. It’s great to have one handheld device that’s always with me and that can serve an increasingly useful purpose. Below I outline my basic process in hopes that it might give you some idea of the capabilities, and perhaps inspire you to begin streamlining your own creative process.

When I sit down to write, it’s usually with an acoustic guitar, a notepad and pen. I rarely bothered pulling out my tuner to tune the guitar, preferring instead to simply tune it to itself in whatever condition it happened to be in. But now with the iPhone and an app by Planet Waves called Guitar Tools ($1.99), tuning up is a cinch. The app also offers Chord charts, a Chord Finder, Scales and a Metronome. If a tuner is all you need, Tyro Tuner (iTunes link) is a great free option, and there other standalone (and often free) apps for chord charts and metronomes.

I find using a pad and pen, whenever possible, is great for sketching out verses and chords, but an audio component is still required if I want to remember the melody or strum/picking patterns. I don’t read or write “music” to any acceptable degree, and my past habit of writing something along the lines of “Dee dee DEE dum dum” across the top of the page proved a comical assumption that I would have any idea how that went upon later visitation. So, recording the song’s development is a must.

I’ve tried several different iPhone apps that allow you to make simple recordings and, while all are certainly acceptable, very few of them allow me to record for a bit, pause or stop, and then continue recording (much like a portable cassette recorder does). This is essential for me as the song develops since I’ll usually record a verse or two, pause to modify or write more, then record again with the changes. I may do this several times through the course of writing a song, sometimes even breaking it up over days or weeks depending on time concerns.

The other main requirement I have is for an easy way to get the song ideas onto the computer (as well as having them on the iPhone) so that I can organize and revisit them quickly and efficiently as needed when I feel the urge to finish a certain song and record it.

The following apps are all wonderful in their own way, but all fell short of my demands. None of them allow me to come back to a recorded file and add to it, and they all have shortcomings when it comes to syncing with the computer in the most efficient way for my needs. Here they are, along with a quick description of why I don’t use them for this process so that you can decide if they might work for yours:

Apple’s Voice Memos (Free): A great little app that’s included with the iPhone. Great interface, but it syncs with iTunes which is a drag for me since I want my song ideas separate from my iTunes Library. It lets you “label” recordings, which is nice, but naming the files becomes a little tricky. After a few disastrous syncs with this one, I abandoned it.

Recorder (.99): Another great looking app, but syncing to the computer is done either via email (an extra step I don’t want) or by pointing my computer’s browser to a specified URL and then downloading the recording. Meh.

YouNote Lite (Free): A great little app that I prefer over Apple’s own Notes app. In addition to text notes, you can make audio, image and even drawing notes. It’s really great, but syncing to the computer requires the YouNote Desktop application, resulting in a lot of note duplication and wading through files to get to the song file I’m looking for. Otherwise, this is still my go-to app for quick notes and memos on the iPhone.

Evernote (Free): I love this app and use it as a repository for numerous types of documents and actionable ideas daily. I was really hoping this would be The One, but the lack of being able to continue a recording shot it down. Also lacking are the ability to name an Audio Note before syncing it to the server and my computer, and the 60 MB per month upload limit for free accounts (that’s just not enough for the amount of .wav files I generate). Premium accounts offer 1GB/month for $45/year. Close, but not doin’ it for me….

SoundCloud (Free): Another that was nearly The One. Much like Evernote, SoundCloud has an iPhone app, a web interface, and a Mac desktop app that sync together wonderfully. You’re allowed 2 hours of sound that you can upload to your account (larger amounts available for premium members), and most people use this to share their recordings with the world. That’s great, but you can also mark recordings as “Private” so that only you (or selected individuals) can hear them, and this was almost perfect for me. I could record ideas on the iPhone, upload them as “Private” and open my SoundCloud desktop app anytime I needed them. I could even create Playlists for further organization. But once again, not being able to add to an existing recording soured the deal for me.

THE WINNER (for now anyway):

iTalk Recorder (Free – $2.99): From the good folks at Griffin Technology comes this handy little app. I first downloaded the free version and, even though the interface isn’t particularly inspiring, loved its speed and simplicity. Naming recordings is easy and you can choose from three audio quality settings (Good, Better and Best). You can also add on to recordings that you’ve already made. Excellent! The app is currently on sale for $1.99 (iTunes link) and I sprung for it because the paid version will send recordings directly to my Dropbox with the click of one button. Anytime I add to a recording, the copy in my Dropbox updates as well. The files are conveniently placed in a folder called iTalk Recordings and I can access them from anywhere.

This app meets my current requirements of being able to record and catalog with ease, and I can highly recommend it especially when coupled with a free Dropbox account. I do have the feeling though that in my never-ending quest for organization I’ll need a simple tool for tagging songs & ideas for quicker access as their number grows. Until then, this should do nicely.

So there’s my take. What do you think? Do you have a particular process you use for writing and keeping up with your songs? I’d love to hear about it!

…the [musical] score, the requiring that many parts be played in a particular togetherness, is not an accurate representation of how things are. These [composers] now compose parts but not scores, and the parts may be combined in any unthought ways. This means that each performance of such a piece of music is unique….The parallel in art is the sculpture with moving parts, the mobile. ~ John Cage

There’s an experiment I’ve been wanting to try for some time, but have only just now found a means for presenting. It may not be the most original idea in the book, but it was fun creating and then playing with.

The basic idea is to have several small pieces of audio, of varying lengths and sounds, play randomly and loop indefinitely to see what types of atmospheres evolve as the pieces interact with each other over time, producing not only something unintended and spontaneous, but hopefully something interesting and engaging as well. The listener becomes active in the musical arrangement by their choice of sounds to include (hopefully all of them), and when they choose to start them…and if they choose to turn some of them off (though here again, the interesting things happen as all the sounds evolve and writhe together over time).

I recently attended an event that included the playing of crystal bowls, and found that the frequencies of certain bowls – each associated with one of our chakras – especially when played together, though not simultaneously, stirred great emotion and curiosity within me. The ringing, ending overtone of one bowl as another was struck or caressed for sound provided a unique soundscape of unexpected tones. The intermingling tones of three bowls in particular – those associated with the crown, solar plexus, and sacral chakras – created a sound I had heard in my head not long ago in a moment of rather serious spiritual reflection, and so you can imagine how surprised and delighted I was to hear it again in the actual outside world.

Accordingly then, I chose as my first three sounds for this experiment tones associated with those chakras. The ‘bowl’ sound is a sample of a Tibetan bowl on the musical note associated with the crown chakra, and the color of the tape it’s played on reflects that chakra also. With that information, you can deduce or discover the intentions of the other sounds and tapes of the experiment, though truly they are treated lightly and without a thought toward true accuracy. The eagle-eyed may notice that there are only six tapes/sounds, while the number of chakras we allegedly have is seven. That is true and intended. Perhaps you or the space you listen in can represent the missing seventh.

If you’re still with me here, and interested, the experiment may be found here. My hope is that it can not only be viewed as an interesting whatever, but that it may also be useful as background music for contemplative activities such as meditation, reading, writing, or painting.