Songwriting Habit - Getting the idea out of your head! By Marcel Viera

Getting the idea out of your head!

It’s so important to capture your songwriting ideas when the inspiration hits. There’s nothing worse than having an awesome idea, only to forget it and never use it. To avoid this, songwriters often use some tools that help to capture ideas before they disappear forever. 


Here are the top 5 tools to help capture your next song. 

1. Pen and Paper

Sounds simple but it works. Songwriters often carry around with them pen and paper. Your next lyric line or song idea can come from anywhere. It could be the next thing your friend says or something that happens in a TV show you’re watching. Regardless of where your inspiration comes from, you need to capture it and fast. Having a small notebook that you carry around with you means that you always have something ready to write down that idea. It doesn’t have to be a notebook, many songs have been written on napkins or whatever scrap piece of paper you find. However, having a dedicated notebook means that you keep your song ideas in one place. 


2. Digital Notebook


Do you have a laptop, tablet or smartphone? If so, this means you also have access to a digital notebook. Instead of pen and paper, you write (or type) your ideas down into a digital format. You can use the dedicated notes app on your device or word processors like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. The accessibility to today’s technology means that it’s very easy to capture your ideas on a device. Some digital notebooks and word processors let you sync your work across multiple devices. So you might capture the song title on your smart phone, write a verse on your tablet and finish the song on your laptop! 


3. Audio Recorder


Back in the day, songwriters would commonly carry with them an audio recorder. These devices have a microphone built into them and they have one job in life - to record whatever the microphone can hear as soon as you press the record button. They are small and portable meaning you can take this with you anywhere. Instead of writing or typing your idea, you can sing or hum your idea. You can also record yourself playing your song on your instrument. The older style audio recorders would use mini cassette tapes but today you can easily purchase a digital audio recorder that lets you record hours and hours of ideas onto an micro SD card or internal memory. 


4. Smartphone

If you have a smartphone, then you already have an audio recorder. Smartphones are brilliant devices. We’ve already mentioned the idea of using a smartphone to type in song ideas but because smartphones also have a microphone built into them, they are also a digital audio recorder. This means that you can record yourself singing or playing your songs, as well as talking about your songs. There are plenty of apps that let you record any song ideas that you may have and chances are, that you smartphone already has an app built into its system. 


5. Getting into the habit

OK so this isn’t really a tool in the traditional sense but none of the tools mentioned above work unless you use them. So getting into the habit of capturing your ideas, regardless of how silly you may think they are, helps you practice and develop the craft of songwriting. When it becomes normal for you to write down or record your ideas, you’ll find that you have more things to write songs about. So regardless of whether you use pen and paper or a super cool app on your smartphone, getting into the habit of capturing ideas is going to be the ‘thing’ that makes the difference.