Capturing fleeting ideas
One of my favorite parts of the creative process is the improvisational noodling around on an instrument - that blue sky thinking zone where you're just freely playing, but assigning a part of your brain to be look-out for potential melodies, patterns, etc. The problem is, when that look-out spots something promising I then have to get the phone out to record it...and that action alone removes me from the totally creative space.
Well, I just ordered a device (the Jamcorder) that you plug your electric piano into that captures (in MIDI) every note you play. It turns on as soon as signal comes to it, so the idea is that once you install it you can forget about it and never worry about good ideas getting away. At the end of a session, or the next day or whenever, if you want to revisit something you were playing you just connect to the device on your phone via bluetooth and navigate to the day/time you're after. If you hit the top 5 black keys twice it creates a bookmark to make this finding easier.
Anyway, I'm excited to try it out when it arrives this weekend.
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I was thinking about starting a Discussion about..."How long does it take, usually, for you to write a song". I'd be interested to hear from the forum on this. This might include things like...where does the inspiration usually come from? Does it start with the music or with a story concept? Or how bout...about what percentage of your songs end up in the trash? Or get recycled into a completely different song?
Also, thanks for your comment on From A Dream Matt.
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I can certainly see the benefit of the Jamcorder approach. More than once I've come up with something, played it a couple of times thinking I'll remember it, then next day it's either gone completely or I'm missing some nuance that made it more appealing the day before. Be interested to hear your thoughts again once you've put it into practice. How does it survive in the real world? Are the batteries always flat. That sort of thing.
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@StoneFlowers - For me a fast song is one that's pretty much all written within a week. An average length is many weeks - many months is not uncommon. Often I will have the melody of a verse, and I'll just keep looping it nonstop in my brain - night and day. If lyrics didn't come when I first got the melody, then long walks will often get me a verse or two. I don't read or write music, and have no music theory training, so things like bridges take me a silly amount of time to work out, usually. How about you?
@RainyDayMan - well, turns out the Jamcorder is excellent. I've already relegated it to the very back of my mind, but then remembered it when I played something that I liked the sound of. Set a bookmark, and it's just so easy to go back and find. I particularly like that you can export any little section of midi you want - as midi or as audio.
No batteries - it's powered by USB - so no worries there. And the developer was super responsive. It didn't work with my keyboard when I first connected it, but he replied within 30 minutes, rewrote the code within an hour and posted a firmware update to the app store right away. Took two iterations of that before we finally fixed the issue. Not bad for a developer in San Francisco responding to a customer in the UK! I couldn't say enough nice things about the guy and his device!
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Wow! That's some service! Kudos to him! Thanks for sharing this, it's really helpful to hear from someone actually using a device in the wild.
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Howdy, Stranger!