When I was younger, I'd use my mom's tape deck to record.
If this wasn't the exact one, it looks a lot like it.
I loved to plug in one of her microphones and sing and make up songs. Sometimes, I'd even have some friends help me! I even have one of my birthday parties on tape. It was the height of cooldom for me.
Then, as I grew older and wanted to keep my song ideas to write them down, I tried just writing the words on paper. I found out quickly that was not the best way to keep song ideas. If I left them for a day or even half a day, I would forget what I had come up with! So frustrating! Ugh.
But as an adult I was able to invest in a small digital device:
WHAT THE???
That's not digital! Well, ok, I did have one of these too as a kid. And it was great for recording in my room.
No, I meant one of these:
Ah yes, that was great.... Until I accidentally pushed the wrong button, wiped the memory card and lost all my ideas! DOH!
But since the invention of the cell phone, I have always had my song ideas in my pocket with me. And now that I have a smart phone (an iPhone 6 currently), I can record on the fly with ease. Why with ease? I'll tell you. I use Voice Recorder Pro 7.
Why do I love this app? Look at all the options!
Impressed? I am. It's pretty handy.
When you open it up, you have to press record twice. The first time to set the options you want. You will see this screen.
I love that you can speed up or slow down the recording. When you're songwriting, sometimes what starts off as a slow song needs to be sped up.
When you're finished recording, the file will save as a series of numbers. The name, will be the time and date of the recording.
As you can see from the photo, that can all be changed to reflect the song name or whatever you want.
There's so many advantages to this app, I haven't even messed with them all! Just today I found silence detection!
Now, I've tried lots of songwriting and recording apps, but this is the one that I find the most adaptable and useful for my needs.
Keep writing... Keep going... Record, reflect, rediscover and plot a course towards success!
And get the right tools for the journey.