Remembering forgotten song ideas

[fluffy]

So this morning I woke up with a great song idea in my head. So I rushed over to my guitar and played the chords and hummed the melody. That's usually enough to keep me from forgetting it. But this time it wasn't enough. All I can remember is that it's in the key of E-minor and also uses G, C, B, and D chords, and a few of the niftier transitions. Not very helpful.

Does anyone have any techniques for remembering songs or not forgetting songs to begin with? Aside from the obvious, like, writing them down? (I find that also doesn't really help since conveying the rhythm and phrasing and such is usually lost.) Or, like, recording them. That's also hard to do when groggy and waking up, which is when my best song ideas come to me, and why I almost never record music because I'm always FORGETTING EVERYTHING.

[starfinger]

i know you said "without recording them", but this is so easy I don't see why it doesn't count. i just hum or sing the idea into my audio editor. no instruments, no hookup. hey, you could also use a cellphone with audio memo or some other dictaphone type thing.

no brains required.
-craig

[fluffy]

That may be true but my phone doesn't have a voice recorder app and I don't always have enough time to start up logic or whatever before my bladder explodes.

[roymond]

I use Garageband now for this. My laptop boots in seconds and with no mic setup needed I can record the idea in minutes.

I also have a Morantz digital recorder handy, usually, but then I have to transfer the file to the laptop eventually....whatever. Lazy.

If I'm somewhere I don't have a computer handy, like walking down the street, I use my cell phone's video recorder. At least I can hold on to the idea, as shitty as it will sound, I can recognize it.

[fluffy]

Yeah, I used to do that but the goddamn Sidekick 3 doesn't have a voice recording function of any sort, and T-Mobile doesn't let you leave a voicemail for yourself. But even when I do have a voice recorder I never think to use it.

I know logically that I need to record song ideas when I have them but usually I have them when I'm just waking up in the morning and don't have the presence of mind to do the right thing. I think, "Oh, hey, that's awesome, I'll remember it all day." And of course I don't.

So, are there any techniques to get that inspiration back? That's more what I care about. I've managed to do that before but it's been very very rare.

[Plat]

As far as memorizing riffs, the best I've done is to play the same riff over and over and over and over, until it gets stuck in my head like a Top 40 track that just won't go away. I try to memorize it in sight as well as sound -- so I can actually visualize myself playing it, which helps sometimes.

But because most of my music happens on accident, even that can fail.
So then, depending on the time of year, I take one of two approaches:

A) Darwin-esque rationalization. If I want to write catchy music, and my music wasn't catchy enough for me to remember, maybe it wasn't meant to be. True or not, it helps me move on when I forget something really key. If it's really that good, hopefully it comes back to me later.

B) Record it as soon as possible, and proactively make it easy for yourself to do so, so you can concentrate on the song and not the recording. For example, keep a pen and paper handy wherever you go. Or take inventory of your recording devices, and make sure you've always got one on standby for times like this. Examples:

Voice Recorder via Cell Phone - Yours is the first cell phone I've heard of, without a voice recorder. However I haven't used many cell phones. I've recorded ideas on my phone while driving to work this way.

Voice Recorder via MP3 Player - A lot of mp3 players support low-quality voice recording these days, out of the box or with an add-on. I've used this to record melody and lyric ideas while at the YMCA. I also used it as a backup recording of a SF Live show. An awwwwful mono recording, but it still got me some songs that were otherwise mistakenly unrecorded.

Computer - Hopefully it doesn't take /that/ long to boot up Logic, or even a simpler Sound Forge-like app, to record a braindump. I've recorded so many horrid live demos into Sound Forge it's hard to count.


Hope this helps.

[fluffy]

(A) is the only one which even pays attention to what I've been saying about presence of mind and so on, and that's what I try to do, but it hurts.

[king_arthur]

A lot of my ideas work themselves out while I'm out walking the dogs in the early morning, and I think there have been a couple times where I couldn't remember the idea when I got home... but it came back to me when I was out walking the dogs the next morning, and I managed to make better notes on it at that point.

So, wake up tomorrow morning, rush over to your guitar and start playing chords and humming a melody, and if you're lucky, you'll get a second shot at remembering what you came up with today.

Charles (KA)

[Dan-O from Five-O]

Fluffy I suffer from the same affliction, but perhaps not to the same extent. My best advice is to avoid all other mediums that interfere with your ability to remember the melody. Radio and TV especially. Even ambient noise can break your train of thought if you start hearing anything rhythmic that's not on the tempo of the idea you had; the drip of a coffee maker for instance. Try somehow to allow yourself complete silence, and DON'T concentrate as much on the "Shit, what was that idea?" thing so much. If you can afford yourself a few minutes to just let it come back to you naturally, it should.

To me it sounds like you're trying to force it to come back and in my experience, that's the worst way to go about it.

[fodroy]

I sometimes record little bits of ideas on my laptop when I can't get privacy or something, but I always end up not caring about them by the time I have the place to myself. If I don't get a huge chunk of a song down right off the bat then chances are I'll never get to it.

[fluffy]

The song, or at least something very much like it, came back, as I was falling to sleep tonight. Though I'm not sure it's the same because last time there were whispers of rhyme and meter for the vocals hidden below the notes. Anyway this time I recorded it since I already had a scratch project open in Logic. Yay me.

(Incidentally what normally makes me lose track of song ideas is getting something else stuck in my head. I actually don't listen to a lot of music most of the time.)

[Mostess]

(Incidentally what normally makes me lose track of song ideas is getting something else stuck in my head. I actually don't listen to a lot of music most of the time.)

Me too. This happens to me constantly. I kind of subscribe to that Darwinian idea someone mentioned above, but that idea isn't really falsifiable, and it's kind of silly. So I do actively try to remember ideas. My trick has two parts:

1) Pick out something in the melody and describe or picture it explicitly, and (usually) also compare it to something non-musical I already know (like: it jumps way up and then comes down stepwise a few notes, kind of like the sound of an engine when you brake by down-shifting)

2) As soon as I'm distracted by something, make myself use that analogy to bring the song idea back. I have to do it immediately, so sometimes I'll distract myself on purpose by turning on the TV or making coffee or vaccuming (noise seems to help).

If I do that, I usually find I can make the song come back days or even weeks later. Although whether it comes back exactly the same as the day it was conceived, I can't tell you.

(edit: I just read Dan-o's post above and had to laugh about some of the similarities between his experience and mine. For the record, my notes about the distraction of ambient noise, coffee-making especially, are not a response to his.)

[frankie big face]

Hey fluffy (and others),

Sometimes when I'm in the shower (how clichéd!) I just start singing and before you know it I have a perfectly matched verse and chorus. What's awesome is the phrase lengths might be a little quirky and fun and I want to capture that moment. So I keep singing it over and over, but before you know it, the phrases start to become one length as my brain does a whole bunch of destructive editing, rendering a less than cool end product. This has happened to many potential FBF songs and they almost all get tossed in the cranial wastebasket.

Anyway, what I get an idea at a more convenient time is get it on a microcassette recorder as soon as possible. I would suggest, fluffy, that you keep one right by your bed since it seems your ideas come to you in your sleep a lot. You don't need an instrument--just sing nonsense syllables, bass lines if possible (you can find the chords layer) and talk to yourself about the concept or the lyrics or the sounds you want to use. I have loads of these tapes and every once in a while, I go through them and catalog the ideas for the future. (They're pretty funny sometimes too.) This method is also useful for the car.

I've also called my own answering machine and sung the song idea into the machine. That works pretty well.

Those are my 2¢. You each owe me a dollar.

[JonPorobil]

I just bought XTC's Apple Box, and Andy Partridge makes it very clear from his liner notes that he never goes anywhere without a dictaphone, and that he's got hours of tapes footage of scrapped ideas lying around. Sounds like as good a method as any. And dictaphones can be pretty cheap ($20 or less at Radio Shack).

So basically, what Frankie said... only I have a celebrity backing up the claim.

[deshead]

One more trick: play the melody on guitar (or whatever) and WATCH yourself playing it. Involving both visual and aural elements greatly helps your chances of accurately recalling something later.

[Caravan Ray]

If you've forgotten it - let it go. It was probably crap anyway.

[frankie big face]

So basically, what Frankie said... only I have a celebrity backing up the claim.

I thought I was "celebrity backing"!

[fluffy]

Guess I'll start keeping my minidisc recorder by my bed. Not like I do anything else with it these days.

[JonPorobil]

So basically, what Frankie said... only I have a celebrity backing up the claim.

I thought I was "celebrity backing"!

Well, in a way, sure, but... See, you're making the claim, but you don't have a celebrity backing you up....

Oh, semantics, you can get me out of any mess.

I'll merely add that I used to believe that if you couldn't remember a melody or a lyric, it wasn't worth remembering anyway, but lately I've realized that often really good melodies can be complex, and complex things are harder to remember. I had a really good one while I was at work a few weeks ago, and it's gone almost completely now. I jsut remember that it was really fun.

[roymond]

So basically, what Frankie said... only I have a celebrity backing up the claim.

I thought I was "celebrity backing"!

Well, in a way, sure, but... See, you're making the claim, but you don't have a celebrity backing you up....

I think he was asserting his own celebrity status. I'll back that up

[frankie big face]

Yeah! I'm at least as big a celebrity as Andy Partridge. Now Keith Partridge, that's a different story...

[JonPorobil]

I thought I was "celebrity backing"!

Well, in a way, sure, but... See, you're making the claim, but you don't have a celebrity backing you up....

I think he was asserting his own celebrity status. I'll back that up

Oh sure, I got that! I was just saying that although Frankie himself is a celebrity, he didn't have another celebrity backing him up.

...Fine, at least I get me.

Oh, and in case I've been unclear, Frankie rocks. I still listen to Smile if You Absolutely Have To all the time.