Guerilla Music -- songwriting

Have an original tune burning in your head? Always wanted to write your own songs? In this Guerilla Music series, we'll explore some practical ways to get that song from idea to soundbite.

Record on your phone

Have a melody ringing in your head but not around a computer? Use your phone's voice recorder to capture those lines before it fades into memory abyss. For those who dont have any composition tools can also use this method to capture raw arrangments. Eg. Sing n strum recording or simple sequencing using available iPhone apps.

Pairing up with an arranger

Although you may have gotten melodies and lyrics down it is by no means complete. Pair up with a person that you know who can help you do arrangements -- adding/editing musical parts so the songs becomes more polished and dynamically interesting.

Collaborate with a band

Instead of having to handle all musical parts yourself, why not consider collaboration with a good band? Depending on the members, having more heads can boost creativity.

Learn to use a DAW

This is my favourite but it requires prior knowledge of sequencing basics. Softwares like ProTools, Cubase, Logic have lite versions that are affordable. Some of them even comes packaged with an audiobox which is an essential hardware to record vocals and instruments into your computer. Computing power and memory capacity have come to a point where alot of things which were traditionally done on dedicated expensive hardwares can be done on softwares.

Collaborate with others online

The the web becoming more social it has never been easier to find collaborators if you're open to not having full control and full ownership. With high bandwidth becoming more ubiquitous, things that are traditionally bound to desktops are shifting to the "cloud". Dont be surprised to find garageband served up to you as a web application in the near future.