A Look at My Songwriting Tools

• I’m a songwriter. I am also an arranger on occasion. Sometimes I write worship songs for Christ Church to sing in corporate worship. A few of my songs appear on the Christ Church worship CD which you can find on iTunes here.

  One of the hardest parts of songwriting for me is remembering the idea. So I want to walk you through a few tools and steps I take to take a song from a simple thought to a completed tune.

  

  Above you see a photo with several pictures.  These are the tools I use for songwriting.  Let me go into a bit more detail.

   

  A.  Taylor 414ce – This is my main acoustic guitar.  I do all of my writing on it.  Sometimes I need to bring in an electric so that I can feel the energy of the song, but it all starts here.

  B.  iPhone 4 or 4s.  I have an iPhone 4 and I use it for a ton of things.  There are two built in apps that I use for songwriting.  One is the notes app.  I can pull this up and write down lyric ideas.  The other is the voice memo.  This is perfect because the mic on the iPhone is really pretty good and you can record rough ideas through it.  Here is me playing a quick piece through mine so you can hear what it sounds like.  Sample

  C.  MacBook Pro.  I love this computer.  It is a beautiful machine!  I use two main apps for songs.  Basically it is just a computer version of what I use on the iPhone.  I use Pages, which is just a word processor, for lyrics and chords.  I use GarageBand, which comes free with every mac, to record the tracks.  I like to multitrack, so I use a…

  D.  Beta 87-A.  This is a great condenser mic by Shure.  You could just as easily use a less expensive mic, like a SM58, but this is a great mic.  I run it directly into my…

  E.  M-AUDIO Fast Track Pro.  This is a two-channel interface that connects via USB.  It is really great for the money.  Gives me to XLR inputs and includes phantom power.

   

  Here is my song Prodigal Song.  This is the demo version that I recorded with everything listed here.

   

  Those are my tools for songwriting.  They work great!