Ideas For Jams Getting Lost

Anybody else sit at work and have cracking ideas for templates/adds only to get home and completely forget them?

Happens to me all the time! Very annoying.

Ha ha yes - I think it's an age thing at least for me (I am about to turn 59)

I don't get to listen to the loops at work (probably just as well!). I do tend to download a lot of templates, record a 'sketch' track and then get distracted by the next thing and promptly forget all about it. I must have at least a hundred of those lying around I need to come back to!

Haha, I'm starting to get replies on comments i made months ago :D I'd say things like: "Cool, i will have a go at this tonight!" "Incoming bass!" ....where of course i have totally forgotten about this :D Guess this is how it is to be 40! :O

Ha ha ha.....yeh...often think of something, and either forget it as you guys have said, or scribble something on a bit of paper, and either lose it and (or) it gets washed in the washing machine (left in trouser pocket), or record something then think of a better idea an hour later when its too late!!! And maybe you can all relate - but usually its always the best ideas that you lose! :)

Same with lyrics and melodies. I took to recording snippets on my mobile phones voice recorder...wherever i am, sod the onlookers lol

OK, I'm the odd one out again, or does anyone else have musical dreams? Seems like around 3 AM or later I'll hear something in a dream and realize that it's unique and really like it (always seems to come from somewhere else and not me!?). Can I remember it in the morning? NEVER! No matter, there's joy in the moment...isn't that what music is anyway?

The Beatles did Wade.. but they were high on drugs or mushrooms...or somethin!

I never get musical dreams. I once heard an angel choir, but thats all.

Flashbacks?

@ Wade, I think that happened to Keith Richards, I'm pretty sure he woke up at 2am with this track in his head...and went to record it immediately....the track....satisfaction!

@Stella, Yeh, Marij-juana and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (L.S.D.), but of course it was nothing to do with that at all apparently!! :)

I often wake up with melodies in my head - sometimes ideas, sometimes catchy tracks I've heard on here 6 hours earlier! ha ha :)

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Edited by pconey on Oktober 26 2017 18:20

Paul...are you off your head?
You must be eating dem mushrooms lol!!!

Joking aside, it sounds like Precognition...I used to have that...I hate that.

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Edited by Anon518 on Oktober 26 2017 18:21

Alex Lifeson wrote La Villa Strangiato after he started having nightmares. Chicago's 25 or 6 2 4 was written in the middle of a night. I have nightmares with no soundtrack, weird

mpointon, I use an excel sheet with the tracks I want to collaborate on and some keywords about the lyrical theme, what kind of feel/groove (country, r&b, smooth, gritty, etc.) and i also use a similar method as stella, recording brief snippets if i have a musical idea i don't want to forget. I used to think that if it was good enough i would just remember it in the future but I why not save the effort, if i'm in a position to jot it down or make a short sketch?

this way, i have a hard copy of my plans. i can't forget about them if they're right on the page! i can choose not to look, that's another story... it also gives me a list of things to experiment with, if one ideas not really happening on a given night I'll try something else... sometimes i'm not really jiving with any of the ideas that seemed so "great" earlier. then i get to look at why a certain idea didn't work, maybe i'm not in the right mindset, my voice is tired, oh, maybe the idea is meant for another song!...

hope that helped, typing this out surely reinforced it for me, at least ;)

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Loosing ideas?
I use white paper, DIN A4. Once you have collected some thousands of sheets it is impossible to run out of ideas.
Mostly I record on a little recorder. It is in reach in just 3 seconds and I only need to press one red buttom and the play-buttom.
Of course most song-ideas are spread about several files at different locations. Maybe something like first idea, improvement, intro, B-part, outro etc., etc.
Once you have collected some hundred hours of recorded files you'll feel no lack of lost ideas.
Last but not least I bet it is impossible for a human brain to forget an idea once it has been able to connect to it. It will come back another day. Of course the idea is not present in this minute but it isn't gone.
For shure you need to write down lyrics, even unfinished verses, at once...and solve the problem to find it again after some years.
:)

I started recording little video clips of riffs on my mobile phone as a reminder so I can come back to it later. Otherwise they are gone forever (which sometimes I realize is actually a good thing :D ).

Sometimes I had recorded a song (rhythm that is), and when I try to play it a year later I haven't got a clue how I did it :D :D :D The reason for that is that often I use strange chords that I sort of "find and discover" as I go along, and as I don't read music it is really difficult to make notes. Basically, to put it in simple terms, when it comes to rhythm guitar playing, I am a primitive hunter gatherer :o . So hurrah to video clips :D - it helps me a lot!

I save the little clips into the song directory on my computer if I remember to do it, so it's all there if I need it.

A very nice tool to remind musical ideas are the old midi files. Of course it can take hours to get all edits done to get a readable notation of the melody you hit into the keys.

Playing guitar a running tuner helps. Play 022000 in standard tuning and you'll see "ebegbe". In short "ebg". Now your arranger-keyboard will help you if you type three keys. :) :)
In Reaper the VST "tune" can help with recorded arpeggios to give hints what's going on. Playing a slow version in the diary. :)