Week 4: The stream – instrumental

You can’t force inspiration, but you can always create an environment for it to spark in. Most of the time a song comes during a time of relaxed playing or singing when you weren’t really planning on writing anything. It is definitely a good habit to set apart some time to write, but I find it’s much better for me to rather think of it as just time to make music.

This afternoon I was playing guitar and when you listen to what I wrote now, it will be obvious that I was playing some Sting songs. Guitar is not my main instrument, so the best way to learn I’ve found is to choose some songs you love and learn them.

So while I was playing, I started experimenting with some new chords and patterns and this little instrumental was born. I also experimented with a new way to record my idea this afternoon. I used the Garageband app on my iPad for the first time and was surprised how easy it was to use and add little sounds and loops to the song. I played in a cello part to go with the guitar parts and added some reverb to my main guitar line that sounded quite nice. Definitely an app I will be playing around with some more in the future. I didn’t use any fance mic’s or recording equipment – just the iPad’s mic which was surprisingly clear. Obviously it also picked up some background noise, which was fine for just laying down an idea to come back to later.

Here it is, I call it “The stream”.

What songwriting apps do you use?