Consider this as you think about working on your next album: the New Year is a great time to take inventory of your unfinished work. You might be surprised by what’s there, what you can use and what might inspire you to create something new.
Now’s the perfect time to go through all of the digital files on your phone, your iPad or on your computer; clean up and clean out. Take some time to comb through your old scratch tracks and music files that you long ago stored on your external hard drive and forgot about. What about the voice notes you’ve left on your phone with a melody you cam up with on a long car ride?
It’s also a great time to comb through all the physical blips of creativity you’ve had. Flip through your lyric notebooks or the scraps of napkins and receipts that you scribbled on. You might be surprised by what you find, and how much it can help you get your next work moving.
Here’s why it’s great to take inventory of your unfinished work:
- Clear out: If you have a ton of notebooks or drives that are taking up space, now’s the time to weed out. Keep what you want and ditch what you don’t. A clear space helps make a clear mind.
- Inspiration: Who knows what you might find in your files or in your notebooks. Reading through your unfinished lyrics with a new, wiser mindset might help you have a light bulb moment; you might find the words to finish an old song.
- Collaborate: You might look through all of your unfinished work and realize that you have a lot to offer a co-songwriter or another musician. You might come to find that what you really need is another mind to collaborate with, in order to take your music to the next level.
- Confidence: While taking inventory of your old work, you might come to find that you have some amazing scratch tracks and more than enough songs for an album. You just didn’t realize it at the time you were creating it. Now’s the time to get it finished.
- Get organized: If your files are all out of whack and disorganized, you might come to realize that the best way for you to constantly create is in a more organized environment.
What are you waiting for? Now’s the time! Start weeding through your uncompleted works; clean up, clean out and create.
Tell us what you think! Have you checked out your unfinished work recently? Did you find any diamonds in the rough or inspiration for new tracks?
Up next: New Year New You: Have you made a list of goals for 2012?
The SongCast Crew
Yes we have done just that and are now converting new songs to be uploaded to Songcast for distribution world wide . John R Bond / Blues Baby Blues Album 2012 Artist Of Morning Drive Records John R Bond .
Certainly a good plan, in my case I always seem to have so many song chord ideas I seldom make it back to the scratch files storage. What I have done on occasion is listen to them and If I hear something I really like, I dig it out. What I also do is keep about 5 ideas in the head and go over them when I play guitar. If it gets any more than 5, obviously I record the idea snippet. I don’t worry too much about storage because I have a number of storage devices. I do like the idea about doing 1 song a month and in fact I am doing that for the 2013 CD. These days I never write lyrics till I have recorded rythm guitars, bass and drums. Excuse me, end of January is coming up and I have a deadline to meet.