Tools I Use as a Composer

Tools I Use as a Composer

Today on The Composer Challenge, I’m going to break down the tools I use for composing and how they work together to capture my ideas. As an artist, inspiration can come from anywhere so I needed to develop a system that can work for me no matter where I am, or what form the idea comes in. This is what I’m using now.

Notability

This is how the majority of my writing gets done. When I compose, I don’t think linearly. Having open space to write words, draw pictures, use colors, and notate motifs is important to my progress. Notability even has a function where you can record sound as you write, which is the coolest feature feature to me. You can also import manuscript paper and compose by hand if that’s your thing. Once my ideas are solid enough to stand on their own, I organize them in a more uniform way in another program.

---

Finale

Usually, that next step is putting it into Finale. If you’re a composer, having a music notation software is probably a good idea. That way you can notate songs in a way where virtually anyone can read what you write. My notability files are all fine and dandy, but I’m the only one who can read them. Using Finale puts me in the position to share what I write with anyone who can read music.

It’s not my favorite way to capture what I compose, it can be pretty rigid and limiting in what I can express, but I don’t just write for myself. So Finale enables me to write down ideas in a way that other people can understand, too.

Voice Memos

Ideas can come from anywhere. I don’t walk around with manuscript paper, ready to jot down musical concepts as they come to me. But I do walk around with my phone in my pocket. Voice Memos gives me a quick-capture method for sketching melodies, recording lyrics, or outlining blueprints of a song regardless of where I am.

Sometimes while I’m driving and listening to music, I’ll hear something that I think sounds cool. I’ll open a voice memo and just start talking about why I think it’s cool. This helps me connect it to other ideas floating around in my brain, so that it’ll be useable at some point. The next time I sit down to compose, I’ll open my voice memos and write down the ideas in either Notability or Finale.

Notion

This is ultimately where everything ends up. Notion keeps every aspect of my life organized, and composition is no exception. I use a sort of “inventory” system to track every composition I start, whether I finish it or not. Over time these accumulate and I can see all my work at a glance. Notion also has useful features like adding pictures, audio files, and text so I can truly track everything about my compositions all in one place.

I hope you found something in this post useful! Let me know below how you keep track of your composition ideas, I’ll see you next time on The Composer Challenge.

Want to watch the video version of this post? Click here.