Comments on: How (Not?) To Keep Track Of Your Lyrics & Chord Charts

By: TonyConniff

TonyConniff — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 19:13:29 +0000

Fantastic, Annie!
Thanks,
Tony

By: Annie Dineran

Annie Dineran — Thu, 16 May 2019 15:39:24 +0000

I’m writing a song using Finale PrintMusic. I realized that seven measures I’d rewritten last night were not an improvement. I was able to copy those measures from a backup of my flash drive from a few days ago. That saved me a lot of time.

Rather than backing up individual documents to individual folders, I usually back up the entire flash to the hard drive, in a dated folder in Documents. I name each backup the same way (plus the date) so they show up in sequence in the index. I drag the oldest backups to the Trash, maybe once a week.

By: Annie Dinerman

Annie Dinerman — Sun, 05 May 2019 16:04:03 +0000

I keep a database chart in Word of all my copyrights – Title, Author(s), splits, copyright numbers, etc. The certificates are scanned, but there’s also an alphabetized folder of the paper certificates.

My old paper charts are alphabetized in a file cabinet and will probably stay that way. My charts going back about 12 years are in notation software. It’s laborious to create them but it’s great for transposing and emailing. I think I should convert my G7 charts to Finale MakeMusic but I will probably only do that chart by chart, if needed. Each time I PDF a chart, I save it for future use. Scanning your charts as PDFs, or another format that your band can view on their tablets, would be an easy way to store them.

My lyrics filing system is all in Word but it needs reorganizing. Still, since I can search by title, I may never get around to creating a new filing system for my lyrics.

By: Tony Conniff

Tony Conniff — Fri, 19 Apr 2019 04:08:01 +0000

In reply to Michael Asquith. Great ideas, Mike. Thanks!

By: Tony Conniff

Tony Conniff — Fri, 19 Apr 2019 04:06:46 +0000

In reply to Tamara Hey. Thanks T; this is great! TC

By: Michael Asquith

Michael Asquith — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 14:42:29 +0000

Hi Tony,

I keep everything on a large USB stick (128GB) and a back up (1TB) Hard drive, that way I can go between computers (MacBook and iMac).
I keep Lyrics, titles, little jams, finished GarageBand and Pro tools files, works in progress, Voice memos, Word clouds, rhyming dictionary etc all on the same USB stick so I’ve got a very portable way of having everything in one place, I also use my iPhone a lot for jotting down lyric ideas and voice memos, and then send them to my MacBook using Airdrop and update the USB Stick.

I like the feel of old school guitar and pen and paper, I write on guitar also, but I’m finding GarageBand very handy for getting ideas down fast, I can have a track down in 30mins and it’ll sound not half bad.

So I’m getting ideas down that way, and then when Ive a got a few songs in the bag, and I think there are some good ones in there, I’ll do a full production using pro tools in my studio.

I found before I would spend far too much time working on mic positions etc etc only to end up recording nothing or nothing that good anyway.
So I decided the two didn’t mix (no pun intended haha) and I can save a lot of time working in GarageBand to sort the good from the bad. Its more fun too without getting bogged down with all the technical stuff that takes you away from the song itself.

Kind regards,
Mike

By: Tony Conniff

Tony Conniff — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 13:56:37 +0000

In reply to Sarah Fridrich.

Sarah,
This is great. Thanks for sharing it with me… I’m sure it’ll help other writers too.
Best wishes,
Tony

By: Tamara Hey

Tamara Hey — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 22:42:06 +0000

You could use an app like “Genius Scan” to create pdfs of all hand-written charts so they’re never lost. Replacing printed versions of charts you don’t use anymore with scans could help make room in the file cabinet Also, if the band takes your charts home, you use the app to create a quick pdf of their hand-written notes before they take them away.

By: Sarah Fridrich

Sarah Fridrich — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 18:58:47 +0000

Just the past few days I’ve been going through my Logic folder on my computer, bc it’s just a huge long list of recording projects – unfinished songs, unfinished covers, unfinished instruments, and unfinished sessions (finished songs in various stages of final recording). I made sub folders of these subcategories and then opened and listened to each project to determine which folder to move each project to.
For lyrics, last year I started by making two folders in my google drive – which is something that helps me share lyric sheets with others – “unfinished” & “finished” songs. Under “finished” I have sub folders “recorded” & “unrecorded”. I started putting the basic chord structure in the header of every lyrics document and then putting a link(s) to a recording (if there is one) so anyone who is going to play or sing on the song can access the lyrics, chords, and also listen to it.

But, before doing this … yeah, chaos. The fact that I’ve been much less busy with recording or performing this past year gave me time to get organized.

Now, back to tackling that 40+ list of unfinished songs….