The iPhone as a Songwriting Tool

Ok I'll stop the iPhone love gush one of these days but I've had mine less than a week so this is allowed. Here's why this thing and all it's magical little apps you can download are awesome. Today I'm working on a new song... 1) I pull up some words I had jotted in the notes section this week. None of them actually got used this round but oh well. 2) I emailed some buddies from the phone to fact check a scenario for me...as in, "This line makes sense, right guys?" Jamie nearly responded with a spreadsheet and graph because she's so on it (she's an editor). They said I was in the affirmative. Phew. 3). I use Biblical references sometimes. So I pulled up the app that contains every version of the Bible...in several languages even. Did a content search of the whole thing and pulled up a story about Joshua to make sure I had it right. 4). Then I downloaded a rhyming dictionary app to get some help. 5). Then I decided to take a photo of my large piece of paper and blog it. All from the phone. The only reason I left my bed was to get cereal. Thank you Apple. But you don't get royalties. Yet. Blogged from Outerspace

Neither epidemic nor riot...

This week is flying by. The music school life is hoppin' and while Susan is off gigging in Atlanta and writing in Nashville, I have a lot of business stuff to attend to back here...like designing posters, for instance. And making sure they get to the right venues. And making contracts for upcoming gigs. My favorite line from an old contract we pulled out is, "if the Artist is unable to perform as required by this contract because of acts of God, strikes, illness, riots, epidemics, or accidents, they shall not be in breach...". It's nice to know we have an out if there's an ebola outbreak or perhaps a riot over who gets the last hoodie. In other news I welcomed a new iPhone into my life and I'm not quite sure what existed before it. Truly a useful tool, truly a good investment, truly going to make me a good booking agent in training, among other things. I think my business card would say: "Jana Pochop: In Training" for the next 60 years, if I had a really honest one printed up. Except I'm an expert at mailing posters.

Positively European

My new tool for the road is a "Euro Lap Desk" (that was what the package said anyway). It's a big piece of wood with padding on the bottom, so I can laptop in the van in style. I've also successfully used it as a writing desk and today I used it to eat a salad with no mishaps or spillage whatsoever. Truly, the Euro Lap Desk is a thing of beauty. What makes it "Euro"...we can't figure out. Maybe lap desks are big over there. Hello, mobile office. We're on our way to the White Elephant Saloon in Fort Worth...

Book No. 5 Begins

I try to contain most of my songwriting in one main book that I take with me just about everywhere. I do this because it's nice to keep songs in one place as they evolve so I can track their progress and easily revert back or switch gears while keeping all the ideas intact. It's also good to be able to flip through and find bits of things that never made it into a tune; sometimes these spark a song of their own or are waiting to be used in some other new idea. It takes me a while to work through a whole blank notebook, but it's satisfying when I finish one. I started my first book ("Green"...used September, 2001 through January, 2003) by accident during my freshman year of college. I probably bought this book to take notes in political science class or something, but ended up using it to write songs instead. Green is the book where my first few complete songs came together, including "24/7," which some of my beloved former roommates still request! Sometimes I indulge them, haha. Purple (February, 2003 - March, 2005). Purple had a lot going on. Apparently I was into saving the rainforest while writing, so this is coffee paper. I guess it's made with...coffee leaves? The pages had a nice brownish tint as if someone had spilled coffee all over them, so if I was ever careless with my morning brew it didn't matter. Here's Brown (March, 2005 - March, 2007). As plain as one can get, I bought Brown in San Francisco when I was there for a political science conference in college (nerd alert, that's me). It has absolutely nothing on it or in it, which I liked quite a bit. Again it is made of all recycled stuff, so the pages were brown and rather unthreatening. It was with this book that I started tracking all the places it went in the front cover. This one went to Atlanta, Denver, South Dakota, San Diego, Seattle, Salt Lake City, and Austin (before I moved here) among other places. It also holds my backstage pass to a Mary Chapin Carpenter show. Thems good times. Orange (April, 2007 - June, 2008) has just been retired as of today. Again, nothing on the outside and nothing on the inside. It did have a sleek black strap to keep it shut. The pages were white and fairly starchy feeling under the pen. It could make that movie-like scratching sound with a pen if you wrote fast enough. Orange traveled less but it did go on two tours of New Mexico, all around Texas, Seattle, and New York City. Not bad. I filled this one in just a year. Blazing fast on my schedule; all the others took two years to fill. Meet Black (June, 2008 - ????). Just purchased. Nothing in it yet. Hasn't been anywhere. Excited.

I (heart) Moleskine

A peek. Just a peek. I'm kind of a nerd. I have a thing for paper and pens, in a way that is probably unhealthy. I will browse the aisles of Borders, Barnes and Noble, Book People, and wherever else I need to be to find just the right songwriting notebook. No ruled paper, please. Spiral bound for easy flexibility. A nice, stiffish paper that takes ink well. Preferably free of anything on the cover or title page that would imply anyone had any ideas for what the notebook should be before I opened it. I've transferred this love over to my To Do system, as I am a great believer in productivity via what are called "lifehacks" -- which are simply smart ways of doing things so that I have more time to focus on important things like writing and locating the nearest retailer of Red Velvet Bingles. While I love the internet and use it for just about everything, I can't give up my pen and paper. Carrying my lists with me makes me feel put together. When I found the Moleskine brand of pocket notebooks, I was skeptical of their magical powers. "The legendary notebook of Hemingway, Picasso, Chatwin," they say. Oh, really. But you crack one of these leather-bound babies and you are unstoppable. They are the perfect size to carry anywhere, they handle a nice inky pen well, they have a fabulous elastic band around them for safe-keeping...everything is perfection. I get the "Squared Notebook" which is good for note-taking as well as sketching out diagrams or charts. A good half of my Moleskine is used for my daily To Do list, but I tab it off into other sections (see those colorful little dealies in the photo) for phone numbers, song lines that come to me in the grocery store, what have you. Moleskines are quite popular and there's even a Moleskinerie blog dedicated to their uses. It's lovely to see how people implement such a simple thing in so many ways. Just a tool of the trade...