my memory is really bad. as a result, if i don’t write things down i forget them. you know, things like what to get at the store and what to do today. but also lyric ideas. so i’ve gotten really good about writing on whatever i’ve got and now i don’t lose many lyric ideas on account of forgetfulness because i write everything down.

in the same way, if i have a musical or melodic idea, and i don’t record it very quickly, it too is lost into the irretrievable reaches of my head. fortunately i am learning my lesson and i’ve gotten okay with this too.

i got an mbox a couple years ago and do most recording stuff into pro tools le. with the purchase of my mac, i am still using pro tools (and sort of wishing i had an mbox 2 insead of my plain one) but it opened up the avenue of garage band, which i am moving toward for rough mixing and recording. the program is really pretty good….it’s simple and it really seems to be pretty powerful.

so when ‘not the end’ got finished i was excited to try garage band with it because i hear a shaker in that song. the problem is, the song is in 3/4 time and, as i learned just now, garage band in its simplest form has little to no percussion loops in 3/4. so i think i’m going to buy a couple shakers and see if i can’t make my own 3/4 shaker loop. who knows how hard that will be.