I have always, always loved music. Listening to music has always worked wonders for my unpredictable brain. It’s incredibly soothing. I enjoy music across most genres for a myriad of reasons. (Fun fact: when I’m manic, nothing brings me down and back to myself like putting on headphones and listening to heavy metal music. It’s the only thing that can keep up with the frenetic pace of ManicBrain.) But I also really love making music, and that’s becoming more of a focus in my life again. I’m really excited about a lot of what I’m writing, and I feel more of an urge to share it with the world instead of just playing for myself.

This week I’ve been wrestling with the fact that I am always wanting to learn new instruments, but that I need to be saving money and working with what I have, at least for this year, as I’ve got some big expenses coming up in the fall. Contentment is something I struggle with, along with patience and delayed gratification, but it’s something I need to learn.  So, I’m thinking I will need to focus on writing more than ever, and on expanding the skills that I have on the instruments that I already know how to play, so that I can do more interesting things with the music I write.

Last week I read this article about Apple’s new Music Memos app for the iPhone, and over the weekend I got a chance to play around with it. It is so cool and I’m super stoked about it – I’ve basically been telling all the musicians I know that they should try it.

I was pretty pleased with the song I wrote for my songwriting class last week, so I recorded it and stuck it up on my SoundCloud page. The guitar was recorded in Music Memos, where I also added the automatic drum and bass tracks. Then I exported it to GarageBand (also on my phone) and recorded vocals over it all. I’m really pleased with how it turned out – this is the closest I’ve ever come to hearing how one of my songs would sound if I played with a band, and it’s making me extra excited about making more music.