Check out this great interview with singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bird on QTV!
“I at some point had to extract myself, my identity from the violin.”
I can relate to that. I can’t speak for Bird about his need to escape the violin—but there are times when I feel constrained by all my ingrained habits and routines on the guitar, and at those times it can feel really, really good to sit in front of the piano and feel all my paradigms shift. When you’re behind a different instrument, your relationship to the whole world changes.
Here’s what I found most intriguing in this interview: Andrew Bird doesn’t write anything down while working on a song. The interviewer mentions that many songwriters will run for a notebook and a tape recorder the second they have a hint of an idea. Bird doesn’t bother.
“There’re so many ideas in one day that you’d be in constant mourning for the loss of ideas… the ones that are unique stick and come back.”
Bird seems to suggest that your brain has its own Greatest Hits comprised of your song ideas. Is a song memorable enough to spread far if its composer can’t remember how it goes?
I think I’ll stick with writing things down. 
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your brain has its own Greatest Hits comprised of your song ideas
I think I’ve got a bit of a unique take on that. I try to write everything down but at least twice in my life I’ve been inspired and written a piece of music only to find out much later that the same idea was sitting in my files from years before.
So I think there’s some truth in what he says.
And as I’m legally contracted to mention the Beatles, Lennon and McCartney didn’t have any tape recorders to demo songs or capture ideas till maybe ’65.
I write everything down. There are ten binders on the shelf behind me right now, and in the next room I’m probably storing about a hundred pounds of paper.
But I can’t remember the last time I picked up any of them and read anything over again, so obviously my system is broken.
I used to hold that theory, that I’d only remember it if it was good. After taping myself, I realized that I’d only remember the best material if I could count on no one interrupting me, no thought interrupting me and only if I was in that highly retentive state of mind. 99% of the time, leaving it to memory knocked the most interesting details off the edges of the melody or lyric. Even what we think are memorable songs on the radio are repeated a lot and elaborately produced to emphasize the hooks. If people can’t even remember details of an accident they see, how are we going to remember that the F goes to the A?
Recording immediately empties my mind so that there’s room for the next idea, or, even better, the next revision or following verse.
I mean, if it works for Andrew, great. But he must not have chatty kids and an always chatty mind.
Excellent points, Ruth.
Bird may not use a notebook, but I can’t fathom working without one–first, to ensure total idea capture. Second, to make a total mess, make free associations, move lines around. Third, to play with rhyme schemes, write lists of loot from rhyming dictionaries… etc.
Hm, I wish I had your habit of recording. I sometimes do, but mostly I write things down and fail to revisit them once they’re finished.