Partly because this blog is still under development and partly because I work with simple tools: Pen and Paper and musical instruments such as guitar, keyboard and drums.
When it comes down to notating your own music I am a strong believer in developing your own system to notate whatever it is you are playing. I still think it is more fun to play guitar, mess about and come up with an idea, play it for a while and quickly jot it down on a piece of paper, than setting up a recording device, and getting lost in all the recordingoptions and losing your inspiration in the process of this. Hopefully you will remember the idea again when you see it written down at the piece of paper. Notating your own music will also help you to understand what you are doing better in terms of rhythm and where the division of the bars are. All very useful for when you need to explain your songs to other musicians and guitarplayers!
With regards to the system I use, I will create a specific blog explaining it in detail how it works. For lessons for beginners I will mostely create chordsequences and the fingering of those chords will be given. The fingeringsystem for those chords is not too different from standard tablature with the only difference that there will be no strings going through the chords, simply because you do not need them for this purpose! Once you can finger the chord, strum (or pick) it in any way you like, then follow my guidelines for strumming or whatever is suggested.
For Melodies and Riffs ect . follow the guideline for the counting, count while you play the idea slowly and try to get the FEEL, once you feel it, speed the idea up, as this will make the feel stronger, if you speed the idea up too much it will loose its feel. This is because musical ideas work within a particular temporange: Too slow or fast will kill the feel, and you can no longer hear what the idea is about.
Once you get used to this particular way of notation you will no longer need a taperecorder or camera. I am not suggesting for a moment that any of these devices are no good, no, they are excellent, but there are other, simpler ways of recording what you played: the use of pen and paper.
As mentioned before I will create a specific blog about the notation system, for now, go over the older blogs and read them carefully keeping in mind what I suggested about feel and counting.
Please bear in mind that most of the ideas given here are only starting points, experiment with different feel and tempos ect. as none of these ideas are finished as such. For that matter, any song in the world you know can be treated like this: Try playing some of your favourite riffs with a different feel and see what you get.
Happy experimenting
Eddie