Jimmy Lem - Blister Pop Unlimited

Due to work and other commitments over the past year or so, I can’t get myself in the recording mindset.  I can’t get relaxed or fertile enough with a nice span of free time ahead of me to get involved in any project at all.  Yet, the creative stuff still oozes out.

I should pause here to mention that my projects include not only music but photography, painting, electronics, circuit-bending, sculpting, drawing, web design, coding, my IT day job, hacking anything…even just pure sound…and computer and analog edits slash mixdowns slash remixes of all of these things and sharing these works online…and absorbing new influences and learning new things.

So what I can do now here today is share some of my way, my workflow – the software that I have been using to capture my creative oozings and ideas with the hope that these can be worked out (or simply released “as is”) later, snippets of lyrics, written chord progressions and concepts – even new band names & just pure stream-of-consciousness BS and not-so-BS outpouring and sketches – things that might lead to quick guitar demos, poems or something visual.

Overall, I like to have nice reliable ways to make these things “talk” to each other so of the following have exporting or connecting features.   I also appreciate a bare-bones design – no ads, no “likes”, no social This can be too distracting for me

750 Words – http://750wordscom – kinda based on “The Artist’s Way” without all the spiritual hoo-hah, this site allows you all day to write roughly three pages by the end of the day I can’t keep up with the daily routine but I did get a lot out of me – creative and other conflicts – when I did use it for roughly a month

Draft – http://draftincom – a nice version controlled unassuming notepad with some intelligent editing and versioning features – I’m writing on this right now

Pocket – http://getpocketcom – you can save bookmarked websites this way – sometimes I will see something inspirational that I will want to try or read later.  I can find inspiration from random sites much the same way that I used to walk around public libraries looking for a phrase or photo to remember and set me off to go back on my own and write about.  I usually don’t/can’t dig too deep into my influences – watching or reading something for a short time will usually cause my mind to drift into something I can then do with my own hands because I never really stop sythesizing how art makes me feel.  As a musician, I have not placed much value in “cover songs” – having learned almost none myself but I am also not fooling myself Everything creative is inspired by something as far as I am concerned

Google Drive – http://drivegooglecom – meshes nicely with Gmail and other Google things and Android and Windows. I tend to use this as a place to create new blank docs or spreadsheets of anything from random sentences to photos to lyrics to folders of more full fledged projects where all of these things are together.  When I folder starts to get full, I try to either get working on it or split it into different things.  I’m free to do anything I want here without investing too much time until the idea is at least something I want to try.  As it is, I’m very open to finishing almost anything just to see how it comes out – I try to keep all my old prejudices and rules at the door and just let it flow.

If This Then That – IFTTT – http://iftttcom – a great way to make  social media talk to each other (for instance I use this to broadcast photos I upload to Flickr over to a Facebook page, my Twitter feed (which in turn feeds my personal FB wall), my WordPress blog, my Tumblr) Caledars can be synced. Also, you can do some cool things like watch a weather feed and have it message your phone every morning when you are off to work.  It’s a simple, graceful little site that makes something that should be more complicated not so much – sure, some social media allows for connections to all social media but this bridges what you can do there, sometimes gives you a nicer looking choice.

Do It – http://doit.im – the heart of my internal scheduling system – the thing that tells me when to read another chapter of Pynchon, wash the bathroom floor, import another cassette into the computer, take my meds, get on the exercise bike and record a little bit of music every once in a while.