In the course of our jobs we've come to find out that musicians use their phones differently than non-musicians. They're using voice memos, or voice notes, or whatever app, to record the barest bones of their next song. To us, those of us who don't play an instrument, who don't move through the world being pelted by melodies all day, it seems miraculous—first that there are so many and second how much they transform as they move from daydream to iTunes. So we're asking—just asking—singers and songwriters and producers to let us hear the often very modest beginnings of the music we love. This song, like every song, even the best ones, the ones that sound like they fell fully formed from the sky, had a modest beginning. And though it caused Natalie some pain, she let us hear the first gawky iteration of what became "Why Don't You Believe In Me."

Natalie Prass And Matt White, ‘Why Don't You Believe In Me’

We asked Lorely Rodriguez if she had any early versions of the songs on her debut full-length, and she did have one, just one, the only song where she began what she calls "the initial feels" on an
instrument other than her laptop. It's the opening track on her album, called "Everything Is You." She started on it right after she signed her recording contract, when she was living in an apartment in Brooklyn that also housed a dilapidated piano. We talked about how and why the song changed over the course of the nine months she labored over it, her love of errors and how she makes fear work for her.

Empress Of, 'Everything Is You'

Last March, in Brooklyn, Arthur Ashin was rushing. He had one week left before he was due in studio to record his next album. You and I would call the work that he was doing then songwriting. He calls it content gathering. He is not interested in romanticizing his job. He doesn't really want anybody to hear the voice memos where he put down the very first glimmers of the last song he wrote for the album, but he spoke with me anyway, because he's trying to hide less, in the spirit of his album's title, The Age of Transparency. This is the story of how "Cold Winds" was made.

Autre Ne Veut, 'Cold Winds'

India Shawn has been singer and songwriter, and now she's both. She was discovered singing in a Best Buy parking lot when she was a teenager, and landed a publishing deal through Atlanta hitmaker Polow da Don, writing for Puffy's artists and Chris Brown. But she wasn't satisfied working for other people, and she left that life behind. She enlisted her boyfriend John Key to produce for her and by the fall of 2012, she had released her debut album, called Origin. This is the story of how the first single from it, "All I Have," was made.

India Shawn, 'All I Have'

Where does "Street Level" come from? The song disappeared on a laptop lost in a drunken haze and reemerged when its writer googled himself and found a video of him spinning a demo, something he never does. Its sentiment reminds Alan Palomo of Bugsy Malone, the 1976 gangster flick in which a 13-year-old Jodie Foster stars and the guns shoot whipped cream pies.  As Alan Palomo says, "You should take the process of making music very seriously. But you should certainly not take yourself very seriously."

Neon Indian, 'Street Level'

(rough) - A Podcast By Yours Truly.

In the course of our jobs we have come to find out that musicians use their phones differently than non-musicians. They're using voice memos, or voice notes, or whatever app, to record the barest bones of their next song. To us, those of us who don't play an instrument, who don't move through the world being pelted by melodies all day, it seems miraculous first that there are so many and second how much they transform as they move from daydream to iTunes. So we're asking -- just asking -- singers and songwriters and producers to let us hear the often very modest beginnings of the music we love.

(rough)

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