What instrument do you use generally when composing?

[Capo3tanya]

The ibuprofin bottle in my purse was making this interesting perfectly timed rhythm as i walked from my car into the store yesterday.  Made a song out of it in my head. 

[MikeRobinson]

When a song drifts through my head I grab for my iPhone and punch the "Voice Memos" app.  I hum or sing the song as clearly as I can, and speak whatever notes occur to me, before the inspiration vanishes.  I've accumulated quite a collection of those things, and I'm gradually trying to work through them.  In every case I remember nothing about the original inspiration.

[Capo3tanya]

I wish I had done that!  I always think I'm going to remember things lol.  Ibuprofin bottle song is gone darn.

[geographyhorse]

I have an 88 key Korg digital piano. Whether or not I even use the instrument in the song, it's written there first. 

[DaveKell]

I have a professional brass jaw harp given to me R.B. Lindsay who was Mickey Newbury's friend and harmonica player. He showed me breathing exercises to do with it to help with singing of all things. I'm getting adept enough with it to get melody ideas for lyrics I write which are then applied to melody on guitar. It's not a usual step in the process but has helped a few times with eliminating unworkable syllable counts. R. B. sold these harps for $15 apiece until somebody stole his ornate gypsy artist decorated case holding about a hundred of them out of his truck.

[songbird52]

I need a guitar in order to write songs. I spent 10 years learning to play banjo, and stopped playing guitar during that time. I didn't write as many songs then as I normally would. Then last winter I started playing guitar again, and now I write songs all the time.

 

I also play ukulele, but I can't write songs while playing that. Don't know why. It has to be guitar.

[MikeRobinson]

There are only a very few things that my iPhone-recorder has taught me:

• Keep it by your bed, and try not to wake your wife up when you hum into it.  (Oops... she knows.  Of course she does.)
• When you subsequently try to use that voice-recording to create a new song, "your work is only just beginning."  (Unfortunately, the process of creating a song from an inspiration ... is work.)
• ... expect to find that this "new song" actually draws from several voice-recordings, sometimes far-distant.
• ... but if you instead went back to sleep, certain that you would still remember that song in the morning ... heh:  "you snooze, you lose!"

Edited October 8, 2018 by MikeRobinson

[nenopro]

I use my grandfather's piano Lauberger and gloss, pretty old. From 1875. He was composer too.

[geographyhorse]

Whether or not I even use the instrument in my final mix. Almost all of my songs are composed on a digital piano. 

[Fimus Tauri]

My computer

 

Exclusively