In music, as in life, hitting the wrong note may wreak havoc to even the most artful performance. On the opposite, the right combination of notes can conjure something beautiful and unexpected.
Let’s start from where we left in the last post, talking about Evernote as a viable back-office for our life and work.
Evernote is an application for taking notes: this sounds as obvious as it does sound generic. What does it mean to “take a note” in your daily life, using pencil and paper? It can be anything from jotting down a quick telephone number, listing the items to buy in the marketplace (you’ll mark them off as you put them in your bag), writing the minutes of a two-hour physics lesson (with graphs and formulas), sketching a map or a drawing. Getting fancy with scissors and glue, you can also attach a piece of paper to your sheet, in combination with all of the above. Evernote allows for this sort of notes and expands the list of possibilities with what you would expect in the Digital Age. You can add audio or video content, rich text editor, any document as an attachment (works especially well with pdf, Word or Excel because of search possibilities, we’ll see in further posts), checkboxes, even reminders with a timed alarm.
Before we went further, let me assume that you can install Evernote on your device of choice and save simple notes. If needed, please refer to the official website (https://evernote.com/) for instructions. Better, you may wish to buy the fantastic ebook “Evernote Essentials: The Definitive Guide for New Evernote Users” by Brett Kelly to start off with the right foot. You can get it at online (https://brettkelly.org/evernote-essentials/), and it is by far the best guide on the topic. Now at 12.99 USD, 100% money-back guarantee for 30 days. Moreover, Brett will send you every update of the book (4th version as of today) FOREVER FOR FREE! That is a deal you just cannot miss (I have no affiliation of any sort, in case you are wondering). Remember also that this blog is not intended to be an Evernote course, so I’ll be skipping many less important topics that are detailed in the book.
Let’s take a look at a real life note, just to get the general feel. It is work-in-progress for a song my band is composing:
As you see, there is a title on top, some bold text, and audio clip (recorded directly within Evernote app), a checklist with an item ticked off and an image that proves that tick. There are also two small labels, slightly above the tools bar: Music and ToDevelop. They are called “tags” and, for the moment, look at theme as some meta-words used to describe the content.
Now I have an assignment for you! Please do the following:
- Install Evernote on PC, on mobile, it doesn’t matter, although I strongly advise to have it on any device you own. I go to the extent of installing it every morning on my PC at work since it is wiped off every night.
- Write a new note. Nothing overly complicated, just some text. Be sure to insert some word that you will remember later.
- Write another note, with a different particular word.
- Go on, trying something new every time. Checklists, bullets, different text, images, links, audio, drag-and-drop pdf inside, always put a specific word (for example, it can be the type of content: “pdf”, “audio”).
- Feel amazed about the potential of the instrument.
- Fell confused about how to retrieve the content you just put in!
- Wait for the next post, and remember to sign in for the newsletter!
Until next time, take care!
P.s.: a friend of many reported that he found Evernote a little too intrusive, with a barrage of pop-ups asking to use it for documents, photographs and everything else as well. If you get the same feeling, please let me know, I can try to contact Evernote assistance and get clarifications.
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