If you haven’t already heard of Evernote, then you need to check it out right away. It’s essentially a cloud-based “notebook” app similar in ways to Google Docs or Dropbox. Probably the best summarization of it would be like a filing cabinet containing anything you want to remember that you can take anywhere. Meant mostly as a text based note app, you can also save audio and picture note, as well as saving files within your notes. You can access your notes from pretty much anywhere: the website, Mac, PC, iPhone, Android, etc…. Further more, you can save your notes into various Notebooks to organize them as well as add tags to them. The basic account is free and allows for 60MB/month upload, but for $5 a month you can upgrade to Premium which increases your upload limit and adds a few more features.
Tracking Expenses
I’ve already mentioned this in my article “Being A Financially Responsible Band/Artist.” You can use Evernote to track your expenses in plain text, a table, or more conveniently by taking a picture of each receipt. Evernote will use their servers to process the image with OCR software and return you the image with search data attached. This means you can then find specific receipts simply by searching for text within the receipt. Not only that, but you can save all your receipts into their own Notebook to find them more readily. This comes in handy during tax time.
Songwriting
Ever get an idea for some lyrics while you’re at a gig or in a place where you don’t have anything to write with? A lot of musicians would just resort to saving a note on their phone or email themselves via their phone. Instead, create a note in Evernote with the lyrics. Once the note on your phone is synced to their servers, you won’t lose the lyrics even if you lose the phone. When you get home, those lyrics will be loaded onto your computer when you open the Evernote app. Don’t have the option of typing in the lyrics? Don’t worry because you can save an audio note and simply speak the lyrics to your phone to save them.
To Do/Checklists
You get a lot of the typical features of a word processor with Evernote. You get the various text formatting options, but you also get the option of numerical, bulleted, and check lists. Have a list of items you want to make sure you grab during load out at a gig? Create a checklist in a note, and then simply check off each item as you grab it. Have a list of things you need to get done for your album release? No problem. Just make a checklist and tick each item off as you complete it.
Reference Information
Ever read an article about mixing live sound and wanted to have it with you at every gig? If it is an online article, you can it as a text note. If it’s a printed article then you can take a picture and let Evernote “scan” it in for you. With all the social networks and online storefronts available, you can create a note to track all of that login information and encrypt the text within Evernote.
Recall Equipment Setup/Settings
Ever get that great guitar sound at a gig, then while packing the amp you accidentally move some of the knobs? Have a great mix set up on your board and want to make sure you don’t lose those settings before the next gig? This is a simple trick. Just take a picture of the settings. Then you can pull it up when you need to recover those specific settings. Have a gear rider prepared that you need to send to a venue? Save it as a note and then share it to the necessary people via email, Facebook, or whatever.
Store Serial Numbers
Speaking of equipment settings, why not save your equipment and software serial numbers this way? Should your trailer get broken into, this would make it trivial to pull up all the information you need to provide the police. You can also save in the date of purchase, purchase price, and such for tax purposes.
Keep Important Documents
This encompasses the tips of storing receipts, riders, and other documents. Keep your booking contract saved in Evernote, and you can quickly email it to a venue right after they call you about booking. Save a small promo kit and have it ready to email out. Really any document you need to save is great for putting into Evernote so you can access it when you need it.