The Portable Recorder Writing Setup

Here’s a fun little portable writing setup, battery powered, that lets you write music from anywhere.

Write from anywhere with this portable writing setup

In this set of gear, we’ve got a small digital 6 or 8 track recorder, paired with a Sennheiser e935 microphone bundle that includes a mic stand and cable. Under $500 for everything at the time of this writing-quite affordable for many people!

More affordable home songwriting gear options can be found in this series right here.

Pros & Cons of the Portable Recorder Setup

Pros

1. Great for the songwriter who wants a relatively cheap and portable setup, or who doesn’t like writing music on a computer.

2. Great for jotting down and layering up musical ideas quickly. You could also use a voice memo app, but those typically don’t let you layer ideas as easily.

3. Portable & battery powered: write from anywhere.

4. Limitations inspire creativity!

5. Quite affordable for many people.

   Cons

1. Difficult to get professional results on this type of equipment. Maybe that’s ok, if you’re just working on a simple demo.

2. Might not be flexible enough to do what you want it to do all of the time.

3. Best for writing demos and layering musical ideas quickly, as a notepad. Could be limiting, outside of that context.

4. While this is a great place to get started, it’s easy to outgrow this gear quickly.