Can you make an entire song using just one riff?
Writing songs truly is easy, and yes, it is possible to construct an entire song and have it sound good just using one riff.
Guitar players in particular have a really difficult time completing songs, and one of the main reasons for that is because they keep wanting to add in unnecessary crap. Since guitarists have all these notes and chords available to them, they feel they should stuff in ridiculous amounts of phrasing, melodies and so on. Why? Because of the thought "that's what people want to hear", when in fact the exact opposite is true.
In the guitar player's mind, simple = amateur. Guitar guys see all these other guitarists that know every part of the fretboard and play fantastically complicated stuff, so they in turn get fooled into the belief of, "If those other guys play complicated stuff, I should too if I want to get any respect".
If it were true that playing complicated crap did "get you respect," guitar shredders would be the most-listened-to musicians, right? Well, they're not. In fact, they're at the bottom of the barrel and absolutely none of them have any songs that anyone listens to other than other guitar players. Remember how I said a while back to not play for other guitar players?
An example of a song that uses just one riff
Okay, technically, this example is one-and-a-half riffs (just barely). But the point is that the song Shut Up and Let Me Go by The Ting Tings is just one riff the whole way through. All you have here is a simple bass guitar line with accompanying guitar on top, drums, simple keyboard accompaniment and not much else.
When the song needed to separate into a different section, the riff was just changed around slightly but still essentially played the same way. It was either shortened, lengthened, stopped and started again, and so on. But it's all still the same riff.
I've given the tip before that you should try songwriting with a bass guitar, for the reason the restrictions of the 4-string bass (i.e. no soloing or other needless crap) make for a better songwriting tool. And you'll notice with Shut Up and Let Me Go, the main guitar heard more than any other is actually the bass, indicating the song was probably crafted originally on the bass guitar.
So yes, you can craft a whole song using just one riff. Take that one riff and just change it around a bit to establish verses/choruses/breaks and that's pretty much all there is to it.
Do you have to write songs this way? No, of course not. But if you've been struggling with songwriting, if you have just one riff, now you know how to take that and make an entire song out of it.
Is guitar pickup modding stupid?
Woe be to those by those who perform ill-witted guitar "upgrades".
Guitar pickup modding is something a lot of guitar players do to make a guitar "better", but ultimately results in making a guitar sound awful.
Most modders know little to nothing about how electric guitars are supposed to work
I've seen a lot of guys on the internet do mods, and very few of them end up with an instrument that sounds any better than it originally did.
A quick list of classic modder mistakes:
Installing "hot" pickups in a Strat
End result: A Strat guitar that sounds like an overpowered, over-trebly mess.
What he should have done: Used a cheap compressor.
There are many Strat players who firmly believe that "hot output" pickups are the only solution to getting good Strat tone. It isn't. "Hot" pickups make a Strat sound awful because of the nature of the skinny single-coil sound.
Now of course, the modder will try everything to get that Strat "hot". He'll try hot-output, realize it sucks, and junk it. Then he'll try a stacked single-coil, but then get frustrated because the pickup "doesn't sound like a Strat".
In the end, all he needed was a compressor. That's it. He wanted the sound to be boosted, and be able control the amount of boost. The compressor will do that. No mods required. And a lot cheaper.
Or, if you want to do it real old-school style, use a simple booster pedal. There are even tutorials on the internet that show you how to build a booster pedal yourself, due to the fact they're so easy to make and only have 1 knob on them.
Or if you want to take the really, really easy way, just buy a Blacktop HH Strat and call it a day.
Installing a preamp
End result: No appreciable difference in sound compared to a passive setup.
What he should have done: Used a properly-voiced passive pickup instead.
There are certain types of guitars where a preamp works great and others where it makes no sense at all.
In bass guitars, a preamp makes total sense. Why? Because the vast majority of the time, bass players use nothing but clean signal with little to no effects applied. In that kind of sound environment, it makes sense for a bass player to have a preamp, which allows for an on-the-instrument 2-band or 3-band EQ.
On 6-string electrics however, preamps ordinarily don't serve much of a purpose. If using it for signal boost, the distortion pedal is already doing that. If used to "clean up the signal", that suggests your existing wiring is total crap and needs rewiring. If used for frequency band adjustments, um.. ever hear of a tone knob? Yeah, that thing. Try using it. Or just use a linear taper potentiometer for the volume control to get easy-access treble cutoff with a small turn from 10 to 9.
The moment a 6-string guitar has distortion or even a light overdrive applied to the signal, the preamp at that point has become totally useless. Why? Because the dist/od effect almost completely negates any tone shaping the preamp did before reaching the amplifier.
Like I said, no appreciable difference. For "hot" output, either use a booster, a different distortion pedal or just outright use a dual coil (as in a humbucker) pickup that has high output, such as the DP100.
Where does a preamp actually make sense on a 6-string electric? Jazz and country music. Guitarists of those styles play clean, and the preamp actually does make a difference when they play, because the clean tone has to be as crisp and clean as possible. But for rock or metal, preamps are useless because the dist/od applied to the signal just destroys (in a bad way) the pre-amplified signal.
If you play rock or metal, don't pre-amplify at the guitar. Not necessary. Just get a properly-voiced, high-output dual coil pickup.
Not matching pickup output levels from neck to bridge
End result: Blaring rear (bridge) pickup that totally overpowers front (neck) pickup, making the middle and front pickup selections totally useless.
"Metal" guitar players do this a lot.
The modder installs a ridiculously hot-output pickup in the rear position, but to save money does not buy a front-voiced pickup of equal output level for the front position. This in turn makes the guitar only playable on the rear position and nowhere else.
If you've ever picked up a used guitar at the guitar store, strum a few chords with the rear pickup selected, but then when switching to middle or front the guitar "totally goes dead", that's most likely not a worn-out front pickup. Some idiot modded the guitar and put a rear pickup in it that had way too much output. Either that, or he put in a junk pickup in the front position and traded it out that way.
All you need to know here is that if you're going to install an aftermarket pickup, make sure its output level at least somewhat matches the other pickups.
For example, on certain Gibson guitars you will see the pickups listed as a 490T and a 490R. What does that mean? The T is for treble (rear/bridge position) and the R is for rhythm (front/neck position). Each pickup is voiced specifically for their respective mounting positions.
Heck, even Squier does this. The Squier Jaguar uses a Duncan Designed JG-101B (rear/bridge position) and a Duncan Designed JG-101N (front/neck position). So even they know to do it so the guitar is voiced properly.
Are you matching up your aftermarket pickup output levels properly when you mod? You should. The big guitar makers do it for a reason. And that reason is that it ends up making for a proper-sounding electric guitar.
A quick cheat sheet for proper pickup mods
These are really easy to follow.
1. Stick with one brand
Which brand? That's your preference. But stick with one, be it DiMarzio, Fender, EMG, Seymour Duncan or whatever. Just stick to one brand so you have some consistency going on.
2. Pay attention to position
Don't put a pickup meant for front/neck use in the rear/bridge position and vice versa. Pickup makers voice pickups for certain positions, and it's just not just mentioned for the heck of it. When a pickup maker states a certain model is for a certain mounted position on the guitar, they mean it.
What happens if you put a pickup voiced for a specific position in the wrong position? One of two things. It will either be a trebly mess, or "sound like mud". No, your guitar won't blow up or anything like that by mounting a pickup in the wrong spot. It'll just sound bad.
3. Pay attention to output level
Match your output levels between pickups, as noted above.
4. Shield, shield, shield
Get a roll of self-adhesive copper shielding tape. You'll need it. It doesn't matter what pickups you're using. Shielding is necessary.
If you're modding a cheap guitar, you will find little to no shielding where there's supposed to be some, so get a roll and be prepared to use it.
What happens when you don't shield? Signal noise. Does copper shielding eliminate all signal noise? No. But it can decrease a good amount of it. Better to have it than not have it.
5. Mind your string spacing, or get blades/rails and don't care
You'll notice some pickups are labeled as being "F spaced". That's Fender spacing, meaning the string spacing Fender guitars use.
If you want a pickup where you absolutely do not have to care about string spacing at all, use a pickup that has blades or rails in it.
An example of a blade pickup is a Lindy Fralin Strat set. The blades are really easy to spot because the pickup has "lines" on it. Those are the blades. Other pickup makers made similar styles.
On pickups with pole pieces, as in those circle things, the string is supposed to hover directly over the pole. If it doesn't, the string will barely be heard. Blade and rail pickups take care of this potential issue where if the string hovers anywhere over the blade/rail, it will be heard. Problem solved.
While true that blade/rail pickups don't have a "classic" look to them, they're a lot easier to deal with because string spacing is a non-issue.
Pickups described as "vintage" are usually the best kind
I'm specifically referring to new pickups where the sound they make is described as vintage and not the look, meaning not that "relic" crapola.
"Vintage" means "normal". It means a pickup that's voiced without any special or "enhanced" junk going on. It means a traditional pickup with traditional windings that in most instances has a very predictable sound to it. And yes, predictable is good.
Throughout the 2000s and still today, pickup makers have tried some seriously wacky crap with their pickup offerings, all in the name of trying to be "innovative".
An example of this ridiculousness is the Seymour Duncan "Black Winter" pickup. Everything Seymour Duncan used to describe this pickup is total marketing schlock. Words like extreme and hardcore and crushing are used, which of course makes no sense at all to describe how a pickup sounds.
In other words, it's a pickup for people who fall for marketing hype. Remember the EXTREME computer video graphics cards of the 2000s? Yeah, they're all in landfills now. Guess they weren't so EXTREME after all. Neither is the Black Winter pickup. It's a frickin' pickup and not as "dark as the winters in Scandinavia", as Seymour Duncan's web site says. And yes, that is an actual quote from their product page on it.
Conversely, the Seymour Duncan SH-1 set, which does not use all that dopey marketing crap, is a better pickup. It has a product description that actually makes sense, such as "Classic appointments include plain enamel wire, long legged bottom plate, vintage single conductor cable and no logo". YES! THANK YOU! That is useful information.
Again, "vintage" means "normal". It is an output rating that will give you more control over your sound because the output is not blaring all over the place. Mate those pickups to properly wired potentiometers in a housing that's well-shielded, and you've got yourself a guitar that sounds great for any kind of music.
Mod if you must with aftermarket pickups. But choose the right pickup(s). And don't go "extreme". You'll hate it. Stick to "vintage".
Best cheap guitars for 2015
It's 2015, and it's time to list what's best for cheap guitars for this year.
What's new?
For the 2015 year, not too much. 2015 rolls off with the reintroduction of models that ran out due to good sales in 2014. Guitar companies are rolling out what sold well last year, and that's actually a good thing because you can find guitar reviews on just about all of what's below very easily.
The list
I've got 10 of them this year, all of which receive high customer satisfaction ratings.
This list starts with the cheapest guitar that's under $200, and the rest stay well below $500 USD.
That being said, here they are.
We begin with the cheapest guitar on the list, and arguably one of the best, because this is a can't-go-wrong guitar. No vibrato system (meaning no "whammy bar"), two pickups, great weight, great look, stupidly easy to maintain, pretty much a set-it-and-forget-it guitar and ridiculously easy to string up and play. That's the Squier Affinity Telecaster. Not easy to find in stores because these sell out quick.
This guitar works for anyone, no matter the skill level. Whether you're a beginner, intermediate or a pro player, this guitar totally gets it right in every way.
Squier Vintage Modified '70s Stratocaster
I'm listing this specific Squier Strat because it already has the visual modifications that most players would do to it, that being black knobs and black pickup covers. Can these be switched out if you wanted to switch to white or off-white? Yes, of course.
This is a great Strat all around and has the better Duncan Designed pickups in it, which is a step up from the Bullet series.
The guitar needs nothing except setup (as does any guitar you would buy no matter how much you paid for it). Plug in and go.
The LP-100 is a Les Paul guitar that, as I've said before, is a Les Paul that's not missing anything. It has all the controls where they would be on a Gibson Les Paul and comes with the pick guard - which is something even several Gibson models don't offer.
This is, more or less, a "Studio" version of the Epiphone Les Paul Standard. The only thing separating it looks-wise from the Standard is the lack of binding and dots on the neck instead of trapezoid inlays.
When you want a Gibson SG in an Epiphone flavor, the G-400 is what you want. This guitar absolutely and totally gets right everything that makes an SG an SG. It has the "fast" slim taper D-shape neck, has the smaller pick guard under the pickups, has 4 knobs instead of just 2, it's the correct cherry color, has the trapezoid inlays... it has it all.
When you want a proper SG for a nice price, the G-400 is it. Nobody else makes anything that even comes close to it other than Gibson themselves.
This Agile is, without question, the most Les Paul you can get for the money. It is absolutely loaded with goodies. Too many to list here. Let's just say that if this had "Gibson" on the headstock, it would sell for about $3,000 easily. But it's way, way less than that.
Fender Modern Player Tele Plus
Yes, we have a real-deal Fender Telecaster in the under-$450 price range, and this one delivers.
It is an HSS, but you'll notice there's a little switch between the volume and tone knobs for splitting that humbucker to single. Pictures do this guitar no justice as the Honey Burst finish looks incredible in person.
If you looked at the Squier Affinity Tele and thought, "I'd like a Tele with more to it", this is your guitar. It's loaded and it has "Fender" on the headstock for bragging rights. Can't do much better than that.
Why even bother with the Epiphone LP Standard when the Agile is a better guitar that sells for less? There are only two reasons.
The first is color choices, such as Cardinal Red shown above. A Les Paul in that style of red just looks cool.
The second is resale/trade-in value. If you're interested in buying a Les Paul but may sell or trade it out later on, the Epiphone will hold more value than the Agile will, even though it's not as good as the Agile is. For some, resale value matters. And if it's a choice between Agile and Epiphone, Epiphone wins when it comes to how much someone would be willing to pay for a used one, or how much a guitar store would offer in trade value for it.
This special model from Schecter is the best value for metal players. It comes stock with an EMG 81 pickup in the bridge position and an EMG 85 in the neck position. It also has a Graph Tech TUSQ nut and cool "fire" inlay work.
The Damien Special is a crazy-good metal guitar for the money, no question about that. It's also built right, meaning it can take a beating and keep coming back for more.
Danelectro D59 Modified Hollow-Body
I'm listing this specific guitar for those out there that want something different but won't put you in the poorhouse. Danelectro delivers with the D59MOD in black. Yes, it is a hollow-body, although it doesn't look like one. And yes, that means it's lightweight and the neck won't dive on you.
This is technically a reissue of the D59. The only thing you have to be aware of is that it has a "wraparound" bridge, meaning strings are installed by going under the bridge, wrapping around the top, then back to the headstock. Yes, it's easy to figure out.
How does it sound? Jangly and twangy, kind of a Telecaster but with more treble because of the lipstick pickups.
Fun guitar all around, and easy-to-play.
Wow, what a guitar. Truly.
This particular Epiphone is built overseas, but set up in the USA before you get it. I'm amazed at the price this thing sells for, because it could easily pass as a $2,500 USD instrument. The look is totally correct, the sound is totally correct... pretty much everything on this guitar is totally correct.
The ES-339 has something else too. Sex appeal. Yes, really. Anyone that sees you playing one of these makes it look like you have money and drive a BMW. Are those reasons to buy the guitar? Not really, but it's a nice bonus! :)
The real reasons to get the ES-339 is that it has that classic semi-hollow body sound for rock, blues, jazz and country. It's also the size of a Les Paul, which to many feels better than the bigger body of the ES-335.
If there were any one guitar on this list you would be totally happy with, the ES-335 is it. Yes, it's the most expensive on the list, but still well south of $500.
Did you know the 1TB USB thumb drive exists?
A wonder of modern technology, the 1TB USB flash drive. The nerdy side of me wants one of these things...
...but I wouldn't buy it for one reason. It's insanely expensive, but that's only because it's still such a new technology at the time I write this. And it's a bit chunky at 2.8 x 1.1 x 0.8 inches. That's not physically big by any means, but for a flash drive, it's a fatty.
But here's something that will make you feel better instantly. 64GB flash drives are now insanely cheap, so if you haven't bought a USB pendrive/flash drive/thumb drive/whatever-you-want-to-call-it in a while, go ahead and get a 64GB. If you want even cheaper, get a 32GB flash drive. You can grab one for under 15 bucks now. Yes, really.
Some quick math:
A 32GB flash drive stores roughly the same amount of data as almost 7 DVD-5 discs. A 64GB flash drive holds roughly the same as 13.5 DVD-5 discs.
And 1TB is almost 213 DVD-5 discs.
Yeah.
DVD-5 is still the cheapest of the cheap, for now
Here's the 101 concerning DVD-5 discs.
When you want the cheapest possible way to store a bunch of data, you get DVD-5 discs. Purposely buy only 100-count spindles of them, and buy the one suited to your needs.
For discs intended to be used for data-only storage, you get DVD+R.
For discs intended to be used for movies to be played in a console player, you get DVD-R.
Yes, there are differences between +R and -R. I won't get into all the technical differences, but I will say this:
The entire reason you use the -R type in console players is because that's what was supported first since it is the older format. So no matter what console player you chuck a -R disc in, it will play. And by this, I mean a disc burned "movie style" with the VIDEO_TS folder. If you've ever burned DVD movies, you know what I'm talking about.
The entire reason you use +R type for data storage is because it's much better suited for it. DVD+R is multi-layer while -R is single-layer, you can mix video + data if you wanted to on +R whereas on -R you cannot, background formatting is allowed on +R, and there are other reasons.
Oh, and the best reason of all to use +R over -R for data storage: Far less chance of data corruption when reading or writing. You use -R, and you will encounter data screw-ups. Use +R, and the chance of that happening is decreased a great deal.
However - and I can't say this loudly enough - the only reason to use DVD-5 is because it's cheap and for no other reason.
If you can afford to store your stuff on flash drives, do it
USB flash drives are not the cheapest way to store data, but every year the price of flash memory keeps diving down.
What's the #1 reason to store on a flash drive? No moving parts. Anything that moves will break faster than something that doesn't. This is why traditional hard drives with spinning platters only have a reasonable life expectancy of 5 to 7 years while a USB flash drive can be used for 10 years before it starts majorly screwing up.
The only way to really kill a USB flash drive is to beat the crap out of it with constant file writes, such as running an operating system off of one. At some point, the flash drive won't allow data to be written to it anymore. You'll be able to read data, but not write.
And yes, that means if you have an older USB flash drive kicking around where you can still read data from it but can't write a thing without it corrupting like crazy, it's time to copy the data to another USB stick and chuck the old one in the trash.
The only other thing I know of that kills USB flash drives is if the contacts wear out, or the contacts become corroded just due to age.
To date, I have only had one USB stick fail on me. It was a 512MB (yes, MB and not GB) Sandisk cruzer stick. It still worked, but the thing just wouldn't hold any data no matter how many times I formatted it. I even low-level formatted it, and that didn't even work, so yeah, it was time to chuck it. The point is that it took almost 10 years for it to screw up that bad.
Having any media storage last 10 years is actually pretty damned good. Stellar, in fact. If you ever needed a reason aside from the convenience factor to use USB flash drives over DVD, well, there you go.
If you don't take notes, you will forget everything
I do something that most people don't do. I take notes.
For just about any task I have to do, if I don't jot it down as a handwritten note, I will forget it. And yes, it has to be handwritten.
Over the years, I've tried almost every electronic means of note taking. The only one I've not used is voice memos because there's really no way to organize those, so if you have a bunch recorded, you have to go through them all to find the one you're looking for, just like voice mail. And I can't stand voice mail.
When it comes to reminders, electronic notes are good for that, but it has to be in email. For example, I have a recurrent email set up that reminds me to take out the trash the day before trash day. If I didn't get that weekly email, I would forget to do it. When I get the email, I take out the trash, then delete the email out of my inbox. It works. And for those of you out there that think that's a good idea, Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, Hotmail and Gmail all have calendar functions where you can set up recurrent reminders like that. Email is the best to use because you'll get the reminder anywhere you access your account, be it desktop PC, laptop, phone or tablet.
But when it comes to traditional note taking, doing it electronically just doesn't work, and there are four reasons why.
Reason 1. Automatic noise filtering
I read tons of internet articles, see tons of internet video, go through a ton of emails, see/read/view a ton of social media, and all that turns into a big mush. I interpret that mush as noise, and naturally, my brain will filter that noise right out. It's an automatic thing my brain does, and as such, using electronic means of note taking is worthless because I will totally forget any to-do list I create on the computer.
Reason 2. Too many distractions
If I'm in the middle of doing something on the computer, such as writing an article like this one, and an email comes in where I see that tiny icon at the lower right of my screen, I'm compelled to read it. I can't just ignore it. Must... read... email... And that totally breaks my train of thought.
Sure, I could turn my email client off. But then I'll forget to launch it again and miss an important message, which has happened before.
Reason 3. Stuff typed on-screen does not commit to memory
I'm referring to the memory in my head and not computer memory.
I type out things often. And because I type so much, much of what I type turns into the same noise I mentioned above. What this means is that if I used a computer or phone or tablet for note taking, I would promptly forget the note I put in there in just minutes. And notes don't mean much if they're forgotten in mere moments after you type them in.
Reason 4. You can't cross off finished tasks on an electronic screen
Yes, I know there are certain phone apps where you can take a stylus to virtually jot down notes, and probably even a few that allows you to cross out finished tasks...
...but it's not the same as actually crossing out finished tasks for real.
When you take that pen and cross out a task you finished, that feels good. There is a finality to it that electronic screens have never been able to replicate, and never will.
Write notes, and spend the cash on good pads and pens
I'm actually very picky when it comes to what I use to take notes with, and I have my reasons.
Here are those reasons.
The paper: 70-sheet college ruled memo pad
If you're thinking this is just like any other memo pad, it's not.
The best memo pads are the kind where the spiral is on the top and not the side, because it works for both right and left-handed people, and I happen to be left-handed. But even for righties, this is still the better type of pad to use because you get maximum use of every sheet.
Don't try finding these at a local pharmacy like CVS or Walgreen's, because they don't have them. They'll have memo pads, but always with the spiral on the left side.
When you want a real-deal, honest-to-goodness, proper memo pad with a top spiral, you either have to go to an office supply store to get it, or buy it online.
If you go to an office supply store like Staples to get these proper memo pads, don't be surprised if you have to search all around the store just to find them. At the Staples I go to, they are all the way in the back and really easy to miss.
The pen: Pilot Precise V7 fine point pen
Nothing will discourage you from note taking faster than a crappy pen. The world is full of crappy pens, and it's a waste of your time to even bother with them.
Pilot Precise V7 is a genuinely good pen. There are two types of V series Pilots and two types of points. You can either get the ones with the capped tops or the retractable style, commonly known as a clicky pen. I personally prefer the capped kind because it's lighter, cheaper, and because there's no chance of "play" at the writing tip.
You'll notice there's also the Pilot Precise V5. What's the difference between the V5 and V7? The V7 is fine point, and the V5 is extra-fine point. For note taking, the V7 is the better of the two because the ink comes out slightly thicker and works better on memo pad paper.
What color of ink should you get? Black. Why? Because it's easier to read. There are pilot Pilot Precise pens in assorted color packs if you want to try that out, but for note taking, the only ink color that matters is black.
When you see the cost of the Pilot Precise pens, you may get slight sticker shock. Trust me, these pens are worth the money.
How should you take down written notes?
Some people don't know how to take notes properly, so here's a quick tutorial on it.
Rule #1: One task per line
Any task you have to do should fit on one line and only one line. If it doesn't, then you need to break it up into two tasks.
Rule #2: Date your tasks
On a to-do list, you put month/day (or day/month, whichever you prefer) and then the task. The date you place is the day you wrote it and not the day it's due. So if you have a task of "buy pens," and you wrote it on January 20, the task would be written as "1/20 buy pens".
Why write it this way? So you know how old a task is just by looking at the list.
Rule #3: Make a mark in the corner for completed pages
When a page full of tasks is completed, the easiest thing to do is draw a star or filled-in box at the top right corner so you know every single thing on that page has been completed.
Rule #4: Don't tear completed pages out immediately
The general rule here is to keep completed pages in your memo pad for a few days just in case you ask yourself, "Did I remember to do [insert thing here you had to do]?" You can reference back to completed pages for that.
And yes, this means that when you cross out completed tasks, make sure what you wrote is still readable.
Rule #5: If you have to rewrite a task, also rewrite the original date
Sometimes you may have to rewrite a task if it gets shuffled back too many pages deep. That's fine, but also rewrite the original date so you're reminded of how old the task is.
Rule #6: One pad at a time
When using a memo pad for task use, you want it all in a single pad. If you juggle around multiple pads, one will get preferential treatment over another and things won't get done. Put it all in one pad.
Rule #7: Tasks only; not goals
A goal is a major life event, such as "quit smoking." A task is a simple life event, such as "get oil change for car."
Don't put goals in a memo pad, because they will take a very long time to complete.
You will get great satisfaction out of crossing out stuff on a task list, so you should put the easy stuff there. For the more difficult stuff, use a dry-erase board, or print out the goal and tape it to the wall, or use a sticky-note, or use whatever you want. But don't use the memo pad for it, because that's simple-stuff-only territory.
You don't have a bad memory
One of the first things you'll notice by handwriting notes is how much more you remember stuff. You're remembering stuff because you actually wrote it down, and the act of physically writing something down commits what you write to memory better.
It doesn't matter how busy or not-busy your schedule is. What matters is remembering to do stuff so you get things done. So unless you have an incredible memory, which most people don't, start making handwritten lists.