REDUCE
I've found that clutter often keeps me from finding stuff when I need it, and that slowly working on organizing my mess can really help. If you have a file cabinet, you probably have multiple files that say the same thing-why not shove both into one and put a fresh label on the file with a title of something that could really use filing? If a file is too huge, perhaps you need to find further ways to organize those contents-Songs About Women could become Songs About Women/Love and Songs About Women/Observations or something like that. That way, next time you go looking for that one song about Mom, you won't have to wade through twenty love songs to find it-better yet, give Mom her own file. You probably find you could get rid of some of the scraps and organize them by gluing or pasting them onto a single page, making them take up less space, have less chance of getting mangled or lost, and now organized somehow. I have my scraps organized into lyric fragments, titles, doublets, riffs, rhythms and so forth, so I can find them when I need them. When I run across a new one in my purse, I try to file it as quickly as possible in the correct "home" so I can find it when I run across the perfect time to put it into use.
REUSE
Sometimes a good riff is a bad thing to waste. If you know you really need something nice in a song, and have a nice riff you can play well, try just learning it in a different key, mode or rhythm, and use it anyway. You may find that it fits there really well, but it also might drive you to think of something better down the line-you just needed something for reference just then to keep the song moving. Never think of any song as being sacred, and that you can't use bits in another of your compositions-even if you used that bit on a "song for hire," you can usually just change it enough so that it isn't an obvious copy and it will be legally just fine. Do make sure you make some serious changes, though, if for no other reason than to keep yourself in the habit of doing so-if you practice ethics on a regular basis, chances are you won't accidentally make a slip up later on. Even if it is your own work, it is always best to change it a little, just so you don't get accused of having music that all sounds the same. Playing something backwards is an easy way to reuse some material that you've played, as is rewording a good phrase of lyrics. For that matter, don't be afraid to reuse your tapes/CDs either-if you take your old practice tapes, transfer the good bits to CD and erase them, they may have a little static, but are fine for more practices, or even to hand out to prospective band members that you think are probably flaky anyway, and helps prevent loss of potentially good material later if those old tapes break.
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