Songwriting Software Express, Issue # 32 - Home Studio

September, 2005 Issue

To help your songwriting with a focus on the benefits of innovative songwriting software, tools, resources and programs for your songwriting craft and career.

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First up: Editor's Note from the laptop of Robert Curtis,
your songwriter in residence at Songwriting Software Plus.

1. Some Basic Bones For Your Big Dreams Small Space Studio
2. One Minute To Better Songwriting With Evyn Charles
3. This Month's Notable Quote
4. Songwriting Software Plus Software Superstars

Today's issue delves into a common challenge for many songwriters - the need to set up a "recording studio" and often in a situation where you need to budget your money and the space you'll set your studio up in.

And interestingly although it used to be a compromise to go "small" now many small home-based, even bedroom closet, studios are cranking out great sounding demos, even full fledged cds, from big dreamed songwriters :-)

The main article of this month's edition will detail some of the issues and items to consider as you set up or develop your songwriter studio. As for the dream side of the equation check out the Oprah Winfrey endorsed Marcia Weider dream coaching program.

Marcia, known as America's Dream Coach, has just released 3 new ebooks on getting to your dreams.

Marcia makes it easier than ever to identify and take action on your dreams, while overcoming any obstacles that have been holding you back.

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In this issue we'll cover the basics for home studio set ups that are computer based where all the ingredients can add up to less than $1000 US in addition to your computer.

We'll hit on five main topics that will address, at least in a basic way, the componetry indicated for each of the main functions you'd need to cover to get a reasonably decent studio set up - those being the furniture needed for your equipment and seating for you, the computer hardware, the computer software, a microphone and speakers.

First of all you need a space to set up your gear and these days with a computer based system it can be most anywhere from your bedroom, a spare closet, an extra room in your house or if you're lucky you've got a freestanding building like a garage or other type of building that you can dedicate to your writing and recording.

However, if you choose an external building like a garage you have to more closely consider what if any climate control your situation has as computer equipment tends to prefer a cool and dry environment to operate optimally.

Once you've plotted out a space that works best for you you'll need something to put your computer and peripheral equipment on.

A lot of the prefabricated computer workstations work great for this or you can get more specifically designed equipment like the Creation Station's medium sized unit, pictured, that is suited for typical recording equipment and computers and the desk surface height is set for the average midi type piano based keyboard for ease of use.

The Creation Station is widely available and can be found online and from pretty much any major music equipment store like GuitarCenter or SamAsh for about $200 US.

Finish that out with a good supporting chair and you're almost all set to write and record. Make sure the chair you pick has height adjustment so you more readily and comfortably adapt to the height of your midi keyboard or to microphone placement if you're recording live guitar.

Once you're set with some sort of workstation you're now ready to set up your computer. Desktop systems are the best and their cabinetry continues to get more compact.

Laptops can work but you're typically going to have to spend a lot more to get close to what a desktop system will offer you for far less money. This applies to to PCs and Macs.

Addressing laptops for a moment - in my own situation using a Dell Inspiron 5100 with 1 GB of RAM and a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 processor I've had to employ an external audio card, the Tascam US-122 to process sound efficiently - a very typical scenario for most PC laptops.

Overall it works great but to playback midi with an audio file of a vocal for example without a lot of distortion or out and out crashing of the program I have to convert all the midi files to wav files even as I'm working on the song.

I like and use the laptop because it gives me the freedom to work in many different locations but typically I have to use my Gateway desktop to construct songs with midi so I can get through the writing process much more quickly (read minus a lot of crashes).

Concerning a Mac laptop similar problems can arise and the best laptop Apple has only has a G4 processor and the next time you see an upgrade to that may be a year from now as they're switching over to Intel chips (smart move) but that will take a year or so before they're in to a new laptop lineup.

If you have a G4 PowerBook and have to or plan to stay with that only then consider the Tascam US-122 to process your sounds. It works for Windows and Macs and hooks up easily via a USB port. You should find that a nice improvement.

By the way you can hook up the Tascam US-122 to your desktop system as well for better sound processing and go back an forth between that and your laptop if you have both.

Overall the point here is that if you have to make a choice then desktops will give you a lot more and are much more easily and cheaply upgraded if need be. So for a home studio a desktop system, like an Apple Mac G5 or a current PC model with a good sound card internally like the EMU 0404 (pictured below) are smart choices.

For lyric writing get your money's worth in Cadillac performance for less than $50 US with Lyricist.

Lyricist is a great core program for lyric construction with a thesaurus and rhyming dictionary built in and offers you a very intuitive system of creating lead sheets (chord based) for your songs.

For creating music if you can only come up with a chord progression and stop there then PG Music's Band-In-A-Box (less than $100 US) can create a whole band arrangement in any number of styles to arrange your song.

If you're more musically savvy then use a sequencing program to create a groove with their built in drum kits, record you keyboard and or guitar and vocals and you're set with a suitable demo.

Going more mainstream and more expensive (though base programs are less expensive and often well fortified for song demos) you're looking at, for Windows programs, higher-end versions of Cubase and Cakewalk and for Macs you're typically looking at programs like Logic and Cubase again and Digital Performer.

As this discussion is for the space challenged consider getting a headset microphone. This allows you to avoid having a mic stand in the way and trying to constantly adjust the boom into holding the mic at just the right height plus you don't have to go to the expense of getting a decent microphone stand.

These days you can get incredible sound quality for less. A headset microphone makes moving around easy and the mic is positioned and ready whenever you need to do your next vocal take.

The AKG C 420 mic, pictured, has condenser functionality and even wireless capability. You can even set it on your workstation surface and record a live guitar or other instrument. Just adjust its flexible boom outward.

You can get this microphone for under $200 online and at major music stores like SamAsh or GuitarCenter.

Now to really save on space, have complete portability and minimize bother to your neighbors simply get a nice set of headphones.

Check out the AKG K101 headphones, pictured, for purchase or as a good model from which to compare other models.

They're light weight but strongly featured and have high user satisfaction. They'll be more comfortable too over the earpieces of your headset microphone :-)

Well I hope this gives you a good headphone start on beginning or developing your home songwriter studio.

The groove is what determines if you're going to relax or even contemplate to a song or get up and dance.

Many songwriters focus primarily only on the lyric and chords and they're certainly very important and even crucial but if you don't have an appropriate and supportive groove for your song its impact will be lacking.

For a more in-depth and timely look at groove that you'll be able to hear and feel check out Jai Josefs' new audio cd on groove, "Getting Into The Groove", and learn how groove can impact your songwriting. Click here to Jai Josefs' site for more information on this.

Evyn Charles is a singer-songwriter and musician in Los Angeles and graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music. He regularly performs on his own and he's played stints from Club Med to a current Orville Redenbacher popcorn commercial as well as with numerous classic touring acts.

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
-- Darrell Royal, in James A. Michener, Sports in America

Lyricist - the premiere indispensable and affordable lyric and lead sheet music writing program.

MasterWriter - the most comprehensive program for writing lyrics with a recorder for melodies and preprogrammed grooves.

Used by hit songwriters Gwen Stefani, Rob Thomas, Jimmy Webb, Kenny Loggins, Trent Reznor, Clint Black, Jeffrey Steele, and many more. Windows and Mac compatible.

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