Songwriting Software Express, Issue # 27

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

Play Music - Music Notation Software - Notation Technologies has revolutionized the music notation software market by creating Play Music…the easiest music composition software available and quite likely the most affordable.

No Music Theory knowledge needed. Just play or point and click - Play Music’s user friendly interface will easily guide you through the composition process…simply click on the instrument sounds you want and Play Music will play back your song!

Add lyrics and print out your masterpiece. Even beginners can compose music the very first time they use Play Music!

Click here for more information and to purchase Play Music.

Play Music - affordable notation software.

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

1. Would You Like A Lyric Writing Assistant?
2. One Minute To Better Songwriting With Evyn Charles (New Regular Tip Column)
3. This Month's Notable Quote
4. Songwriting Software Plus Super Savings Zone

Of all the software that sells on Songwriting Software Plus the lyric writing based programs lead the pack.

Maybe the lyric writing programs top the charts because we songwriters often have a lot to juggle in our lives and giving your brain a software boost can really help get to the nuts and bolts of your lyric easier and faster. Or maybe sometimes we just need a little extra stimulation when we're writing to grease the creative wheels.

Whatever the reasons are - today we'll take a look at some great choices at your disposal and highlight their main roles and benefits for helping you to write your lyrics with more insight, inspiration and craft.

Also, speaking of inspiration and more specifically dreaming - to offer another way to help you achieve your songwriting dreams Songwriting Software Plus has teamed up with America's dream coach Marcia Weider to make the process of getting personal support for your dreams much more easily in reach. Please click here to find out more.

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So you're set up with your computer system for songwriting and you're ready to write your next song, or to keep working the one you've been trying to finish for a few months :-), and you may be thinking that you sure could use some input on your lyric writing.

Thankfully there are some programs designed especially for songwriters to give you that helping hand.

Today's popular songwriting is loaded with soft rhymes and twisted clichés. There are programs that provide great rhyming dictionaries and more but if you're simply wanting to get a nice collection of rhymes an clichés to work into your lyrics look no further than Zillion Kajillion Rhymes And Clichés.

If you do most of your writing in a word processor you can fire up Zillion Kajillion Rhymes and Clichés right along side it and quickly scan numerous true and soft rhyme choices and get ideas from the cliché listings.

Want to see all the clichés that relate to the word day - just type that in and all the "day" clichés pop up for you to peruse.

When you want rhyme support, a thesaurus and more you're moving into the are of lyric writing software tool boxes. In this category two programs are at the forefront - namely Lyricist and MasterWriter.

For the ultimate lyric writing support with the most extensive rhyming dictionary (over 100,000) with rhymed phrases, Roget's thesaurus, the world's only alliteration dictionary, cultural references including clichés and today's buzz phrases, along with the American Heritage Dictionary there's MasterWriter.

MasterWriter is hands down the most powerful lyric writing support tool and it has numerous other features like a recorder for scratch melodies and musical ideas and an extensive library of preprogrammed grooves for various styles of writing. It does not have lead sheet creation support though.

For a solid lyric and lead sheet writing program take a look at Lyricist. Lyricist is lighter on the lyric support compared to MasterWriter but it makes a great central work horse program for song creation and offers unparalleled chord support. And there's nothing that says you can't use them both or even Zillion Kajillion along with it.

Indeed many writers have set up Lyricist as their main program and then gave it more power by getting a program like MasterWriter to work along with it - it's a great combination approach.

When you've got the start of a lyric line or one that you'd like to rewrite there are programs that can assist this process to give you new possibilities that might be better ways to say what you're trying to get across.

A unique program that helps with this task is ParaMind. It can take one line you've written and rewrite it into hundreds of different versions that you can quickly scroll through to see different options for your one line.

Imagine doing this for each line of an entire song. That might be too much on every song but it sure can help on a few lines you may want a different take on.

Another interesting program is Ray Kuzweil's Cybernetic Poet that can actually write a song for you practically from scratch. It was developed for poetry writing but works for songs too. If you're wanting to harness some artificial intelligence or just desperate for some lines give it a whirl. There's even a free trial version.

With both programs' processing - a manner of brainstorming is being done as well - that can stimulate new ideas for your song. Let's talk more about that now.

When you need inspiration to get new ideas or have an inkling of an idea but want to develop it further just fire up a brainstorming program.

There are a number of titles in this category and frankly they're seemingly underused by songwriters yet brainstorming is one of the most recommended songwriting development techniques advocated by songwriting teachers.

When you start out on a song you can create a number of images to use in your song and ideas to develop your song by using brainstorming. Brainstorming software pretty much does the work for you and often gives you a lot of images and ideas that you may have never thought of.

Check out our page on brainstorming and the most popular titles towards to bottom of that page by clicking here.

With all these assistants you should have it a lot easier writing your next hit.

In last issue's tip I referred to creating scenes in your songs just like you were writing a movie using the visual element of movies.

Creating images in your songs just like in the movies helps you to tell your story by showing it and that can make for a more impactful presentation of the idea of your song. Frankly it's why we love to go to movies - to see the story told.

Bear in mind where you place your images and how long you give them attention will imply their weight in your story. Movies can convey an image's importance as being more important when the camera hones in it for what seems like a little extra time and focus - with that lingered shot you know that image is important to the story.

In your songs the images you paint with your words have that same significance more or less depending on where they occur in the song, how long you may hold your melodic note as you sing the word of your image, whether they're in the verse or the chorus, etc...

Your imagery should build up to and support your title, your main idea of the song.

Evyn Charles is a full time independent singer-songwriter and musician in Los Angeles and a graduate of the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. In addition to regularly performing on his own he's played stints as varied as Club Med to currently being heard on the Orville Redenbacher popcorn commercial as well as playing with numerous classic touring acts.

Lyricist - the premiere indispensable and affordable lyric and lead sheet music writing program that incorporates chord charting (guitar, piano and the Nashville Number System), key transposition, word processing (formatting, spell checking, etc.), thesaurus, rhyming dictionary, media file launch, song organization, emailing of your songs capability plus more! All the essential tools of the trade for writing and polishing lyrics and preparing lead sheets of your songs.

Write lyrics masterfully with MasterWriter.

MasterWriter - the most comprehensive program for writing lyrics with a recorder for melodies and preprogrammed grooves. Easy to use as your word processor. Won Best of Show at MacWorld Expo and has received rave reviews in every major music magazine. Endorsed by ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, NSAI. Used by hit songwriters including 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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