Songwriting Software Express, Issue # 60

March 2008 Issue

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

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Enjoy easier songwriting and make your songs more creative and more impactful - lyrically and musically - with our best selling, easy-to-ride, workhorse program!

Hop onto Lyricist - your lyric and chord processor that continues to make it easier for you to more readily write and be creative with your songs - now in version 3.

Lyricist gives you an easy interface, supports rich text, has chord charting (guitar, piano or Nashville Numbers), key transposer, song arranger (just chords - no lyrics) - all at the click of your mouse.

Also you'll enjoy a built in spell checker, thesaurus, rhyming dictionary, media file launch, plus organize songs into album categories, export to RTF (Rich-Text) files, and even email your songs in an instant.

Lyricist is all the essential tools for writing and polishing your lyrics and creating chord lead sheets.

Check it all out by clicking here - and fall in love with our special Lyricist savings!

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Contents:

It's lyric writing month here at Songwriting Software Plus and there are a myriad of choices for the task.

Depending on your approach to lyric writing or even co-writing there is sure to be a program that can aid your process.

I primarily use Lyricist and Zillion-Kajillion Rhymes and Clichés in my own process but I'm sure as time goes by I'll be including at least some of the others noted.

Enjoy the review and take note there are some new players on the lyric loosening block.

Once again you're stuck on the second verse - or is it the title - or the opening line - or...

Bottom line is you're stuck and it's a very common situation in the lyric writing and more accurately rewriting process. So let's take a look at some various time tested programs that can loosen you out of your jam.

Brainstorming is an oft recommended techniques for starting or moving songs along and there are programs for just such a task.

Inspiration (designed for students but works for stuck songwriters too) and WritersBlocks are two top choices among various approaches to getting ideas to spring forth into your head and ultimately onto paper or your computer screen.

Once you've busted open some idea streams then to further craft those ideas into song lines you're going to need some rhymes - and a few good twisted clichés won't hurt either.

Searching for a rhyme - type in your main word and with a quick mouse click you'll be presented with numerous choices.

Want to work a clichés into a new soufflé - type in the principal idea word of the cliché or idea you're trying to develop, like "rain", and all the clichés related to rain will fall into the list.

Need a place to put all these new song snippets or a place to start and complete the entire process than take a look at the top lyric workshop kits.

Lyricist makes a great home program for your songwriting and includes extensive chord support.

Lyricist principal strengths are in aiding the lyric creation process and in making accompanying lead sheets (chord based).

Lyricist offers over 11,000 rhymes and a useful thesaurus along with it's chord wizard set up that allows chord graphing for guitar along with the Nashville Number system and is readily usable for keyboards too.

MasterWriter has the most extensive rhyming dictionary (100,000+) along with rhymed phrases, the Roget's thesaurus, an alliteration dictionary and provides cultural references including clichés and topical buzz phrases. Also it includes the American Heritage Dictionary.

MasterWriter also has a recorder for scratch melodies or musical ideas and a large library of preprogrammed grooves in various styles of writing. It does not have lead sheet creation support though like Lyricist.

A lot of writers have established Lyricist as their main lyric and lead sheet writing software and have MasterWriter as well as a supplemental lyric writing tool.

LyricPro has many of the same basic features of Lyricist and includes items to help with everything from structuring your song from a proper craft perspective to keeping track of the business side of your songwriting.

All these programs have strengths that may suit your needs in of themselves or certainly they can all be used together with just the elements of each that you need.

Can't get your favorite co-writer on the phone at 3 AM - then how 'bout a virtual co-writer?

With a virtual co-writing program like ParaMind you can simply write in a draft line that you're tying to flesh out and the program then rewrites it several times - making only slight changes each time with different adjectives, etc..

Next you just quickly scan the new lines and see if anything grabs you to get your line the meat and bones it needs to shine at it's best.

At the extreme end of this idea is Ray Kuzweil's Cybernetic Poet. It can actually write a song for you practically from scratch. It was designed for poetry writers but works for songs too.

If your aim is to write a play with a song or two included or a full-on musical or opera then you'll be aided by software that can help you with the "book" portion (also called the libretto) of your work.

Final Draft, probably the most popular play/screenwriting/and musical writer has many formats for different types of stage or screen productions and has a template for in the “Broadway Musical” form.

For more on writing musicals in general check out our article on the topic by musical theatre contributing site expert Adryan Russ by clicking here.

And for a good website that's all about writing musicals check out MusicalWriters.com.

If you're still wanting for more lyric writing programs then check out more downloads and shareware from the Hitsquad Musician Network.