Songwriting Software Express, Issue # 61 - Do You Write Music? Have A Band To Play It?

April 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, faster songwriting and make your songs more creative and 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!

Mac users - run Lyricist and all Windows software with Parallels Desktop for Mac.

Vista users - Lyricist now runs on Vista; click here for the Lyricist instructional pdf on Vista.

Contents:

When people ask me for resources on how to write compelling music my first reaction is to say write from your heart. But that's usually quickly followed by something more concrete that makes the heart get heard louder - some basic theory references.

Along those lines generally my best idea is to refer them to CompleteChords.com and suggest they take a good week or so to read their excellent text How Music Really Works and to be on notice to check out their coming How Songwriting Really Works. Also I highly suggest Jai Josefs' Writing Music For Hit Songs.

Once you've got a sense of expressing your emotional intent with music on your guitar or keyboard various software programs can help you note what you've written - either chords or chords and melody.

Today's article will explain how programs can help you do that and if you need to go all the way to having software produce a full band rendition of your song then you're in luck - read on to today's article below for all the details.

Writing music for most songwriters is often one of the most daunting challenges.

Today we'll set the stage with a few programs that well address most pop songwriters needs for writing music - and we'll then take a closer look at a program that bridges these efforts with fully produced music from classic to today's most popular styles.

There are a number of programs that can help in the process of writing out chords or chords and melody for you songs.

Chord based lead sheet writing is a component of our best selling Lyricist program and more elaborated lead sheet writing with chords and melody can be handled by our best selling notation program PlayMusic.

If it's simply these features that you need you can be well served by their respective capabilities.

If you need more - like a full band demo with all the fixin's from keys to guitars to drums to bass then you'll be looking for something in a different direction. Use the above programs to start the process or go it alone with our next item.

A type of program exists that is designed for chord based lead sheet writing or chords and melody writing and provides a full band arrangement with the actual played music - Band-in-a-Box.

Band-in-a-Box is great for songwriters who not only need a chord based lead sheet but also could use the option of putting in a musically written melody line if need be and also would enjoy having a full audio musical accompaniment to go with their song.

In a nut shell with Band-in-a-Box you simply write in your chord arrangement, pick a style from country to hip-hop and the program creates an entire arrangement in that style that you can then sing along to and even record your vocal onto your newly created song.

The program allows you put in a melody line as well and even your lyrics that can all be printed out.

The program also allows you the ability to print out different lead sheets for each instrument if you need to distribute lead sheets for a band to perform your song in studio and or live.

If you want to further edit your song you can transfer the tracks from Band-in-a-Box and open the file in their sequencer PowerTracks (sold separately) or in your favorite sequencer program like Cubase or a Cakewalk program in Windows or in a Mac with programs like Digital Performer or Logic.

Just a quick tip re. moving a Band-in-a-Box arrangement to your sequencer - make sure you save the Band-in-a-Box midi file as Type 1 so when you open the file in your sequencer all the tracks will split up into separate tracks for the drums, guitar, etc. If you save the file as Type 0 they all show up on one track with all the instruments combined and you can't edit each individual instrument track.

And Band-in-a-Box has programs for both PCs and Macs - plus they have great web based and live customer service support.

If you need it all for songwriting and demo purposes Band-in-a-Box may just be the music writing program that gets your songs done.