Songwriting And Music Software
Bits And Bytes Blog

Mar 7, 2010, Begin learning guitar with these basic tips, notation and strumming ideas.

Start learning guitar with these essential tips and suggested tools along with a basic description of essential notation, hand positioning and strumming ideas.

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Jan 23, 2010, Enlist Your Fans To Help Fund Your Songwriting

The innovative artist oriented company ArtistShare has now developed a service focused on songwriters called ArtistShare for Songwriters. It is based on their fan-funded model for making music which has been working for six years and has even resulted in several Grammy nominations and awards.

In exchange for supporting your songwriting process ArtistShare allows your fans to closely follow you as you take a song from concept to completed recording. The idea is to give you an appreciative and strong relationship with your fans and let them in on some of your songwriting world.

Here is how it works. You choose to write a new song or record a song, and share the creative experience with fans through audio files, videos, and blogs. To start - you set up your project on ArtistShare for Songwriters' website and then use their software to reach out to your fans directly from your own website and through social networking sites like FaceBook and MySpace.

In turn, your fans "buy in" at different levels and depending on what level that is, they share more or less of the creation process through your periodic updates. Depending on what level the fans buy in at, they may be eligible for limited edition recordings, possible access to recording sessions, and sometimes even producer credit listing on the final CD.

When the recording project is complete, your fans are given the first chance to download it, and the proceeds are paid out to you, minus a 15% commission.

ArtistShare has been around since 2003, letting fans show their appreciation for their favorite musicians by actually funding the projects the artist is working on.

And hey, even if you're just starting out you've got at least some friends and family as your initial fans, right? At least one? :-) That's all you need.

Overall a pretty simple and pretty cool way to financially support and share your muse I thought.

Check it out at the link below.

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Apr 28, 2009, Can You Run Digital Performer 6 or Logic Studio On The New Mac mini?

In a word, yes. However, it depends on how much you want to do recording-wise as to what kind of performance you'll get.

In other words, if you're the typical songwriter who is going to do a basic demo - bass, guitar and or keyboard, drums and vocals you'll do just fine. If however you want to do a lot - like let's say 87 tracks of which several are audio tracks (recordings of live instruments or vocals) then the result might suffer.

In any event bear in mind you're going to need an external audio interface fire-wired and or usb-ed into the Mac mini to process your sounds effectively and efficiently so you have to figure that in to your set up if you're going to go with a Mac mini or even an iMac for that matter.

Click here to see a blog discussion from mid last year that goes over several choices for audio interfaces you could consider - courtesy of the Logic Studio Blog - as worked into a Mac mini.

Also, bear in mind that there are two Mac mini models, both of which are 2.0 GHz but differ in RAM - 1G vs. 2G and 120GB vs. 320 GB hard drives at $599(US) and $799(US) respectively - with the ability of either to go to 4GBs of RAM. You'll get by with the basic set up but should expect better performance with more RAM and you can store a lot more of your songs of course with the 320GB hard drive.

If you're going bare-bones budget note that Digital Performer 6 for example will work with the Mac mini basic configuration as DP6's mininmum specs are a 1 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM and OSX 10.4.7.

There can be many more angles to this, especially if you tend or want to do more sophisticated recording - so to see more sides to this issue I suggest checking out a couple of threads on this subject by clicking here to Apple's discussion blog and clicking here to macjams.com's forum discussion on the topic.

Click the link below to see the two new Mac minis side by side.

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Feb 27, 2009, Virtual Co-writer ParaMind Now Runs On Vista - And Macs Too

I have gotten a few questions lately about the virtual co-writer program ParaMind and whether or not it runs on Vista. And as noted in the headline - the answer is yes.

The Windows version of ParaMind runs on Windows in general - including XP and Vista.

Mas users of course would want the Mac version and each choice is clearly marked on the ParaMind page.

Click the link below for more on ParaMind and Windows (Vista too) and Mac versions.

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Feb 19, 2009, Psystar Mac Clone Maker Goes To Court With Apple November 9, 2009 As German Mac Clone Maker Jumps Into The Ring

Well, we probably will not know the outcome of the Mac clone maker Psystar's fate perhaps until November 9, 2009 at the earliest unless a settlement is reached beforehand.

(See the previous post on Psystar's production of a Mac clone that is much cheaper than Mac's own line of computers.)

Psystar did lose out on its bid to sue Apple with an anti-trust claim last November but the judge has ruled that Psystar can proceed with a claim against Apple based on copyright grounds.

As it stands now little may change until each party meets again in court in November.

And to add another twist to this ongoing saga - a German company has now jumped in with an effort to make and market Mac Clones.

Stay tuned.

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Jul 19, 2008, Free Video - Dramatically Improve Your Songwriting

Dramatically improve your songwriting in seven days with this simple yet powerful technique developed by a leading researcher in creativity.

Get all the details in this 18 minute clip.

Check it out - click the link below.

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Jul 19, 2008, Newsletter To Be Back Soon

Sorry if you've missed the last couple of issues of our newsletter. Due to technical difficulties the mailings have been curtailed - but all should be up and running again soon - fingers crossed.

Thanks.

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Apr 10, 2008, Lyricist Now Works On Vista

Our number one selling lyric and lead sheet writing program Lyricist now works on the new Microsoft operating system Vista.

All new Microsoft based PCs now ship with Vista and of course currently in use PCs can be upgraded to Vista.

One cautionary note though; if you're considering buying a new computer and or upgrading check with your software vendors about whether all the programs you use will work in the Vista environment.

For a look at the Lyricist Vista instructional click on the link below.

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Nov 8, 2007, Acoustica's Mixcraft Compared To Garage Band

More kudos for the Window's based Acoustica's Mixcraft music recording software - it was recently featured on the Windows to Apples blog as, in short, having the look, feel and much of the functionality of GarageBand. See more of the write up in the following quote.

"The primary application that I would find difficult to do without is GarageBand. Much to my relief, I have recently discovered an excellent Windows program with the look, feel and much of the functionality of GarageBand - it's Mixcraft.

Mixcraft, produced by Acoustica, ships with an impressive library of sounds, effects, loops as well as the ability to import and play my favorite import GarageBand AIF files.

The user interface and program design make it easy to transition from GarageBand. I am impressed.

Microsoft claims it is on an a mission to acquire technologies and companies. If they have not begun development of a competitor for GarageBand perhaps they should take a peek at Mixcraft.

Buy and bundle Mixcraft with Vista and throw in a dozen or so impressive effects and transitions to Windows Movie Maker."

Check out more about music recording software choices and further reference to Mixcraft on our Music Recording Software page linked below.

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Jul 16, 2007, Band-in-a-Box 2007 Upgrade Now Here - It's So Big It's Been Renamed Band-in-a-Box 2007.5

Numerous upgrades have been made to the most recent version of Band-in-a-Box, the chord based program great for songwriters.

If you're not familiar, this program is great in creating full band arrangements from just the entering of the chords to your song - you simply just pick the style and it creates essentially a demo arrangement for you - just add your vocal.

To review all the main and new features I advise simply clicking to PG Music's main page (see link) and if you can take the time to watch the one hour demonstration video that walks you through the nuts and bolts of the program's primary features.

The biggest enhancement to the program is definitely the Real Drums feature. It utilizes actual recordings of pro players in all the styles of Band-in-a-Box and it's tempo sensitive too - to the tempo you set initially or may change it too - as you edit and fine-tune your song.

The Real Drums sound very impressive to my ears and I was taken right away on a quick listen, just through my laptop, from their online demo video.

You can elaborate on a Band-in-a-Box arrangement too by simply dumping the tracks into its sister sequencing program Power Tracks or your own sequencer.

Get all the nitty gritty details by clicking on the link.

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