What is the best songwriting software for beginners?

[GinaMarie]

I am new to the business of songwriting, I actually write only the lyrics. What kind of software is best for me to create a complete song on my own? Thanks for any advice!
GinaMarie

[gonsoulined]

I like garage band if you have a mac, it is really simple and great if you are only using a couple of tracks, like a guitar and a vocal. I use and M-Audio M-box for my interface, it is really cheap. Not the most powerful setup by any means, but it is great for capturing a basic singer songwriter type track.

[cardell]

If you mean for lyric writing, I use: MasterWriter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RyCYAUobGE

However, for creating tracks, that's more difficult to answer...but I agree, Garage Band is decent starting point.

What equipment/instruments do you already have? e.g microphone, MIDI keyboard, computer...

Stuart

[Len911]

I'm going to say Songframe. It's $99. It comes with some free vst pianos and drums to download if you don't have any instruments. It is not a digital audio workstation. What it will do is offer tools for lyric writing, chord progressions, sections such as intro, verse, chorus, bridge...
Melodies, scales, range and scale highlight tools, some drum midi, an audio track, etc. In other words, you can write lyrics, enter chord progressions or find chords, write the melody, sing if you want, organize them into sections, write a complete song, but it will not be a finished polished song as far as final instruments. The chords will play back 1, 2, 3 or 4 beats to the measure, no arpeggios. Write songs yes, make cd's no! I think you can even print out lead and lyric sheets.

http://tanageraudioworks.com/Products/SongFrame

There are other softwares, but this one is probably the easiest and most complete without having to buy instruments and a big learning curve. You can do the same things and more with a digital audio workstation, this software just puts all the focus on the songwriting rather than the production. For lyric writing only, Masterwriter is more preferable, but if you want to add melody and chords, songframe.

[Casey H]

I'm going to say Songframe. It's $99. It comes with some free vst pianos and drums to download if you don't have any instruments. It is not a digital audio workstation. What it will do is offer tools for lyric writing, chord progressions, sections such as intro, verse, chorus, bridge...
Melodies, scales, range and scale highlight tools, some drum midi, an audio track, etc. In other words, you can write lyrics, enter chord progressions or find chords, write the melody, sing if you want, organize them into sections, write a complete song, but it will not be a finished polished song as far as final instruments. The chords will play back 1, 2, 3 or 4 beats to the measure, no arpeggios. Write songs yes, make cd's no! I think you can even print out lead and lyric sheets.

http://tanageraudioworks.com/Products/SongFrame

There are other softwares, but this one is probably the easiest and most complete without having to buy instruments and a big learning curve. You can do the same things and more with a digital audio workstation, this software just puts all the focus on the songwriting rather than the production. For lyric writing only, Masterwriter is more preferable, but if you want to add melody and chords, songframe.

That looks like a pretty cool took for $99. Even though I play guitar and use a DAW, I find re-recording my guitar tracks as I make writing changes (changing chords, inserting/deleting measures, etc) tedious. I've been looking for something that will just output drums and guitar chords measure by measure. I am one of those non-performing songwriters who makes rough demos to give producers. I'm going to download the demo and check it out.

Note to Gina, the original poster… This choice of what software to use depends a bit on whether or not you play an instrument such as guitar, have computer skills, understand chord structures, etc. How do you anticipate melody and chord writing? Tell us a little more about yourself.

Casey

[pedrocosta]

One of the best tools these days for the price is Reaper. Fantastic DAW! http://reaper.fm/
I use Ableton Live but it costs a good chunk of change for someone just getting started.

[jdhogg]

software does not create songs

All you need is a guitar/piano, a few songbooks to see how its done and dictaphone or digital recorder to get your ideas down.

When you have some rough sketches then get the software.

[Casey H]

We don't even know if Gina, the original poster, plays an instrument. There are songwriters (and some darn good ones!) who don't play one or can barely play one. They compose melodies in their head or use software to generate chords and melodies.

If someone doesn't play an instrument, I wouldn't recommend any DAW as the "beginner" starting point.

Need more info.

Stop by and tell us more, please Gina.

Casey

[Len911]

software does not create songs

All you need is a guitar/piano, a few songbooks to see how its done and dictaphone or digital recorder to get your ideas down.

When you have some rough sketches then get the software.

That is true, software doesn't create songs. Songframe bills itself as a pre-daw software, which is very accurate. It comes (you have to download and register) a couple of free virtual instruments 4front pianos,bass, ez drummer lite. It has a plethora of chord progressions that can be searched by vintage, genre, section, number of measures, etc., you just drag the chords. It also allows substitution and offers choices based on chord before and after, or a color chart to audition chords according to feel or tension. So the songbook portion is the abundant chord progressions contained. You drag the sections and order into the active box, eg. intro, verse, chorus, bridge, ending... and choose how many measures you want of each section, it has a metronome, tempo settings, time sig etc. The dictaphone or digital recorder section is the one audio track you may record.
One of the neatest features imo is that it comes with a vast amount of scales and instrument ranges that can be highlighted on the melody track keyboard. So if your melody is to be written for a soprano, it highlights the range of the soprano, or violin or saxophone or whatever, plus it will highlite a scale of your choosing, say gypsy minor or blues pentatonic. If you start with melody first let's say, you can tap out one note to the rhythm of your melody, say an "A", and then just drag each note afterwards to a highlited, according to range and scale, melody of your choosing. Then you may choose the chords for the melody. If you start out with a chord progression, you could work opposite.
When you get your song worked out, chord progressions, melody etc., you can save as a midi file, and it will place markers in your daw for the chords and sections in your daw along with the midi notes.
The software is only for composition and organization, it doesn't give you styles, melody or chord generators, such as say a band-in-the box. Though I suppose you could enter the chords and melody you make from songframe into bandinthebox if you needed styles?
I guess you could say you don't need a daw to record music, a word processor to write a novel, screenwriter software to write a screenplay, it just makes things a lot easier and organized. Songframe is for making the sketches actually, so if you already have the sketches it would be more appropriate to move to a daw.

[remmet]

For lyric writing, I'll add my vote for Masterwriter. It has a great way of revealing possibilities you never would have thought of. It has gotten me unstuck on many occasions.

Richard