Songwriting For Dummies

Chapter 11

The Cheating Side of Town: Shortcuts and Cool Technologies

In This Chapter

Finding the fastest, smartest, and most effortless tools

Using software to your advantage

Creating a masterpiece in the privacy of your own home

Catching up with new advances and training

Ah, welcome to the twenty-first century, where the impossible now seems commonplace and practically anything you can imagine seems possible. With the advent of the Internet, we have seen a major shift in not only how we access our information but the speed in which it comes to us as well.

In this chapter we look at some cool new technology tools that are available to the songwriter. These tools can assist in creating everything from writing lyrics to recording melodic ideas, from creating commercial-sounding demos to organizing and archiving your document files.

Creating Songs Quicker, Better, Easier

Unless you have been hiding somewhere under a rock on some distant and deserted island, you have noticed that the ol’ music business just ain’t what it used to be. Much of the last decade has been in a state of managed chaos, and the playing field has been greatly leveled with cool new technological advances. Even though this may be bad news to the major labels and traditional music stores, this is certainly good news for the songwriters and independent artists of the world.

The #1 question remaining seems to be this: With all these new gadgets that are supposed to make life easier, do we actually end up with more ...