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For recording
live audio tracks and MIDI ones,we use
SONAR software by Cakewalk in our studio. Over the years,
I've worked in studios that used Pro Tools which is generally
accepted to be the benchmark. But the SONAR 3 Producer
Edition we use gives us everything we need from soup
to nuts and nothing we don't, at a more competitive price.
We find it easy to work with, and very intuitive.
I believe SONAR 5 is being released now, but our SONAR
3 hasn't let us down yet, so why fix it? Go to www.cakewalk.com for
a Demo download, or to buy the real thing.
They also sell scaled-down versions if your recording needs are simpler.
Out of all the musician/songwriter magazines, I find Electronic Musician to be
the most balanced and useful. It's a monthly and if you live in the USA, it's
possible to get a year's subscription for $11.95 (instead of paying the newsstand
price of $80) by looking around the Web for cheap magazine subscriptions. Check
out what the magazine's about at www.emusician.com
Keeping up with new studio stuff that may be useful is one of the benefits you
get from music magazines but for more immediate info, I cruise by www.harmony-central.com every
couple of days. They have a User Review section which is particularly useful
when you're thinking of buying some new studio gear. By looking up the item you're
shopping for in their User Review index, you'll get the real story from people
who bought the item before you did, and their personal opinion of its value to
them.
If you know your way around a studio, but your songs are lacking that extra commercial
zip and shine, the most useful site you'll ever find is David Mellor's site at www.record-producer.com Subscribe
to his free weekly newsletter and get a handful of articles every week that are
really hands-on useful. You'll notice an improvement in your finished product
right away.
A site I like to go back to regularly to brush up on the rules is www.craftofsongwriting.com In
amongst the News, Articles and Chatroom here, you'll find the best ever example
of what I consider to be wrong with major label music. A few years back, the
site co-owner wrote a song called Home to You, which hit #1 on the Country charts.
But what's fascinating is that on their site, you can hear the first demo of
the song, then the studio demo, and lastly the final version as released. The
initial songwriter demo is really rough, but the studio demo is brilliant. And
the killer is that the final version completely sucks when compared to the studio
demo. Why..? Because where the studio demo is relaxed and earthy and tuneful,
the final record is screwed down tight, lacks spontaneity, and is the perfect
example of what's wrong with the modern sound for radio. Beware the studio owner
who boasts that he's got a mixer with a compressor on every channel! That's one
of the things that's squeezing the juice out of music these days. It's like asking
Da Vinci to paint with ballpoint pens...
For help in writing better lyrics, I like Jeff Mallett's Songwriter Site at www.lyricist.com .
There's a lot of down-home sense here about what works and what doesn't in lyric
writing. Also a place to get your lyrics and songs checked out by other writers,
and vice versa. And unlike a lot of songwriter sites, this one doesn't cost you
anything but your time.
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