Welcome to our songwriting resources page, a curated list of links that we find useful as a collective when writing songs.
Use the shortcut Ctrl + D (Windows) or ⌘ + D (Macintosh) to bookmark this page for future reference.
Table of Contents
Ableton Live
Digital audio workstation (DAW) used by the collective. Compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems. Sign up for a free 90-day trial via the above link.
Default project template used by the collective.
Default user library used by the collective.
Comprehensive user guide for Ableton Live. The manual can be used as a guide for beginners who are just starting to learn how to use the software, as well as for experienced users who want to learn more about its advanced features and workflows.
List of keyboard shortcuts that allow Ableton Live users to perform tasks more efficiently.
Collection of videos that the collective have found useful or interesting.
Online community where Ableton Live users can ask questions, share knowledge, and discuss all aspects of using the software.
Music Theory
Popular music learning platform. Learn the skills essential for understanding music, reading music and playing an instrument.
Interactive website created by Ableton, designed to help beginners learn the basics of music production and composition. The website includes a series of interactive lessons and tutorials, which cover topics such as rhythm, melody, harmony, and song structure.
Interactive website created by Ableton, designed to help beginners learn the basics of synthesisers and synthesis. The website includes a series of interactive lessons and tutorials, which cover topics such as oscillators, filters, envelopes and modulation.
Useful Tools
BPM to ms Converter/Calculator
Used in music production and audio engineering to convert tempo values expressed in beats per minute (BPM) to their equivalent duration in milliseconds. This can be useful for setting delays, reverb, and other time-based effects that are synced to the tempo of the music.
An interactive circle of fifths chart, a very useful music theory tool to help visualise scales, notes, chords and keys as well as the relationship between them.
Random collection of musical calculators.
Simple musical interval calculator to get the interval name and the number of semitones between two notes.
Reference table for musical notes and their frequencies, middle C is 161.63 Hz.
A chatbot powered by artificial intelligence.
Chords
Explore music using simple geometric shapes.
An awesome way to explore chord progressions.
Select the root and type of chord and it will be displayed on the keyboard.
Lyrics
This reverse dictionary allows you to search for words by their definition.
Find rhymes, synonyms, adjectives, and more!
Find words that are related to a specific word or phrase
Search for words by their definition
2,500 English idioms, phrases and proverbs.
Project Management
Online Collaboration Guidelines
Guidelines that the collective refers to when collaborating online.
The Universal Category System (UCS) is an excellent system for maintaining an organised sound effects library.
Complete list of categories which are to be used for the classification of sound effects.
Cloud Storage
As a songwriter or music producer, it's crucial to backup your lyrics and projects on a regular basis. We abide by the "Rule of Three" and keep at least three copies in different locations. Below are the cloud services that we use and recommend for reliable and easy backups.
Used for lyrics, ideas and project files. Google Workspace allows real-time collaboration on documents, so is great if you have multiple users looking to work on lyrics simultaneously. When uploading master back up projects we ZIP these before uploading to avoid any compatibility issues. 30 GB of storage, with additional storage available for a monthly fee. The first 14 days are at no cost.
Used by the collective to host all the files that are available to download on this site. Note that if you're looking to do the same you need to force a browser to download the contents of a link rather than display it. To do this all you need to do is replace the '0' at the end of the URL with a '1'.
Used to automatically back up the contents of our Google Drive, Dropbox and Laptop. Their lifetime storage is a one off payment so you don't need to worry about any monthly or yearly payments.