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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.

Ableton Live

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.

Ableton Live Project Template

Default project template used by the collective.

Ableton Live User Library

Default user library used by the collective.

Reference Manual

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.

Keyboard Shortcuts

List of keyboard shortcuts that allow Ableton Live users to perform tasks more efficiently.

YouTube Tutorials

Collection of videos that the collective have found useful or interesting.

Official Ableton Forum​

Online community where Ableton Live users can ask questions, share knowledge, and discuss all aspects of using the software.

Help and Support

Music Theory

Musicca

Popular music learning platform. Learn the skills essential for understanding music, reading music and playing an instrument.

Learning Music

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.

Learning Synths

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.

Circle of Fifths

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.

Music Calculators

Random collection of musical calculators.

Music Interval Calculator

Simple musical interval calculator to get the interval name and the number of semitones between two notes.

Note Frequency Chart

Reference table for musical notes and their frequencies, middle C is 161.63 Hz.

OpenAI's ChatGPT

A chatbot powered by artificial intelligence.

Chords

Guitar Chord Finder

Guitar Chord Analyser

Guitar Progressions

Harmonagon

Explore music using simple geometric shapes.

Hook Theory Trends

An awesome way to explore chord progressions.

Piano Chord Finder

Select the root and type of chord and it will be displayed on the keyboard.

Ukebuddy

Ukulele Chord Progressions

Ultimate Chord Finder for Guitar and Piano

Lyrics

Describing Words

This reverse dictionary allows you to search for words by their definition.

Rhyme Zone

Find rhymes, synonyms, adjectives, and more!

Related Words

Find words that are related to a specific word or phrase

Reverse Dictionary

Search for words by their definition

Syllable Counter

The Phrase Finder

2,500 English idioms, phrases and proverbs.

Sounds

Freesound

Link is set to search for all sounds licensed under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0).

Pixabay

Royalty-free sound effects. No attribution required.

Project Management

Online Collaboration Guidelines

Guidelines that the collective refers to when collaborating online.

UCS File Naming Convention

The Universal Category System (UCS) is an excellent system for maintaining an organised sound effects library.

USC Category List

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.

Google Workspace

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. 

Dropbox

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'.

pCloud

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. 

Resources

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