Songstarters Use Popular Chord Progressions To Spark Song Ideas

by Mary Shaw | May 17, 2012 | One Comment

While nothing is better than noodling around on my guitar, keyboard or uke, I'm always looking for ways to speed up my songwriting process. That's why I love using songwriting templates in GarageBand. They are perfect for creating quick, easy song sketches without spending a lot of time. One night I was playing around in my studio and came up with a small collection of 4-bar rock chord progressions in the key of C. These "Songstarters" are easy to use and lots of fun. If you're a Garageband user I thought you might like to check them out below.

What Is A Songstarter?

Songstarters are very short multi-track GarageBand .band files comprised of simple chord progressions designed to spark melody and/or lyric ideas. Like loops, they can be mixed and mashed up into full songs, but the learning curve is much shorter since the chord progressions are already setup. My husband and I had a blast jamming along with them and came up with lots of different melodies with this first set.

How To Use Songstarters

Each Songstarters template is a self-contained Garageband .band file, so you can double-click on it or launch Garageband and then select the file you want to use. For example, the Rock collection of 10 Songstarters templates uses all the same instrumentation at 120 bpm. This makes it quick and easy to come up with simple arrangements to support your melody and/or lyric ideas. Check out the video below for a detailed look showing how you can use these to spark your own ideas:

Give 'Em A Try

You can try Songstarters for free at the link below. When you signup you'll get access to one of the original Rock templates in the key of C. To get the full set of 10 templates, visit the templates page and enter the promo code "serve" to get 50% off your order. I'm thinking about developing a full line of these templates and would love to hear your feedback. What do you like about them? What's missing? How can we make this a better tool for your songwriting? Please leave your thoughts in the comments. Try Song Starters For Free

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