Masterwriter

I've found that Masterwriter is THE most helpful software for songwriters and especially lyricists. It's a comprehensive tool that helps you spend more time with the creative part of lyric writing, instead of desperately looking for words, phrases and rhymes in dictionaries or thesauruses.

Several famous songwriters use this tool, including Gwen Stefani, David Foster, Babyface, Linda Perry and LeAnn Rimes.

My Opinion About Masterwriter

I purchased the software about a year ago. Although it's not cheap, I'm glad I did. It has helped me tremendously to come up with lyric ideas that wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise. Sometimes I managed to take my songs in a totally different and more creative direction just by coming across a special word in Masterwriter. I can't imagine what songwriters who don't use Masterwriter do when they get stuck or need new ideas. They probably collect all the tools that's in this program from different places on the internet, but it's tedious work if not impossible.

Tools in the Software

• Songs: a great way to keep a database of your songs. You can include audio too. There is also a creation-date registration service called Songuard. It comes handy if you need to prove that you own the copyright to your song. (For more information on copyright protection, visit the Copyright page.)

• Rhymes: a rhyming dictionary with over 100,000 entries and 36,000 rhymed phrases, including close rhymes, wider rhymes, x-wide rhymes and perfect rhymes. You can also choose how many syllables you want the word to contain.

• Phrases: there are more than 33,000 phrases, sayings and idioms in the database. This is my favorite part of Masterwriter! There is also a box of related words in this tool.

• Dictionary: this part is obvious. It contains The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary.

• Thesaurus: this is, again, obvious. The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Thesaurus is included in the software.

• Word Families: it's also a kind of dictionary but it's special because it helps you come up with some descriptive words and phrases for your lyrics. You can set how many syllables you want the word or phrase to contain, what part of speech it should be, what ending it should have (base word, -s, -ed, -ing). You can also filter the results according to intensity, etc. My second favorite Masterwriter tool!

• Parts of Speech: this is a list of descriptive words that you can filter according to several criteria: part of speech, ending (base word, -s, -ed, -ing), intensity, positive-negative words and alliterations.

• Pop Culture: it's a Pop-Culture Dictionary that contains more than 11,000 entries from the American World of Culture. You can choose from several sub-collections, like: The World (Countries, Landmarks, Islands, Peoples of the World, Space, Myths, etc.), The Famous (Leaders, Infamous, Artists, Fictional Characters, Sports, etc.), Food & Drink (Beers, Soft Drinks, Bars, Travel, etc.), Products (Cars, Toys, Books, TV, etc.) and The Bible (Full Bible or Old Testament, New Testament)

• Notes: in this section you can put down and save lyric ideas or whatever you want. You can even format the text.

System Requirements

Masterwriter works both on Mac and Windows computers. I have a Mac so I don't know how well it runs on Windows. But the Mac version is clearly not a native Mac application. That's the only negative thing I can say about this software. It runs on my Mac but I can always feel it's a little "difficult" for my computer. The creators should somehow make the software more light-weight. Or it's just my Mac which is not the latest model but it still works perfectly most of the time.

Mac:
PowerPC G4 1.42 GHz or better or Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 Ghz or better
OS X 10.4 or better
512 MB or more RAM, 1 GB recommended
Built-in or External Microphone
QuickTime 7.5.5 or better

Windows:
2.4 GHz or better Processor of Intel Pentium/Celeron Family or AMD Athlon / Duron Family
Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7
512 MB or more RAM, 1 GB recommended
Built-in or External Microphone
QuickTime 7.5.5 or better

I'm a huge fan of Masterwriter and I definitely didn't regret my purchase. If you're serious about songwriting, and you write lyrics, I highly recommend it, click here to get it on Amazon!


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