Be the best singer/ songwriter without breaking the bank
Powering up your singer/ songwriter studio will require heavier investment in some areas, but you’ll be able to dispense with more advanced kit that other approaches demand
We’re stripping back to the very basics here – the fundamental skill of writing a song on either a guitar or piano, recording vocals with your microphone and either choosing to work up your arrangement over time, or keeping things very simple, intimate and direct. With that in mind, having an armada of software synths, complex effects plugins or oddball rhythm generators isn’t really on our agenda. Instead we need to think about the best ways to both bottle and enhance your instrument and your voice, while, as always, keeping a very close eye on our budget constraints.
We also need to consider the writing process itself. If you’re wanting to eventually settle into being a song-generating machine, you’re going to need continual inspiration. The necessary environment in which to do that is your DAW, of course, and in our scoping out of the DAW that is the most songwriter-aligned, Tracktion Waveform Pro 12 comes out on top. Containing a solid singer/songwriter template, a fluid drag and drop approach, a heap of useful utility plugins, the ability to strum your MIDI and some very effective instrument-aligned fare, including its Dual Guitar IR cabinet simulator, the full version of Waveform Pro 12 is worth shelling out for. Better yet, you can even dip your toe in the water with Tracktion Free if you’re on the fence. We’d strongly recommend you make either your singer/songwriter workbench.
It goes without saying that a stable interface, trustworthy pair of cans, a robust microphone and a little more consideration to your vocal’s sound is more necessary here than other genres, so to further power up our budget studio we’ve highlighted some particularly apposite options. We’ve also found an great piece of freeware, available within the CM Plugin Suite that will definitely be a real asset for singer/ songwriters looking for the means to build out harmony voices and pitch correct with ease.