Songwriting and music production

There's a lot more to recording a great song than simply clever or skilled production. While it is absolutely possible to take a fantastic song and make it sound terrible it is almost impossible to take a terrible song and make it sound great.

Songwriting and arranging a two very important skills for home producer. Music production relies heavily on the quality of the material that is being produced. There are many fantastic resources on the web and in print that can help you in writing that perfect song and arranging it in a interesting way.  One of my more recent purchases have been a number of books by Rikky Rooksby.  many of his books seem to focus on helping guitarists writes better songs  I can highly recommend The Songwriting Sourcebook: How to Turn Chords Into Great Songs  as it has helped me over the last 12 months.

 In addition to reading books or browsing the web there are many other resources that you could turn to. another of my favourites  is Songsalive. Songsalive  is a not-for-profit organisation originally started in Australia but now becoming more global with chapters across the US. They run workshops and provide online services dedicated to help struggling songwriter's. Check out their website to see if there is a chapter near you or maybe you could even consider starting your own.