Apple’s GarageBand is a powerful tool for recording MIDI and audio and arranging loops. It can be puzzling to songwriters, though, because it doesn’t really understand chord changes. Sure, you can transpose MIDI loops or (more problematically) audio, but that process is a bit clunky and rarely sounds right. Many beginner-level GarageBand songs (especially by students) simply stay in one big, long I chord for an entire piece, which, by astounding coincidence, is what I sound like playing guitar. (Come on, I went to the trouble of getting my fingers on these frets — now you want me to move them? Where’s a piano? I’m through.)

Enter ChordStudio, an entirely Web-based tool that takes the opposite approach. Running entirely in a browser, the free Web app presents a blank score and lets you construct song structures with chords. Behind the scenes, 30,000 loops seamlessly render those chords into something that actually sounds like music. You can control the mix with common instruments, including electric guitars, bass, drums, piano, and electric piano.

The results are very simple, but I can see them being very useful. Aside from making it fun for a beginner with limited computer and/or music skills to put together basic song structures, it’s not hard to imagine someone using this as a quickie web tool on the road to get an idea down. It’s no GarageBand killer, of course — it’s just a simple Web interface — but if you like the loops, you can purchase them as a US$99 DVD and use them with GarageBand or your favorite looping app of choice.

ChordStudio.com

Web applications are unlikely ever to replace dedicated, standalone music and audio applications, because these applications by definition require an intimate relationship with your computer’s hardware. But that doesn’t mean the Web won’t be a place for some simple, useful ideas to complement standalone apps. Previously:

Tune Your Guitar Via the Web, with Free Tuner and Instructions

Promoting yourself with a demo can mean all kinds things, from selecting a couple of tracks to help connect with a collaborator to getting yourself a composing gig or record deal. Producer/musician Quantazelle herself has seen plenty of demo discs and has assembled some tips for how to make them work. If you’ve got ideas or questions of your own, be sure to sound off in comments. But the best idea of all may be getting people together for an in-person event to share music and visual reels. -Ed.

A demo is short for “demonstration,” and its purpose is to show others what you can do, musically. In the past, a band with major-label aspirations would scrape together a bit of cash for a few hours in a studio and crank out a few copies of their best songs on a tape or a record and then send it off to various A&R departments, hoping for a record deal and a contract with a fat advance. These days, technology has made the concept of a demo and its applications somewhat different, but we’ll always need to share what we’re capable of with others.

If you’re in Chicago this Tuesday… During my time at Modsquare a few years back, I organized a Demo Swap at a club in Chicago, where guests would get in free if they showed up with a stack of 10 or more or their demos on CDR. Not only did I discover talented local acts who I featured on our free online compilations, I met artists that I would later book at events, and learned that fellow attendees who had met at the night ended up collaborating on projects. Since I had so many people asking me to do another one, we’ve reincarnated the night at Ramp Chicago. So if you’re close to Chicago, show up at Sonotheque on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 9pm with a stack of demos or promotional material, get in for a reduced cover, and start meeting your fellow musicians and industry types (Peter Kirn of CDM will be there!). Read more about it here: Demo Swap July 17 at Ramp Chicago.

Where’s it going?

Figure out your intentions with the demo. Is it to get signed to a label? To book gigs? To find like-minded potential collaborators? To get work scoring a film? Similarly, determine the audience. Is it the A & R people at a label? The talent buyer at a club? Other musicians? Each of these requires a different approach.

Now that the rest of our studio has gone digital, the approach to producing score for acoustic instruments has changed, too. Here’s a look at some of my favorite toys and tools for keeping music flowing.

You’d have to be a true Luddite to argue that word processors are bad for writing. Blogs, perhaps, sometimes inspire poor writing (ahem), but it’s more difficult to blame technology. The original argument that word processors would end the process of drafting and revision is absurd to anyone who’s spent long hours slaving over text in Microsoft Word. Our attitudes have changed as we’ve grown accustomed to the technology.

When it comes to music notation, though, there’s still an uncomfortable relationship between composers and computer scoring. That’s understandable: producing a score is a lot more involved than typing words, and even with modern software filled with keyboard shortcuts, scoring music is slow in any medium. But, even as some traditionalist composition teachers preach against the “evils” of computer notation (you know who you are), I think computers are becoming part of an elaborate digital creation process, even for composers working on entirely acoustic scores. Leaving out the tried-and-true methods of drinking tea/coffee, stopping for sandwich breaks, and outright procrastination, here are the tools I consider essential to my studio: