Songzap Blog

In the final part of the Songzap for Pianists blog series, we’ll experiment with and shape the sonics of our designed and captured creations. The song we made in Part III features a mix of recorded keyboard performances and drum patterns we prepared for the song’s different arrangement sections, which deploy drum sounds from Songzap’s sample libraries. The objective here will be to ‘mix’ all of the song’s elements into a cohesive whole that delivers the song’s narrative effectively.

In this third part of the Songzap for Pianists blog series, we’ll expand our quest toward the ‘macro’ aspect of arrangement, developing longer-form structures and pieces through the keyboard as a compositional tool. We’ll use Songzap’s Arrange functionality to tie it all together, and organise the transition and linking of sections toward a complete song narrative.

In the second part of the Songzap for Pianists blog series, we’ll focus on timing, groove and the art of layering parts, particularly from a rhythmic perspective. We’ll play to and off the click, and develop piano grooves that interact with Songzap’s Groove Designer beats. We’ll listen to the left hand as a bass part and examine its relationship to kick drum patterns; and we’ll focus in on right-hand parts as rhythmic stabs, chops or licks that feed off, support and complement the snare and hi-hat syncopation.

In this first part of the blog series on Songzap for Pianists, we’ll come to terms with the sound of the upright piano and the techniques that will help us capture its glorious sonic footprint. Why the upright piano? It sounds great, it’s cheaper (than a grand), many more pianists have one in their home, and … if you can do it on the upright, you can also extend your knowledge to capturing a baby grand, or grand piano.

Songzap is a songwriting and pre-production mobile phone app designed specifically with musicians in mind. In this blog series, Mike will take you through a bunch of approaches to recording, practising with, layering and mixing the upright piano using Songzap!

Songzap is designed to enable quick and easy multitrack recording of acoustic instruments and voice, and to, quickly and easily, turn those recordings into a mixed demo that can be shared with friends, band members and contacts. In the video below, Rob, singer-songwriter and Songzap’s lead developer, records a multitrack cover of All Along the Watchtower by Bob Dylan. The song was famously recorded as a rocking cover version by Jimi Hendrix too, and Rob’s version falls somewhere between the two approaches, retaining Dylan’s acoustic vibe but with some intensity and lead guitar licks inspired by Hendrix.

Here at Songzap we know it can be a challenge to become acquainted with a new piece of software and to master all of the advanced features that are available to you. We’ve designed Songzap to be truly intuitive, with simple interfaces that are controlled by powerful algorithms and code behind the scenes. We kept the most important features as simple as possible to access and control, but we also wanted to include numerous advanced features that emerging and professional music artists will need to call upon as they develop their sings and take them to a real studio.

An audio interface is a critical centre-point in most music studios, from the World’s greatest studios down to the everyday bedroom musician. The audio interface is the physical connection which allows sound to be recorded into a computer system and equally allows sound to be played back out of a computer system. It can take many guises, having one or multiple input paths (allowing one or more microphones to be recorded at once) and one or multiple output paths (allowing many loudspeakers to play audio at the same time), it can even be built into the computer system itself and not be so obvious (for example, the iPhone has a built-in interface chip that connects to both the iPhone microphone and the built-in loudspeakers).