freestuff.gifSongwriting books, DVDs, classes and workshops are big money in the songwriting industry. But before you spend your hard earned cash on clinics, try out some of the free resources online for songwriters.

There’s plenty that’s already out there:

Online rhyming dictionary. Online thesaurus.
Great stuff. I mentioned these before, but have since found some new ones that I love. My two favorites are the top two in the Google search results: RhymeZone and Rhymer. Visit Google for some more online rhyming dictionary options.

As far as a thesaurus, you can’t beat Thesaurus.com.

Quotes sites
A song always starts with an idea. A premise. A story. Quote sites and random quote sites are a great place to get ideas that resonate with you. Here’s my favorites:

Quotations Page
This site has the hands-down largest amount of quotes in one place. You can search quotes by authors or by subject.
Quoteland
While this site might not have as many quotes (a fact I cannot verify) I really do love the layout. It is almost like a quote “portal” with the topics easily laid out and intuitive. Highly recommended.

GarageBand.com
Sign up at GarageBand.com for a free account. Review songs by other people. After you review a certain amount, you get “Upload Credits” where you can upload a song to be subjected to review by the other GarageBand members. You can also bypass “earning” credits and just pay straight up to get your songs on there. But that wouldn’t be FREE now would it?

Random word generator
Graham English pointed to this nifty little tool a couple weeks ago. Get a random word, specify certain types of random words (i.e. limit the word to an adjective, common or uncommon, etc.). The advanced tools are also pretty great idea generators.

Songwriting Forums
Tunesmith, Harmony Central, Songwriter101, SongStuff, and others have some great working songwriters in their forums. It is worth the time to pick their brains and get some insight into the creative and business aspects of being a songwriter.

Photo Editing and Sharing Software
Hands down my favorite photo editing software is Picassa. It merges nicely with their Picassa photo sharing site. Currently you can only get it as a part of Google Pack.

Do you have any favorite free online resources you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments below.

Check out more songwriting resources at Blogging Muses