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I recently got REAPER POWER! from Amazon and I've been extremely impressed with it so far. It's helping me to see how much of REAPER's capabilities I've been missing (you can try out REAPER for free by the way, and a personal use license is only $60.)

I keep finding out about new things I can do with this software and new ways I can streamline my work flow so that I can work in a more efficient way. When you're trying to do something creative you want to be able to do all of the technical things as easily as possible.

If you're a REAPER user (and I don't think I'm ever going to go back to using any other DAW) then I definitely recommend getting this guide. It's great.

I've just purchased The Beatles As Musicians: Revolver Through The Anthology and I wanted to pass word to any other Beatles fanatic home recording people out there who may be interested in it because I think this book looks fascinating.  Of course I haven't read it yet to give any kind of real review of it. I'll try to get to that once it's delivered.

I've read a lot of Beatles books over the years but most of them have been focused more on the biography of the band than on the creation of the music itself. That's what this book is about and that's why I can't wait to get my hands on it.

There's also a second book by the same author (which was actually written after this one) which focuses on The Beatles earlier stuff (through Rubber Soul) but since I'm more interested in their later stuff I figured I would just get this one first to see what it's like before buying the second one.

Can you really learn how to write great songs by reading a book? Well I don't know. But it seems to me that it's a good idea to be open to learning new things if you want to improve your understanding of music.

And for this reason (and because of the excellent Amazon reviews) I decided to buy these two books on songwriting (which are both by Rikky Rooksby.)

Melody: How To Write Great Tunes

This book (as you can tell by the title) is focused writing melodies. I've just started reading it and I'm already finding it very interesting. Has it inspired me to write my very own "Yesterday" ? Well not quite yet. But I don't expect miracles, just building blocks of knowledge that I can work with. It comes with a CD so you can hear examples of what you're reading about. This is essential since music is, of course, a listening art.

How To Write Songs On Guitar

This book is focused on helping those of us who write songs on our guitar. While it doesn't include a CD, it does give plenty of examples for what it's talking about and if you have a decent music collection you'll be able to listen to these songs which is just as effective a technique as including the audio CD, I think.