Bach

My aim is to write songs in an acoustic ballad style (no electric guitars or drums) similar to Don Mclean's Starry Night in terms of arrangement Primarily on piano and guitar (both picking and strumming). I am looking for software to assist with: 1. Recording lyrics (entered by typing) in a way that matches up with chords and melody without much difficulty. 2. Gives the options of best chords available for a given key. (ie. you can edit individual chords in a progression easily) 3. Does auto-arranging for acoustic ballad piano or guitar style. (with the more variety being better) 4. Can generate alternative melodies or similar melodic figures that I can select from. 5. Allows a VST to be imported, so it doesn't sound like rubbish while I'm composing. From my research so far, it seems that all the software that records and displays lyrics to match chords is separate from the software that does arranging and produces nice sound. If I am wrong here, I would love to know which of the advanced arranging software is lyric friendly. EZKeys seems like the best software for my needs, but I might be wrong. EZKeys suggests the best chords, has a nice VST piano, and does auto-arranging, although the variety seems limited and I can't find any info on whether you can import or create your own arrangement midi database. (seems like you have to buy the ones they have made and they are quite expensive) EZKeys doesn't have a melody generator that I could see. Melody generation seems best done by Rapid Composer, but some have suggested that Band In A Box can also do this. From my observations of BIAB it seems they are heavily focused on the jazz, rock and electronic styles which I have no interest in. My main concern with Rapid Composer is that it will produce melodies that sound too computer-generated and weird, like what I have seen in the demos on youtube. Has anyone had good success with Rapid Composer? Synfire seems like a mystery package, but one that might be helpful as I often struggle with coming up with new rhythmic and melodic ideas. The demo on youtube makes it look pretty ordinary and would love to see the workflow of someone making something awesome with it. I'm not sure how good it would be at generating alternative melodies and arrangements that fit the modern ballad style. People suggest loading it's AI database with classical music, but I don't want my music to sound 300 years old in style! Perhaps I could only upload midis of the songs styles similar to what I want to create? Reaper seems to be the best value DAW, so I would go with that. My observations of VST acoustic guitars are that all the good ones require Kontakt 5. I especially like the workflow of Strummaker IV but it seems you need to buy Kontakt 5 which is expensive. I can't find any other VST guitars that enable you to customise strumming patterns but I might be missing something out there. So it seems I will need to buy: 1. Lyrics/songwriting software which can import/export melody and chords. 2. EZkeys OR Reaper plus a good VST guitar OR Kontakt 5 with strummaker 3. BIAB, Rapid Composer OR Synfire if I want help with melody ideas. Any suggestions would be much appreciated :)