john

Good to meet you Jay. Good on your friends and family. Welcome to Songstuff.

Good to meet you Ryan, welcome to Songstuff

Do you use a design methodology? What language do you plan to write in? For what platform? For software development OOD is the approach I usually take, firing loads of use cases at it and capturing the design in UML. I just wondered what you plan. A mobile App? Air? Desktop app? Web app?

Oh, if you do a lot if cans based recording and mixing you may need two sets of cans: 1. Closed back dans for recording. They colour the sound more but you get less spill, vital for noise management when your control room is also your live room and playback can spill onto a mic. These can be cheap provided the spill is low! These are your recording cans. Be warned, ear fatigue is high. 2. Open back cans. They colour the sound less than closed back cans. Most importantly they cause less ear fatigue, which is vital for long sessions, all the more so when you don't use monitors. These are the expensive ones, the ones you really invest in. These are your mixing cans. You can get semi closed as a halfway house but seriously, I would recommend a specialist pair for each of the two circumstances.

What Tom said regarding capturing the idea, plus... Why not teach yourself? When it comes to songwriting I am self taught. There are millions of self taught guitarists and pianists who have also taught themselves both theory and notation. Plus there are loads and loads of free resources, so no, I am not excluding a group. Cost prevents nothing as there need be no cost at all other than time. Additionally, to aspire to letting software do it for you ( in the case laid out in replies) doesn't help the songwriter in the long term. Knowledge is the liberator. Skill is the key that unlocks the door. A tool that does that for them makes it accessible in one way but ultimately leaves the writer dependent, not empowered, constrained, not free to express. Now a tool that augments is different. I would also point out that the tool I described does NOT write the song for the writer,, it merely suggests the most common next stage in a progression based on theory and common practice. The writer remains filly in control. If the tool you suggest does not write for the writer either, then surely we are in general agreement? Lol As an engineer, however, I can happily praise your drive to find a technical solution, while questioning the need for the tool. Why not sing or play the melody, record it, then use pitch recognition to turn it into notes? Or simply listen to the recording and transcribe as Tom said? Job done Honestly I am not seeking to ridicule or otherwise, but any engineer worth his salt would be happy to both question a design and question the need for a design... Unless of course you are solving purely for the challenge, but even then you should be happy to analyse both need and design? Perhaps some use case analysis would be helpful.

Top tip: reference recordings In addition to the system you describe you can improve things by having a cd or collection of reference recordings that you play in all these systems. I suggest a mix of tracks that each demonstrates specific characteristics, like one with strong bass, another with high energy levels, one with a good club mix, another with an intimate acoustic performance and so on. Regularly familiarise yourself with how each track sounds on a selection of sound systems. All this means when you are in recording you can use a mix of the memory of how that sounds with the idea of how you would like your new mix to sound. You can then A/B compare the two recordings using your headphones. If you have software that can also do a spectral analysis on both recordings that can help you too. Making additional notes about your reference recordings can also help, regarding your observations of each track on each system.

Welcome to Songstuff Tim