[Research] Calling poets and lyricists

[TheResearcher]

Hi there,

 

I’m an individual looking to help the community of poets and lyricists. I’m conducting a little bit of research to find out if my idea of a new text editor based around poetry and lyrics would be of use to people. I am posting this with a link to survey monkey for your community to help me gather information on whether this is something I should pursue or not.

 

Your responses would be greatly appreciated, it should only take around 10 minutes to complete. I have my own style of writing and composition that inspired me to think of an idea for a text editor, however I’m looking to see how other people compose their poems / lyrics. Please feel free to forward the link to others who may also be interested.

 

You do not have to submit any personally identifying information, however there is an option to enter in your email address (which is optional) if you would like to be contacted in the future by me – this information will only be used in the event I go forward with my idea, and will be used to give updates and potentially beta access to the software for feedback.

 

Here is the link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/32ZRQKK

 

Thank you in advance,

TheResearcher.

[lemonstar]

Gave up after 5 questions as it was clear you had more or less assumed people answering would be using something other than paper to write and edit - my pad of paper is not connected to the internet, my pad of paper doesn't have a resolution as such and is not of a standard screen size. I have used Masterwriter and Scrivener and numerous other tools but In my case, when lyrics are first being dreamed up they are being improvised as I sing them while playing guitar and simultaneously improvising chords - the words, chords and melody development all feed off each other and I don't write anything down until I have perhaps 8-12 lines 9with chords) that look like they will be part of a song that is going somewhere. Often I'll replay what I have many times before I type these up on the laptop and print them out so I can hand annotate them as I go through each subsequent phase of development - improvising more words and chords... I do use the android app Jotterpad if I want to write when - (usually attempts to unify or extend quite a well advanced or half written song) either I don't have access to my guitar or it's inappropriate to be playing it (i.e. late at night).

[lemonstar]

i wrote software for 20+ years - real-time embedded control software (assembler, C/C++/RTOS) as well as Windows based apps and have used all kinds of editors over the years - a rare type I am fond of is the folding editor and I've used this one since about 1993 I think when I was writing OCCAM for Transputers - a parallel processing environment - it was the editor they used at that company - basically it makes use of the comment style e.g. /* comments */ to embed instructions to the editor - in the editor you can fold up sections of code and choose to see only a title for that section  - it helps you see the structure of large files more easily - you can nest these folds and so it helps you to navigate your way in to the bit of code you want to work on... no use for song writing though  but you might be curious. You could write a complex novel or non-fiction text using it and make use of the multiple layers of abstraction for structuring your work.

http://www.nyangau.org/ae/ae.htm

 

However - if you are looking for an idea for an editing tool for a a musician then an editor (or even just a file viewer) that you can use for live performances would be useful if you can arrange for the lyrics to scroll smoothly past in a given time. I know such things exist as I have seen a pianist using her ipad to sing from. In Micro$oft Word a perhaps lesser known feature is autoscroll but it's not how I would want the feature implemented - if you go "Customise Quick Access Toolbar" select "More commands" then change the drop down box from "Popular Commands" to " All Commands" you can add "Autoscroll" to the quick access toolbar (it's a green circle) - scroll to the top of your lyrics and then click on the autoscroll icon to turn the autoscrolling on and then move the cursor down to just below halfway on the screen - as soon as you go below half way the text starts scrolling down - the further you position the cursor below the half way point the faster it scrolls - so you are having to guess where to place the cursor to get it to scroll at the right speed so it's not that useful imho.

 

The only app I have tried to work on is a hybrid between a tool to traverse a Graph based knowledge database (think sat.nav) and the WordNet database - a large lexical database of English. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms that are interlinked by means of conceptual-semantic and lexical relations. (https://wordnet.princeton.edu/) - the aim would be to make a semantic database that would enable a songwriter to find the closest way i.e. word, phrase or idea (or a list of alternative ways) to link disparate ideas such as "war" and "winter" - this is often a problem in the creative process of lyric writing - how you link ideas different ideas together - you often have to develop a song by moving from one idea to the next  but it's useful to have a way to do this - as song I have just finished (more or less!) links the story of a snowy winter walk past a world war 1 memorial and a homeless guy I started chatting to one snowy day - he was an ex-soldier but clearly suffering from some kind of addiction and/or mental health issued - a link I was after could have been between the words "snow" and "soldier" or "winter" and "war"  - and "cold" could have been a link worth considering - as in "cold war". In the end I used the idea of an "enemy" in war and the homeless guys mental health issue - he was battling with the "enemy within" so you see how the semantic link was important and powerful and that they are often not easy to find.

 

The song is here fwiw:-

https://fawm.org/songs/93422/

 

 

[lemonstar]

Forgot to include a point about a slow scrolling editor with a timer control; there needs to be a way to include pauses at certain points in the lyrics so that instrumental passages can be concluded without subsequent lines of lyric scrolling past when the performer is not singing.

[TheResearcher]

Hi lemonstar,  Thank you for attempting the questions, thank you at least for posting your writing process, it is still insightful. I also am aware of wordnet it is what I was going to use for the software (after researching it further and seeing how useful it would be to use, luckily the license would allow it to be placed within commercial software). This software idea is still in its early stages - hence the questionnaire. I have a vision of it but I need to know whether other writers would benefit from this tool.