> That definitely sounds interesting, but I'm also a little blazé at this kind of announcement.
I can't blame you and if I were you I would be a bit skeptical too.
> I have vague recollection of seeing this kind of ambition multiple times, and zero recollection of seeing any of them concertize.
Which ones for example? You are right, it's problem that people have been trying to solve however most of the proposed solutions were either very academical or very specific. They weren't trying to help you with composition.
> I guess there is a lot of hidden difficulty in the task.
There is however I like to think I've managed to remove quite a bit of it.
> I'm also not sure about that IDE analogy. IDEs and advanced code editors are basically notepad with lots of extra features that increase productivity, at the cost of added complexity and some extra learning effort.
Don't strain the analogy. It's a music composition software that tries to help you.
> Meanwhile, current DAWs can already be very complex and hard to learn fully, because they already have a million features to boost productivity in various ways. So if current DAWs are "notepad", I'm not sure I want to know what an "IDE" even looks like.
Here's the thing, most of current DAWs are for editing of sound. Cutting, mixing etc, they have surprisingly few features that are related to tonality and composition. And Sibelius and all that sucks a stiff one too. How many DAWs actually understand the concept of a scale and how many understand this concept "productively". Ive tried all of them and they are all terrible for this. E.g. if you have 10 tracks playing a chord, and you want to change said chord, you have to go through all the tracks and change the notes manually. That's very annoying.
Not to mention that all current DAWs have terrible, terrible interfaces. I can go for hours on each of them and why it sucks, so pick one, I'll try to tell you why I hate that particular one.
> In any case, I wouldn't belittle the existing tools so much. Several DAWs are deeply scriptable and extensible, on top of the plethora of rapid-workflow features they possess.
I don't want to script things. I want a tool, not a toolkit. And not all things are scriptable. And I also want really good visualization and fast workflows. And you can't really build new UIs.
If you want to talk about this more, send me an email (it's in my profile), I can talk about this for hours.
I don’t think it’s outstandingly great, but it suggests a lot of people are going to be moving into this space.
The problem is automated composition is incredibly unpopular with pop writers - they’d rather use samples anyway - and academic composers would rather do their own thing the hard way.
Most people are very concrete thinkers. IMO the number of people who can handle the kind of musical abstractions you’re talking about is tiny.
I haven’t no. It’s somewhat similar but very different actually.
I wouldn’t call it automated composition either. My thing isn’t too abstract I think.
Edit: I've looked at the sw now and I also hate it. Terrible UI, seems to be stuck in the 18th century as far as music theory goes, etc etc. and they want 700 eur for this?
>E.g. if you have 10 tracks playing a chord, and you want to change said chord, you have to go through all the tracks and change the notes manually. That's very annoying.
Harmony is only the third of it. Does your app offer the same flexibility with respect to melody and rhythm?
Haha yeah I know. Yes my app works fundamentally with periodicities of music. It lets you extract “ideas” out of a song and apply those ideas to your song. These ideas are melodic, harmonic and rhythmic.
I can't blame you and if I were you I would be a bit skeptical too.
> I have vague recollection of seeing this kind of ambition multiple times, and zero recollection of seeing any of them concertize.
Which ones for example? You are right, it's problem that people have been trying to solve however most of the proposed solutions were either very academical or very specific. They weren't trying to help you with composition.
> I guess there is a lot of hidden difficulty in the task.
There is however I like to think I've managed to remove quite a bit of it.
> I'm also not sure about that IDE analogy. IDEs and advanced code editors are basically notepad with lots of extra features that increase productivity, at the cost of added complexity and some extra learning effort.
Don't strain the analogy. It's a music composition software that tries to help you.
> Meanwhile, current DAWs can already be very complex and hard to learn fully, because they already have a million features to boost productivity in various ways. So if current DAWs are "notepad", I'm not sure I want to know what an "IDE" even looks like.
Here's the thing, most of current DAWs are for editing of sound. Cutting, mixing etc, they have surprisingly few features that are related to tonality and composition. And Sibelius and all that sucks a stiff one too. How many DAWs actually understand the concept of a scale and how many understand this concept "productively". Ive tried all of them and they are all terrible for this. E.g. if you have 10 tracks playing a chord, and you want to change said chord, you have to go through all the tracks and change the notes manually. That's very annoying.
Not to mention that all current DAWs have terrible, terrible interfaces. I can go for hours on each of them and why it sucks, so pick one, I'll try to tell you why I hate that particular one.
> In any case, I wouldn't belittle the existing tools so much. Several DAWs are deeply scriptable and extensible, on top of the plethora of rapid-workflow features they possess.
I don't want to script things. I want a tool, not a toolkit. And not all things are scriptable. And I also want really good visualization and fast workflows. And you can't really build new UIs.
If you want to talk about this more, send me an email (it's in my profile), I can talk about this for hours.