What are you writing lyrics with?

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Ramshackles

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« on: March 12, 2018, 09:21:31 PM »
So....what are you writing your lyrics on/with these days?
Good old pen and paper?
Notepad, Word or something more sophisticated?

I have generally been writing in notebooks, but it quickly turns into a mess of ideas, crossings out, half finished pieces etc etc.
Notepad didn't cut it for me but Word/Google docs was overkill. Also, I really wanted a thesaurus and perhaps some kind of rhyming dictionary at my finger tips.

At the weekend I had a bit of free time where I couldn't play music...So I started to make something.
It is a simple online editor. It is only in dev/demo stage yet with a lot of missing features, but I figured it might be interesting to you guys.
So before I do any further work I thought I'd make it public for a short time to see if it would be useful to you and whether you would use it, were it to be fully developed.

It is very rough and missing some important things for it to be fully usable, mainly user accounts (anything you write at the moment is stored locally so no sharing between devices yet) but you can have a look at the development version here:

http://18.216.230.254

The 'interesting' feature is what happens when you highlight a word you have typed...

Anyway, were I to go on and develop it further, features (in order of importance):

- User accounts
- Do some proper styling
- Ability to organise your lyrics/poetry into albums/collections

Then possible other features (this is where I want your input):

- Sharing/discovery of other users work?
- Other word lookups than rhymes/theasaurus/sounds like words? For example, when you highlight a word, it could display adjectives that are often used to describe that word...
- A 'scratchpad' area to jot down ideas/themes?
- Annotations/comments?
- 'presentation' mode to just show the lyrics only in full screen (useful for rehearsing songs)
- Other ideas?

Anyway...feedback welcome.

PS since it is a dev version, I have no idea how it will behave on mobile or ipad so use your PC and you might find it slow to load on your first visit.


CaliaMoko

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« Reply #1 on: March 12, 2018, 11:07:46 PM »
I took a look. Very cool. I might use something like that. Do you have to put all the rhyming words (and near rhymes, and synonyms) in by hand, or can you use ready-made lists and pop them in there?

Ramshackles

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« Reply #2 on: March 13, 2018, 05:56:47 AM »
I took a look. Very cool. I might use something like that. Do you have to put all the rhyming words (and near rhymes, and synonyms) in by hand, or can you use ready-made lists and pop them in there?
No, no, when you highlight a word in your lyrics (eg by double clicking) it automatically comes up with suggestions

CaliaMoko

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« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2018, 11:41:15 AM »
Sorry, I didn't ask that right. What I meant is, how did you get all those lists in there? Did you type them in by hand or did you find ready-made lists to use? You had to program them in somehow, right? When I click on a word, I get these lists of rhyming suggestions, but where do they come from? How do you make it do that?

cowparsleyman

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« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2018, 12:08:39 PM »
Hi Shackers

For me I always use a lined book and a pencil, no thesaurus, nothing else, but a headful of inspiration. I frequently jot lyrics on my phone and just check them when I'm penning something.

cpm

Ramshackles

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« Reply #5 on: March 13, 2018, 12:32:45 PM »
Sorry, I didn't ask that right. What I meant is, how did you get all those lists in there? Did you type them in by hand or did you find ready-made lists to use? You had to program them in somehow, right? When I click on a word, I get these lists of rhyming suggestions, but where do they come from? How do you make it do that?

Ah right, sorry I misunderstood. I am using the Data Muse API (https://www.datamuse.com/api/)
But if I were to develop it further I would compare it against the Words API (https://www.wordsapi.com/), RhymeBrain (http://rhymebrain.com/api.html), dictionary.com, Big Huge Theasarus (http://words.bighugelabs.com/api.php) and whatever else is out there and probably end up using a mixture.

Doesn't look like there is whole lot of interest, so for now I'm just going to develop it for my own purposes, which will mean:

- Adding user accounts so stuff can be saved to the server and shared across devices
- Adding organisation abilities. I'm thinking albums/collections + tags
- Doing the 'full screen mode' to show just lyrics for rehearsing/recording
- Perhaps tidy up the style a little

And in the future, if I have a need I want to lessen the gap between typing and the handiness of a notebook. So that means making it responsive a must (so it can work on ipad and phone), and then I had thought about looking at the speech to text possibilities.

adamfarr

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« Reply #6 on: March 13, 2018, 12:45:16 PM »
I'm so far down the line with Evernote it would be hard to change. OneNote is free and I tried but it was too much. I do like the integrations in yours as there is a lot of app switching and tabbing otherwise. I quite often want offline stuff but of course too much data...

Ramshackles

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« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2018, 02:02:36 PM »
I can understand not changing from Evernote/OneNote/<your software here>
For the too much data for offline stuff...i dont really think that would be much of a problem. The average size of text files for my lyrics folder is about 3kb. Even if we are conservative and say they are all 10kb, you would need 1000 sets of 10kb lyrics to reach just 10MB of data.

In any case, just to be clear, I will develop storage on a server ('cloud' if you will), as that will enable synchronization across all devices, but I think having offline capabilities as well would be good.

adamfarr

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« Reply #8 on: March 13, 2018, 02:38:46 PM »
Hi and thanks - I was thinking more about the dbases (rhyme, thesaurus etc.) and having those offline (for when inspiration strikes on a plane) (hopefully just inspiration...)

Ramshackles

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« Reply #9 on: March 13, 2018, 02:40:24 PM »
Ah yea, couldnt have them offline,!

dasntn

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« Reply #10 on: March 22, 2018, 06:42:57 PM »
Hi
I tend to write on the PC (well, Mac) and use Word to capture the lyrics. (Not that I use any Word features...)

I had a  quick go, and I liked the way it readily shows rhymes and alternative words - very useful.

Thinking of things that might be useful - metadata tags (to identify Verse 1, Chorus etc), and capture Chords. Also, export in a format that goes straight into iPad/Tablet word/chord display software like Songpro, Chordbase.

I could see me using this, especially if it can share across platforms (phone, tablet, pc)

cheers
Dave

Ramshackles

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« Reply #11 on: March 23, 2018, 05:00:34 PM »
Absolutely you will be able to share across platforms.
This demo doesnt have the 'backend' yet but thats the main thing I am working on (on sunday evenings :D).

Tagging verse/chorus sections is interesting. I can imagine it being done quite simply by having a little margin on the left hand side. Click in it at a specific line and you will get a drop down to tag as verse/chorus/other, here is a quick mockup:



I could see that as potentially enabling 'drag and drop' reordering of song sections.
Capturing chords would be a bit more tricky - just in terms of how to nicely display them and allow them to be edited without being in the way and/or being to complicated to interact with.
I'd see that coming as a later feature only if there was any interest in the app

Davino

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« Reply #12 on: May 21, 2018, 03:44:56 AM »
I use a notepad document.

nectar

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« Reply #13 on: May 21, 2018, 09:37:29 AM »
I use the staff notation editor in Reaper, which allows you to add lyrics to the sheet. It's really helpful to tie the lyric directly (syllable-by-syllable) to the notes of the vocal melody, because I'm usually writing music-first and it makes it easier to see where the stressed notes are. It also keeps the lyric with the project file in the DAW, so you're not going to lose one of the files, and you can keep track of how the lyric changed with different versions of the project file.

RealKevM

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« Reply #14 on: June 03, 2018, 07:25:20 AM »
I use notepad and a pen at the minute, find it the easiest way when i'm sat with my guitar writing.
This is an interesting bit of software, good job, I really like the suggested rhymes.