Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 61 posts

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#11

Post by dougb5 »

Allow me to plug a dictionary/thesaurus site I've been running for decades called OneLook (https://onelook.com). Although it's not specifically aimed at songwriters, it does attract many of them as users. Over the past thirty years, I've added all sorts of brainstorming features for creative writers—like the ability to search for words by description, to match words with a given meter, and more recently to discover which colors a word might evoke or vice versa.

(I’m also the creator of RhymeZone so I'll plug that too! I no longer operate it, but I can pass along any feature requests you might have to its new owners.)

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#13

Post by mattpope »

latexr wrote: post #8
dwnw wrote: post #3

Hardware is better at this: notebook, pencil, baseball bat. "AI art" is plagiarism and not an art at all.

> baseball bat Could you expand on this? How does a baseball bat help you in songwriting?

I went to a Slipknot concert back in 2022. They had a "junk set", a bunch of trashcans and kegs that they hit with aluminum bats. Not completely the same, but it did have a dissonant sound!

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#14

Post by shw1n »

I was just asking a producer friend today about this — does anyone know of any tools that let you “clip” parts of songs with notes?

When I’m listening to music I’ll occasionally hear some element I really like and note it down via text for later

Eg “synth at 1:35, really cool — be great for a cyberpunk track”

I’d love to be able to hear these clips with one click (almost like Splice)

Considering building for myself if something doesn’t already exist

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#16

Post by __d »

dwnw wrote: post #3

Hardware is better at this: notebook, pencil, baseball bat. "AI art" is plagiarism and not an art at all.

I’m interested in the plagiarism perspective.

I feel like LLMs are not too dissimilar to humans. We listen to a lifetime of music, read text, watch videos, etc. and when we come to create something all of that influences what we produce.

Like if you’ve listened largely to western music, and you look for a note to complete a provided two-note sequence, your choice is informed by that listening history. A non-western trained person is likely to pick a different note. Similar analogies can be made for eg English phrases, or even topics for songs.

There’s clearly a boundary between influenced by and copied. Is it the same for generative AI as it is for humans?

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#17

Post by dietrichepp »

Currently working on an album.

Software I use for songwriting: mostly Logic, also Dorico. Voice memos. Rhymezone sometimes. Rhymezone seems less and less helpful as I go on. I hardly use text editors for lyrics, paper seems to work a lot better. I end up with a lot of scribbles all over the paper.

AI suggestions for songwriting seems a bit like turning on cheat codes in a game. Cheat codes will help me beat a game faster. The cost? The game is less fun, and the whole reason I play games is to have fun. Songwriting is an activity for me, like gardening or running or something like that. Or putting together a jigsaw puzzle. If you had an AI assistant that could help you put together a jigsaw puzzle, would you use it?

There are AI tools around and some work decently well:

- Logic has session players. I don’t think they’re AI, but they are decent at putting up the skeleton of a song.

- AI-powered stem-splitting tools help you pick apart songs you like and figure out how they work.

- AI-powered song mastering tools produce dubious output. I have gone through multiple iterations with AI-powered tools and ended up happier just mastering the song myself.

LLMs seem like the great failure here.

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#18

Post by dwnw »

__d wrote: post #16
dwnw wrote: post #3

Hardware is better at this: notebook, pencil, baseball bat. "AI art" is plagiarism and not an art at all.

I’m interested in the plagiarism perspective. I feel like LLMs are not too dissimilar to humans. We listen to a lifetime of music, read text, watch videos, etc. and when we come to create something all of that influences what we produce. Like if you’ve listened largely to western music, and you look for a note to complete a provided two-note sequence, your choice is informed by that listening history. A non-western t…

Art is about the human experience of the artist reflected in the art. LLMs have no human experience. They just try to statistically trick you into thinking they made art through mass plagiarism of art. It's an illusion, and also rather boring/lame/uncool.

You can do it, sure. But you'll probably also start to wonder why nobody really wants to listen to it, and you can count me out before I do.

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#19

Post by bpev »

Wrote a giant blog series with the entire process of my last album: https://bpev.me/notes/vx1

I think each song develops differently, so process varies depending. But tldr on software is:

Step 1. Whatever is easiest to write immediately on inspiration (which happens anytime anywhere): Voice Memos, Phone Notes app, Text Editor. I have a super long voice memo history, so my songs usually develop from 2-3+ voice memo ideas that may have been recorded years apart. I'll scroll through old ideas while songwriting to see if other cool ideas fit.

Step 2. Formalize using a combination of apps that depend on what I need to be specific about. Vibes? My DAW (Ableton or Reaper). Score? Musescore. Lyrics? Text editor + maybe recording a loop in my DAW.

Step 3. Usally by the end, I have a score .xml, lyrics .txt, and ableton live exports + stems.

Re: Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

#20

Post by kfrzcode »

dietrichepp wrote: post #17

Currently working on an album. Software I use for songwriting: mostly Logic, also Dorico. Voice memos. Rhymezone sometimes. Rhymezone seems less and less helpful as I go on. I hardly use text editors for lyrics, paper seems to work a lot better. I end up with a lot of scribbles all over the paper. AI suggestions for songwriting seems a bit like turning on cheat codes in a game. Cheat codes will help me beat a game fa…

If you're not already aware of it, check out onelook.com
Post reply on HN