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Ask HN: Songwriters, what software do you use?

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

#31
post #11

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…

Hey Doug, huge fan of yours. Thank you for everything.

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

#32
post #11

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…

Huge, huge fan of the entire Datamuse stack. You have done incredible work toward building a mega-useful cognitive exploration tool, ontology and super-power for word nerds. Software and data which I would love to pay for. Also OP might like https://www.onelook.com/spruce/

Wow, thank you, that means a lot to me! And I'm stoked you found Spruce -- we added that 5 years ago, pre-LLM era, but it never got much traction.

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

#33
post #18
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not disputing that human produced creative works have, at their best, qualities that computer generated works don’t, and maybe can’t.

I am however interested in the claim of plagiarism and how what generative AI does is different to what humans do. It’s not clear to me how it’s different.

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

#37
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

Ah yes, I remember as a kid a common joke we would make when talking about easy jobs is that we wanted to be the guy from Slipknot whose job was simply to swing a baseball bat at a trash can. No need to rehearse for that!

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

#39
Not software, but I am a big fan of the boss 505 table top looper. It is a great tool for building up parts and I love not staring at a screen while making music. Several of my friends swear by loopy pro for similar purposes, but I like the hardware solution here better.
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