I'm Gabe, the creator of Songcraft (https://songcraft.io/home). I recently dove headfirst into songwriting, and I quickly grew frustrated with my process. I found songwriting difficult enough without having to wrangle a mess of different tools, and there's no great solution to build chord sheets and tabs (unless you love pure text input).
So, I built Songcraft - an online songwriting platform and tab builder. The drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to jump from chords to lyrics to melodies. I added a chord progression generator and chord recommendation engine to ensure the ideas keep flowing. The integrated tuner, rhyming dictionary, metronome, and audio recorder allow you to stay focused without distraction.
A few months ago I shared the beta on Hacker News and got some incredibly helpful feedback and some amazing beta users. Since then, I've revamped the product and made a ton of improvements and additions. Today is launch day, and I wouldn't be here without Hacker News!
I'd love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions you may have. Drop a line here or at gabe@songcraft.io.
Excited to give this a red hot go!
Plug in some good headphones and get after it.
Thanks for checking it out!
No one else has to see it so it doesn't have to be pretty
Breaking lyrics strictly on the bar initially seems unintuitive, but in practice it works well. Including pre-roll bars means the spreadsheet corresponds exactly to my DAW. As I work through the arrangement and production I'll tweak the spreadsheet and keep it up to date.
I also copy the spreadsheet to a new tab, rearrange and resize it so I can print it out one one page (lyric-heavy tracks take two). There's a bit of messy cutting and pasting in this, but I've got quite quick at it and it means that while recording I can have all this information in front of me without using any screen real estate. When I've finished the last of these printouts, often with scribbled notes all over it, goes into a folder in case I need to do a remix.
I look forward to giving Songcraft a go!
Thanks for checking out Songcraft. Let me know if there are features it's missing that would make it useful for your method!
This is fantastic. Can't wait to see how this project progresses.
Some random suggestions:
Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see the ability to add chords outside of the scale. Let's say I want to play an E major chord in an A Minor progression due to a harmonic minor substitution. Is that possible with this tool? It would be cool to be able to add common substitutions or completely random chords too, perhaps in a separate box.
It might also be cool to see the roman numerals along with the chords in the progressions or chord box, but that might be too cluttered.
Regardless, I am an instant fan of this. Great work.
I really do want a way to incorporate roman numerals, especially with the progressions. I need to find a way to do it without cluttering the UI, but I love the idea.
Thanks so much!
This is a small thing, but hearing chords/music sounds in your demo video (not just the voice-over) would be great. Also... your demo really should be a song.
That's a great point about the demo. I'm hoping to put up a more polished demo in the near future (with the help of more a talented video editor than I), and I'll definitely include the audio.
I'm reminded by the Fender presentation at re:Invent this year (https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/fender/). Fender noticed that 45% of Fender players are new to the instrument, and most spend more on lessons then the guitar itself, but 90% quit after a year. The 10% that stick with it will go on to purchase 8-10 guitars, typically from their brand. So their whole strategy with apps and services is just to chisel away at that 90% number.
Have you considered hosting tabs for sharing?
It would be great to see a replacement for UltimateGuitar who despite having the largest collection of pop tabs engage in some extremely scummy business practices
https://www.lyrink.com/
Thanks for the feedback!
I also can't find any info about exporting data for backups or what happens to data if a subscription is paused for a period of time. Since it isn't called out my default assumption is that data is trapped and lost respectively.
Generally looks like something I'd love to use but would be great to clarify those points.
I'm working on a FAQ, but I'll also leave some clarification here:
Songcraft Basic is always free, and your existing songs will never be locked or lost, even if you downgrade from Pro to Basic with more than 3 songs. You can always export any song as plain text.
Comparison info on the plans can be found at https://songcraft.io/plans.
Please let me know if you have other questions!
A user could also disable their subscription for longer periods of inactivity, but that's obviously not ideal for a regular but infrequent project (e.g. a couple days per month).
Feature request: export to MIDI.
A long time ago I ran across ABC music notation, typically associated with old time or traditional music. I wonder if there could be an import filter that works with ABC notation?
Thanks for checking it out!
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1) Web applications make it easy to require monthly subscriptions, which many people don't like but is great for companies
2) Web applications can be more easily monetized through ads
3) Web applications can be updated for everyone more easily than a bunch of native installs, potentially reducing support costs
4) Web apps are a solution (not the only solution, but probably the easiest solution) to cross-platform development
The advantages of web applications, especially from the viewpoint of the developer/company, outweigh the advantages of native applications in more and more cases.
That being said, I plan to bring in standard notation as an option after adding timing control. I think Songcraft could do some amazing things with conversion between tabs and standard notation, lead sheet generation, full play throughs, etc. All that is feasible, and I’m excited to get to that point!
The chord recommendations in the editor are predicted from a recurrent neural network.
There are lot of improvements that I'm excited to make in both of these systems!