SongStarter Beta: I need your feedback (Page 1 of 2)

Thanks a ton for the feedback! Ok, I'm starting a separate TODO list just for beta feedback, so I'm writing all of this down. Replies in order:

- Ok, will definitely add a pause button.
- Instant Export to Reaper should already work, though I didn't add a specific menu item for it. Writing it down! Can you try opening one of the other ones, like Ableton, and then dragging the jar out?
- When you save your jam with the desktop version, it actually does already write MIDI! Every time you save, it creates a little "Audio and MIDI" folder for you with all the loops and ideas rendered as WAVE and MIDI files for each idea. I need to figure out a better way to advertise this though. Maybe an explicit "Export" menu?
- Link up as in sequence them then? or playing them simultaneously?

Re: moar features - I really really really want to add external audio input in the next month, so you can record your guitar and synths or whatever and rock out like that. Would you dig that?

This was already super super helpful, thank you so much!

i could just as easily open up audiotool and have MIDI capability, better instrumentation, more control and a familiar interface.

there's your brutal, honest feedback.

I'm going to have to agree with this. You've made a great looking product that's good for prototyping songs, however adding this to my DAW workflow would frankly only convolute it as I'm used to starting my songs in the DAW I'm going to finish them in.

After playing around with this I can't help but think this would be a better mobile app, seeing as when I'm on the bus or something is when I'd be more likely to not be able to compose in my DAW, but might still like to do something musical. This would be really helpful if it could export files in a format a DAW could use from a mobile device.

It would also be great if there was some kind of piano roll I could look at to change misplayed notes or something.

tl;dr It looks and works great, but even then I don't have much use for it.

I hope this feedback is useful

Hi guys, thanks for the feedback. I'll respond to as much of it as I can:

XyNo: Which version of Windows are you on and which web browser are you using? (this is the one you downloaded, right? http://www.oscillicious.com/songstarter … -win32.exe  - should be 60.7 MB)

Aeros: SongStarter has full MIDI capabilities on the desktop, and it doesn't lock your creations up like Audiotool. With Audiotool, you're trapped in the cloud. There's no MIDI export as far as I know.  And while SongStarter's interface may be different from anything you've tried before, I think you'll still find it's very easy to use.

Teradaktyle: I think SongStarter offers a better workflow for that initial, creative songwriting part of production than using DAW, and I've made it as easy as possible to move stuff over into your DAW, to make it so it's not convoluting your workflow. It's about adding an extra tool in at the start of your workflow to help you write better music, and I think that's worth an extra drag and drop. Thanks for the comments though and I'll re-evaluate where a mobile app fits into my broader plan.

Saskrotch: If you can spare a moment, would you mind elaborating on what didn't go well when you messed around with it in Chrome? Also, what part of the impression you got from SongStarter made you think it was a toy?

Thanks again guys, it's been insightful to read your comments!

by that I meant relative to chrome and the cloud - that's the only reason I would use this sort of tool, as I could simply start up FL Studio on Windows and be able to do ten times more with it just as easy as I could with this little tool.

i think what i'm trying to say is, SongStarter, as-is, is pretty much useless to anyone proficient in a DAW, because they could just as soon set out a drumloop at a BPM limited only to rationality, turn live mode on, use an instrument preset that they're fond of, set it as a template that runs on startup, and replicate your program with double the functionality in half the time you'd need to start and set your program up, saving $40 in the process.

oh yeah, and the interface is unintuitive, it DOES look and feel like more of a toy than anything, it's limited, looks too compact, and the jam interface simply feels unpolished altogether, e.g. if there is note quantization, it's ineffective and not immediately configurable; there's no visual beat measurement and the patterns just feel like they start randomly in some cases, the MIDI system seems, by the way, rather glitchy (sounded like i was playing with a noise wave, using w7-x64, windows version, w/ akai mpk mini), and overall it sucks.

Last edited by Aeros (Aug 22, 2012 3:22 pm)

you've completely sidestepped my point - the iPad, in this case, is a simpler, mobile environment designed to get the job done with a minimalistic interface and less functionality, and the desktop is meant to get the job done with a much more complex interface and more functionality. no matter what happens, the job gets done in thereabouts the same time if both are configured correctly. in most cases, if you're going to do something such as write down a quick jam, especially in the field of chipmusic, you would open up your tracker on the desktop, ready your MIDI device, select an instrument, and go - there's no need to have a program ask you 'what bpm do you want?' 'will you be recording sound or MIDI information?' 'which drumloop do you want to start with?' 'which of these 20 instruments do you want to use?'. our DAWs generally are set at the most common BPM we use, and even then all i have to do if it's wrong is grab the BPM control and drag until it sounds right. our DAWs already know what we'll be recording - most automatically detect MIDI signals and play them on the selected digital instrument, and also automatically detect if we're playing an acoustic instrument and picks that up as well. and if you have any sense, all you need is a metronome and a little inspiration to write music, and if you really need a drumloop, or want to hotswap them, it's ctrl-f "drumloop", click-draaag, there you go. and when you jam, the instrument shouldn't matter to the point where you have to make 20 of them like you did.

SongStarter is not a different tool - it's the same tool I've been working with, except its interface has been replaced by a less intuitive one that would simply make me either forget my idea before i could even punch it in, make it sound like crap and therefore make me immediately throw away a perfectly good song, or if I don't have an idea, would simply hinder my ability to effectively write music due to its absolutely silly unquantized, unoptimized, and glitchy solution to a problem that's fairly easy to solve (and if you want to really stretch it, the fact that I can't export to famitracker and/or write it to a LSDSNG file). it feels like an iPhone app designed for entertainment, quite frankly, and that's what's wrong with it - it feels overall like a bad tool to use for serious music creation. keep that in mind while you're developing this.

i kind of feel bad that i just wasted 5 minutes typing all of that.

Played along with it:
http://soundcloud.com/peterswimm/five-m … -dark-room

How do you soundcloud an entire song? its not that clear how you can arrange stuff for rendering purposes yet.. quantize might be a nice feature too!