passion project
Wait! What key is this in? What are the chords?
Whether you're a professional musician performing on a big stage, or playing at a local bar or coffeeshop, it's great to have your chords and lyrics at your fingertips.
"All Set" is designed to help musicians organize, share, and view setlists and songs right on their phones. Want to see the lyrics and chords for the next song, or the previous one? Just swipe!
While "All Set" isn't on the app store yet, I've gotten a lot of requests to hurry up and make that happen!
What do musicians want?
I've spoken to a lot of musicians and friends about what they want in an app. Here are some of their desires, echoed in the following wireframes:
The ability to organize saved setlists, and see the # of songs in each
To see all the songs in any given setlist, with numbers for each song
The ability to swipe back and forth easily through songs
To quickly add a song from a "song-bank" to a setlist from any screen
Editing of any bit of song information, including tempo
What does Lisa want?
Lisa is a singer I've performed with many times. She sings with a lot of different groups, large and small. One of the first musicians I interviewed for this project, she is always the total professional, and so we sat down to talk about what she wants out of an app.
The following persona was culled from that conversation:
The Final Countdown…
…of features that is, NOT a reference to the 80's hair-band hit, but hey, feel free to go check it out if you want, it's your 5 minutes. Stay for the epic guitar solo.
Make it fun to use in addition to its good looks!
Include set names, dates, number of songs in a set, ability to duplicate a set
Ability to number each song, display song key and the tempo (beats per minute - bpm)
Dark mode and a flashing light to indicate song tempo
Toggle between light and dark mode, font size settings
The ability to tap to transpose the song key and tempo
Easy swipe up to add/view any song notes and details
Ability to share, add, dupe and archive setlists
Biggest learning so far?
Many (not all!) drummers can't necessarily look at a written tempo and play it in time. I kinda assumed they could! They may get close, but often can be faster or slower. This can get compounded by adrenaline, resulting in a song played at much different tempo than intended. This can not only change the feel of the song, but can make it harder for other musicians to play their parts.
Providing a flashing "tempo" light on screen, viewed prior to the start of each song, can be very beneficial for all bandmates, as well as an indispensable, unique feature for this app.
