Hey everyone.

I was wondering if any of you have any advice on "notepad" apps that can help you organize, keep track of and keep all that stuff in one app that's always just one click away. Things like say lyrics, to do lists, song ideas, things to check up?

Often I get an idea, a thought pops into my mind or something triggers me to want to look up something and if I don't do it NOW I might forget so it would be awesome to just have an app one click away where I can quickly write down that idea or thing I want to check up on and then go back to what I was doing instead of falling into a rabbit hole of distraction. But just having a text file open and writing stuff there and then saving it in a folder it might get lost among all other text files, if you get my point.

Having an app where you could organize all those things and sort them by topic, tabs and be searchable would be really helpful.

Preferably a portable or at least a standalone app for PC would be great because I do not like "widgets" or apps that share personal info, might all of a sudden become subscription or depend on internet access.

Any suggestions?

 

This is apple's ecosystem

 

https://keep.google.com/
Fairly minimal, basic formatting, if you want to stick with Google's ecosystem.

https://app.simplenote.com/
What I've been using for... 7 years? Extremely minimal, free. Notes can be exported to text files. Web & mobile apps available. Can share via OS share dialog.

https://omnivore.app/
What I use for reading longer texts - strips websites down just the text and relevant pictures.

Everything else I've tried is way too elaborate / too bloated for me (OneNote, Notion, Markdown files).

For pompous ideas, presentations and manuals I use a bunch of Markdown files rendered with https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/features.md.html (supports math, graphs, diagrams, pictures, tables, etc etc)

 

I love EVERNOTE, but it's more of an 'internet connection required' program

Look at Cherrytree Portable 1.2.0 [FREE] :
https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/cherrytree_portable.html

https://cherrytree-for-windows.en.lo4d.com/windows

 

Last edited: Oct 13, 2024

Essential Personal Information Manager - Essential PIM - can get a as crazy as you like, you can use it as an email client to organize and store email offline, etc. contact manager, things to do, events calendar etc.. been around nearly 2 decades, and well maintained by developer.

has a free version and a paid version - portable versions exist as well as cracked versions of the paid app - like everything else today.

https://www.essentialpim.com/features/overview/pro-vs-free

 

My favorite is Obsidian. It is brilliant, efficient, and as deep or as simple as you need it to be. It is also free.

 

I've always liked simple apps for writing texts, lyrics, ideas, and to remember birthdays for me.

Years ago I had researched several "tree view", or "tree note" apps that are organised in a way that you have links to the texts on the left, easy to find everything, and you can search for texts, of course, if you have loads of texts. I had picked "TreeNote" because it is simple, small, portable, and works on all OSes that I use (Linux, Windows, MacOS). I've looked it up and the dev hasn't been very active since 2020, so if it doesn't work or you have problems with that, there is a "TreeNoote" app that looks like a more modern version of TreeNote. Both are free and portable, TreeNote and LoqSeq are Open Source. The dev of the TreeNote actually recommends "LogSeq". It looks nice, but sooo many features it's like a personal organiser. I still just use TreeNote v1.7.9, it works just fine and it has just enough features I need. :P



Cheers!

 

Last edited: Oct 14, 2024

I’ve used many different ones over the years as I am a big note taker and personal tutorial maker creating notes for so many things to do with music production, just for myself.

These are the last 3 I have used with the first one being the one I currently use RightNotes which is fantastic with so many options for images, spread sheets, lyrics, daw how to’s, audio files, hardware config information etc, it’s a little more expensive for the pro version than MyNotesKeeper but well worth the money.

1: RightNotes (There is a free version too)
https://www.bauerapps.com/rightnote/

2: MyNotesKeeper
http://www.mynoteskeeper.com/

3: TreeDBNotes (This is a little older now)
https://treedbnotes.en.softonic.com/

 

Last edited: Oct 14, 2024

or prison, depending on how much you enjoy life in captivity...

 

I use Track Notes for any project based notes https://www.finalmixsoftware.com/utilities and this https://www.audiostudiomanager.com/

 

Audiostudiomanager looks nice, but its Apple only.

How I organize, my music stuff

1. have a separate drive or a partition on the drive for Software, Sample Libraries, books, etc. this is just an archive nothing runs off this drive.

I can search it if I need a program or a sample or a book etc..I'm on windows, I use Agent Ransack to search my drives when I need to find things. it can search by date, by a text string, a filename or a bit of a filename, etc. its quite good. you can print the search or copy and paste it to a file if you need to create a CSV file for import into a database or spreadsheet.

https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/download/


its free and very useful

I also use Servant Salamander which is a File Commander style of, file organization and operation utiility also free and available as 32bit or 64 bit. Its free and useful.

https://www.altap.cz/salamander/features/servant-salamander/

I organize my drive in subfolders. with the most important or frequently used beginning with numbers. Like 1111_Tutorials, or 3333_samplelibraries and 7777_Studio.Gear. Because windows will sort numbers first when sorting by filename so they are always at the top of the directory list, makes it faster to get to them.

Under Studio gear, I have copies in .pdf of all the owners manuals for the various gear I own, and any addenums like midi tables, fx etc - also drivers, firmware upgrades and procedures.

this directory is structured by Manufacturer Brands, so AKAI,Arturai,Boss etc. I also have folders for the computers I use for Music production, so DELL, HP etc.. within these again, mfr's manuals, and any drivers needed in case shit hits the fan and I have to rebuild things.

No matter what information manager program you use, having a coherent storage structure will make your life a lot easier

I have another partition for "COMPOSITIONS" - which is where I save songs to, have a folder for lyrics, ideas for songs, etc.
this can be subdivided by years, if you are so inclined.

Servant Salamander can open .iso files and allow you to copy files out to other folders or read .pdfs, its still a good idea to have a program to mount cd/dvds..

Another good idea is to have a program for mounting .iso files so the o/s sees them as physical cd/dvd to make it easier to install programs that came on cds/dvds.

Wincdemu is free and works well

https://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/download/

Also a good Catalog app, like Cd Catalog Expert, its 30$ but its worth it. It can also be used with hard drives and removeable media to catalog whats where, when you need to find it.

http://www.zero2000.com/cd-catalog-expert/




this just scratches the surface of what you will need to be able to work with files and archives and organize them, edit them and repackage them etc.. This is on top of whatever "organizer" you finally choose to use..

 

It is just a smaller prison, but a luxury one. The day the software integration of windows will be at the level of macos, I would come again.

I have all that the OP is asking for, without installing any app. Just with the nude telephone or computer system.
Notes + reminders + voice notes
And all automatic synchronized with all the electronics + all the other stuff

 

Joplin, opensource, free, all platforms supported and sincronized, can throw anything to it.
joplinapp.org