http://feelyoursound.com/sundog/

Get rid of writer's block once and for all. Experiment with new scales, harmonies, and melodies easily.

Use Sundog to play around with chords and basenotes like a breeze. Go from calm, smooth, chill out styles to energetic upbeat tunes in a matter of seconds. Promised.

Create harmonic melodies and arpeggios easily
Experiment with new scales and basenotes
Over 300 scales available out of the box
Find the best fitting triads and four note chords for a scale
Export standard MIDI files - also via drag and drop
Convert MIDI note input (white keys) to scale notes and chords
Cure writer's block by experimenting with new harmonies
Output: Standard MIDI note data
Input: MIDI notes, computer keys, mouse
Runs on Windows and Mac OS X
Buy once, get updates forever - for all supported platforms

Visit site for demo (mac & windows) Buy 29 EUR / $39

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzRm3Lxaiww

 

I'm sure the food, the wine, the cheese and the editing was (all) alot better than that demo-track.
Human interaction, talent, melodic/harmonic thinking and music theory ftw, imo. But maybe someone will find it interesting.

 

Thanks for the Info, Looks interesting.

 

Thanks for posting this, but – with no reflection on you – I'm dismayed over software packages and loops libraries providing sophisticated sounds by-the-numbers to those with rudimentary (or no) compositional skills, no real ear for music, and possibly no latent talent. The promo video describes music theory on a level that might (or ought to) be taught to fourth-graders.

Studying fundamental music theory, learning to play an instrument or three at least basically (at least to familiarize oneself with the techniques involved), and listening to a lot different types of music and trying to understand their basic musicological principles, goes a long way toward doing more than making simplistic EDM trax out-of-the-box. This is the sort of stuff that is half the reason why the Internet is glutted with music, and also why a lot of it is really bad. It's great for anyone to be able to entertain oneself and to get a sense of music-making even if one has no real talent for it, or is just beginning at it, but this isn't really creativity, it's re-creation – like a coloring book compared to a painting.

I'm not a "serious" composer, a particularly educated or skilled musician, nor a genius, but I can compose the lyrics, melody and chord progression of a pop song, with basic orchestration, in my head while on a bike ride around town. Why? For the same reason why I deplore out-of-the-box music-making software kits. Not braggin' – just sayin'.

 

Hi, i agree and disagree with you. I see this more a tool than just loop libraries, like you mention. This dump midi, so youre free to edit it. But i guess its a tool, and different people will use different. I dont like loops at all, but i understand that ppl use them different, some just use the loop as is, other ppl pretty much just sample out a single hit from entire loop then fx until unrecogizeable. One person use chisel to sculpt statue, other use it to stab holes in cardboard box

I agree with the other points you make, but you could be using this midi info to learn from. I like the chord wheel in EZKeys, it helped me to learn, i think this program could help learning as well. Surely i wont remember 300 scales (im not "serious" composer either), but for cheap price i can dump midi to host. What if you make simple idea with this, then play & record live bass guitar improv? I do play instruments, but still i see this be fairly useful as tool, not full songwriter.

Not trying to argue, just to share other view in friendly conversation, i hope you take that way

 

Hey there,

I just want to leave a reply here. Full disclosure: I am the developer of Sundog Scale Studio ;). I don't reply because I'm offended (I'm not), just to add something to the discussion.

Sundog was first created to be a tool for myself. Later on I decided to make it public, because it was of big value for me. Especially to learn more about music theory. See, I don't play any instrument at all, but I'm making music since age 13 (nearly two decades ago, hehe). I wanted to play around with scales like other friends who were - in hindsight - lucky enough to learn the piano in their teens. I always wanted to play around with the different moods of the scales, but I couldn't remember all the notes "live" to make it feel fluent or joyful while producing music. So I wrote a converter: White notes on my MIDI keyboard to scale notes.

Then I wondered what chords might make sense on the chosen scale. I developed an algorithm to make this "chord stuff" more accessible for me. And it worked . I spent hours just with going through scales and listening to the chord moods. Compared to all the years before that I discovered so many new things about music, because now I didn't have to be a perfect piano player anymore.

And the final part: I was always annoyed by certain things that I had to do again and again when I came up with new song ideas. I had the chord progression finished in my head, and I knew how the background instruments / synths should follow these chords in a rhythmic way. Maybe just a simple offbeat bass, maybe an arpeggio, maybe something more complex. However - it always ended in annoying and time consuming clicks on a piano roll to reproduce the melody in my DAW ;). This is why I decided to add a step sequencer in Sundog who could follow the chords.
I mean: It's really, really nice if you are a piano player and are able to play all this stuff live. But for me and many others it's simply out of reach (I also know drummers and guitar players who have a hard time to get their input transferred to MIDI notes for synths btw).

And a little bit of background knowledge about some of the work my customers do:

* Some create rather simple (but catchy) pop songs, yes
* Some write really complex pieces and simply enjoy all the foreign scales that they never thought of before
* There are a few music teachers who use the chords view to show their students which chords are possible on the chosen scale (this still surprises me, even though I used Sundog myself this way)
* I know of one customer who uses Sundog to quickly sketch film and video scores (this is his profession, not just a hobby). The pressure to reproduce certain moods in very strict time constraints is rather high. Sundog helps him to create "background melodies" much quicker (the lead melodies are often played live then).

Hmm.. this ended longer than expected^^. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you something more about the background stuff behind Sundog and why for many people it's not just a shortcut to do pop songs. This wouldn't do most of my customers justice ;).

Cheers,
Hauke of feelyoursound.com

 

I think for how much info is inside this program alone, along with the rest of the features, plus the dev took the time to find this post, register, post some insight, makes the price worth it.

Thanx for posting some back infos here hauke, and for having a demo for us to try. Hope business is doing good

 

lerkjurk: I saw your news post (thanks!) and then your reply. I thought: "Yep, that's the point" so I wrote the post to build on top of that ;).

BTW: Here is another video for the newest version (1.3.0):

 

Version = 1.5.0
- Scale Finder (Tools -> Scale Finder)
- Swing
- Open recent songs