It's not released yet (app review couldn't get back to me in time for the holiday freeze... grr), but I made an iPad music creation app called Composer's Sketchpad. My goal was to develop a modern, interactive take on sheet music that didn't require a ton of mental energy to reason about, and that could also be used to notate things like guitar solos and complex rhythms just as easily as any Bach choral. The app takes the form of a long scroll view with time on the x-axis and pitch on the y-axis; a grid indicates measures, measure subdivisions (time signature), and the notes of the equal temperament scale. You draw notes with your finger or the Apple Pencil, and you can start each note at any point and bend it to any pitch, with time and pitch grid snapping tools available as an option. Playback is instantaneous and defined by your current scroll position. There's a bunch of instruments as well as a percussion set to choose from. Performance was a high priority, and it runs acceptably well on my iPad 3.

Here's a brief demo clip. (Feel free to ignore the BG music; it's not directly related to the actions demonstrated in the video. I still have some editing to do.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS4-Qho6Log

I'm very proud of what I accomplished with this app, but I'm also ashamed of how long it took me. The app was first conceived several years ago, and the first serious commits were made early last year. Throughout 2014 and 2015, I spent far too much time slacking off and avoiding work (though admittedly I was travelling for a large part of it); my savings cushion prevented me from seriously worrying about deadlines. As a result, about half the work for this project was done in the last few months. I could have finished this project in half a year at most, and it kills me to think of all that time wasted. (I didn't have any other work during this time, though I did release a couple of small side projects.)

I'm also worried about whether anyone will actually find this app useful. I built it mostly for myself, and in using it, I've been finding that I can suddenly write music a lot more easily than ever before. On the other hand, it's missing most of the power features musicians expect from their music software. There's no Audiobus support; no MIDI in or out (largely due to the hacks required to get per-note pitch bending working); not even export at the moment, though I intend to add MP3 export ASAP. The samples are pretty generic MIDI sounds. It's intended to be a musical notepad, not a tool to create production-grade music, and I fear that might be too small of a niche.

In any case, even if it doesn't make me a ton of money, I'm elated that I created something that didn't exist in the world before. This is the first tool in my life that's precisely tailored to my needs. It's going to grow with me as I get new ideas. It's going to be used to write music that I could never write before. Already I have a feature list several dozen items long for the next few versions! Through this project, I've also — finally — proven to myself that I could design and build a fairly complicated app almost from scratch. I look forward to what I can do with this new-found confidence in the coming year!