Grace Simonson | 2025 I.S. Symposium

Name: Grace Simonson
Title: Idea Management for Composers
Majors: Computer Science; Music
Advisors: Dan Palmer; Greg Slawson

A challenge many composers face during the process of writing music is managing their early ideas. Not only does inspiration strike in a variety of places, but ideas themselves come in a myriad of forms: a melody, a texture, an image, words, rhythms, sounds, etc. However, current composition applications focus on notating music to create performance-ready sheet music and lack the ability to record early, inexact ideas. Utilizing knowledge of design principles, interviews with active composers, and research on the composition process and composition tools, I designed and implemented a software tool that allows composers to store, edit, and combine their early music ideas in one workspace. When testing the tool, composers enjoyed the ability to see all their ideas at once and the ability to switch quickly between different idea formats (which may be represented as notated music, drawings, images, audio recordings, or text in the workspace) and found that these features aided the creative process.

Posted in Symposium 2025 on May 1, 2025.