Heptabase vs NOTE TO TONE

Heptabase is a visual note-taking app that helps you learn complex topics. The mobile app provides full access to all your cards and journals, and allows you to read all your whiteboards.

When an idea will not come. When you have been thinking about one thing for too long. Something entirely unrelated — a stranger's conversation overheard — can be what unlocks it. NOTE TO TONE generates words with no connection to anything, to work the stiffness out of an over-focused mind. ■ Random words, to loosen your head What appears is a short phrase that does not quite make sense. "a dry hourglass" — "unravel the heron" — "desperate for the layover" Look at it, and force yourself to find a meaning in it. The moment you try, your head starts looking down a different road. That is the whole point. ■ Words, music, and keeping them The words are random, yet now and then one arrives that somehow shows you a scene — one you want to keep. So you can stock them. And from that word, a piece of music of its own is made, and kept alongside it. The same phrase always makes the same music. ■ The music is built on the spot, by a synthesiser Each phrase is measured along six axes — light, motion, weight, grit, space and warmth — and the music is built to match. Nothing is a recording being picked from a shelf. The sound is made by the engine from our music app ARPJAM Studio, a serious synthesiser that plays itself. That engine is built into NOTE TO TONE in full, so you can hear the music without owning ARPJAM Studio. ■ How to use it - Open the app and a phrase appears - Press SOUND and music is generated for that phrase - Press KEEP to save the phrase and its music; look back from Stocks - Once unlocked, a download button appears. It saves an ARPJAM settings file (a JAM file) to edit in ARPJAM Studio, or to add to a playlist in ARPJAM Player ■ Unlock Free use gives you three phrases and their music each time you open the app. A single purchase unlocks unlimited phrases and JAM file downloads. Nothing recurring. ■ Good for - A brief that will not start - Circling the same thought - Resetting your head before a meeting - Finding a way into a piece of music - Looking at something meaningless before sleep May a good idea find you. --- Credits: PIANO: Salamander Grand Piano V3 — Alexander Holm (CC BY 3.0)