By SongTools.ai
We started out building tools for producers. Along the way we realized the same technology could do something bigger: let Deaf and Hard of Hearing people read what music feels like.
SongTools.ai, made by MIDI Lab, began as a toolkit for people who make music: song feedback, mix checks, mastering reports, lyric tools. Most of what those tools do is turn sound into information. A loudness report turns a master into numbers. A mix check turns a mix into a written critique. A spectrogram turns a whole song into a picture.
Somewhere along the way we noticed what that meant. If a tool can describe a song well enough for a producer to act on, it can describe a song well enough for someone who can't hear it to understand it.
We believe the feeling of music is one of the most powerful things there is. A song can change your mood in three minutes, hold a memory for decades and say something you couldn't put into words yourself. That shouldn't be reserved for people with full hearing.
So we started building in that direction on purpose. Our Mood & Emotion tool reads the emotional arc of a song and the moments where it shifts. Describe a Song writes out what is happening inside it. The Lyrics Transcriber gives you the words. The Spectrogram shows the shape of the sound.
Today SongTools.ai serves two groups with the same idea, that a song can be read:
We are not going to pretend we have this figured out. The people who know best what would help are Deaf and Hard of Hearing people themselves, so we want to build the next tools with them, not just for them. If you have thoughts, ideas or criticism, we would genuinely like to hear it.
In the meantime, anyone who is Deaf or Hard of Hearing can apply for free access. It takes about two minutes and you don't need to make music to qualify. See the Accessibility page.
All the tools discussed in this article are available on SongTools.ai, free to explore.