Angel Beats has been temporarily shelved for a couple reasons, the main one being that my cash runaway is coming to an end so I need to switch focus to filling up my coffers. And since Angel Beats isn't really marketable yet, I need to look elsewhere for funding sources.

When I get back into it, my plan is to do something smaller in scope and more focused on songwriting than on composition or production. In fact, this was the original goal for the project, but the more I learned about all that goes into making a song, the more I wanted something integrated and holistic and not yet another plugin. In other words, a DAW. But I've also realized that a DAW is too big in scope given my current resources. And at the same time, plugins are too small, and I don't want to touch the abomination that is C++ nor deal with Steinberg's archaic license for VSTs. 

So what's between a DAW and a plugin? Well, plenty of plugins also work as standalone applications with functions for importing and exporting to a DAW. And since DAWs generally don't even acknowledge the existence of lyrics and chords, a songwriting tool won't need to be as integrated as a typical plugin. Most likely, it will generate a project file for your DAW of choice once you've got the foundations in place. Similar to how singer-songwriters sending demo tapes to producers they want to work with.

The long term goal is still for Angel Beats to become a DAW as advanced as any other. But rather than try to do everything at once, I'm going to try to do one thing really well and better than anything else currently available. And then do it again. And again. And again. And once I have a pile of killer apps, then I'll be in a position to swap out the underlying operating system, or in this case, the DAW. As is, Angel Beats is all breadth and no depth. A skeleton. And slowly layering meat on a skeleton is crap and not going to work.

I don't have a timeline for when this will be ready or even when I'll be able to get started on it, but I will post updates once I have something to show off. I'm also planning to do more music making.

As a UI designer acutely aware of all the problems with existing music software, it's all too easy to use that as an excuse to not make music. But I also know that even a perfect design isn't going to magically generate motivation and productivity. And I'm not at all interested in reducing songwriting to a push of a button.