iReal Style Co-operative..?

After reading through some of the threads on this forum it became clear that many users would like to be able to make their own styles for the app. I understand that incorporating a style editor into the app would entail a lot of work so I was wondering if their could be another approach.

Presumably styles are created in the iReal Lab as midi files using one of the well known DAWs and then assembled for the app using some kind of proprietry software. (??)

If this is so, how about making style creation a bit more open source and letting those who would like to participate in the development of this great app submit their own styles as source material in the form of midi file packs which could then be tweaked/perfected (if necessary) by the iReal team before being converted to iReal format and made available as either paid or free in-app purchases.

I imagine their are a lot of talented musicians using this app and feel sure that some of them would have the necessary skills to create very high quality styles given the opportunity. As long as their was some kind of quality control I think this could only help the app to grow in popularity and would mean more Euros for you guys!

What are your thoughts on this idea?
Paul

Paul, I have the feeling that creating a new style is a complicated task, involving algorithms for the bass and chord instruments on moving from chord to chord, with numerous variations and the like, not to mention drum sets and their variations. What I would like is the ability to combine existing styles (as in the present Latin-Swing style) and to be able to designate which style goes with which section in the first and last choruses and which style is played in interior choruses (eg, a Bossa-Swing or a Bolero-Swing hybrid style). The iReal Pro community loves it so much that we have transformed the app from a practice aid to a partner in performance, which is a great complement to the app's developers.

Even though it would be difficult to implement, the creation of new or hybrid styles is a good idea. Those who use iReal Pro have created a real community of musicians.

Hi Keith, thanks for your thoughts.

I don't doubt that creating an 'app ready' style is a complicated process and as far as the algorithms are concerned, yes, that's a job for the developers, to get the styles working in a psuedo-intelligent way within the app.
What I'm suggesting is that users could supply the 'raw material', i.e. multiple, well programmed midi patterns that work well together. This could potentially help to grow the number of available styles relatively rapidly whilst at the same time perhaps freeing up some of the devs' time to enable them to work on other features.

Combining styles would be useful as you say and the fact that Latin-Swing already exists means that other variations are clearly possible.

Bump...! :)