Right now, Steno Arcade is a launcher for Steno Hero, a Guitar-Hero-esque game where the user types lyrics in time with the singers of songs.
This is great, except that newcomers to steno are excluded, as the slowest song requires you to be able to write at about 50 words per minute. Many beginners are expected to only produce in the neighborhood of 10WPM, and may have limitations like a 6KRO keyboard or arpeggiating. This means that we need to use words that have less chords, and sing them slowly.
We are looking to commision several slower songs for this "Baby" difficulty in the game.
The tempo and style of the song is up to the artist. While really slow songs like Sunday Smiled are fine, the ideal Steno Hero easy song has:
- Fewer instrumental portions of the song (short intro/outro, no guitar solo)
- Words and syllables sung on the beat to emulate the feeling of playing an instrument
- Meta lyrics (of course!)
The tempo could be high, the words slow, thing of something like Rock Lobster where words are peppered in on a consistent beat, to contrast the style of Sunday Smiled.
Here are the top 100 English words:
- the, be, to, of, and, a, in, that, have, I, it, for, not, on, with, he, as, you, do, at, this, but, his, by, from, they, we, say, her, she, or, an, will, my, one, all, would, there, their, what, so, up, out, if, about, who, get, which, go, me, when, make, can, like, time, no, just, him, know, take, people, into, year, your, good, some, could, them, see, other, than, then, now, look, only, come, its, over, think, also, back, after, use, two, how, our, work, first, well, way, even, new, want, because, any, these, give, day, most, us
Some other good core words for steno, easily briefable:
- always, awful, okay, eazy, water, drop, all right, welcome, love, together, request, familiar, follow, question, ask, continue, nothing, nowhere, nobody, understand, minute, important, today, tomorrow, other, every, everyone, everybody, everything, forever, of course
Meta vocabulary:
- keys, chords, board, stroke, steno, hero, Plover
Simple words, in the format CVC, like mom, pop, tough, John, map, etc. should be fine as well.
This sounds great, I’m still waiting for my keyboard to arrive so I can start learning. I do have a musical background and thought it would be fun to compose a song to learn. How do you see this process working? Would I just send over an mp3 file with the lyrics, or would I be able to make a pull request to Steno Arcade?