I’m Sean. I write software for a living, and I play guitar because I love it. Binturong Audio is where those two meet: a small software company building tools for real problems musicians actually have.
This devlog is where I’ll show the work as it happens: what I’m building, how it works, what I measured, and what didn’t pan out.
What I’m building first
My first product is Binturong R.E.D, and it solves a problem I have every time I pick up a guitar. I land on something good while I’m just playing, and five minutes later it’s gone. Recording helps, but working out the part again from a recording is slow, and I rarely get back the exact notes.
Binturong R.E.D listens to what you play and writes it down: notes, tab, and a full score you can open in MuseScore, Guitar Pro, or Logic. It already does this from recordings on my laptop. It will ship as a desktop app first, then as a plug-in for your DAW, and eventually inside a tuner pedal that quietly transcribes everything you play.
The hard part, and the whole point, is accuracy. A transcription you have to fix note by note isn’t saving anyone time. So I measure it, on research datasets and on my own recordings, and I’ll publish those numbers here, good and bad.
How I want to run this company
I’m tired of software that’s rented instead of sold. Subscriptions for tools that don’t change, apps that stop working when a company loses interest, “lifetime” licenses that last until the next major version. Binturong Audio is going to work differently:
- Buy it once. No subscriptions. You pay a fair price and the software is yours.
- I maintain what I sell. If you buy something from me, I keep it working for its whole life: bug fixes, operating system updates, the unglamorous work. You shouldn’t feel like you wasted your money.
- Honest about what works. Every feature on this site is marked as working today, planned, or something I’m still exploring. When something isn’t good enough yet, I’ll say so.
- Your music stays yours. Transcriptions go into open formats that other tools read, so you’re never locked into mine.
I want to earn your money by building tools that deserve it, tools I’d use myself.
Why “binturong”?
A binturong is a real animal: a shaggy, slow-moving tree-dweller from Southeast Asia, sometimes called a bearcat, though it’s neither a bear nor a cat. It’s famous for smelling like buttered popcorn. I like that it’s a little odd, unhurried, and impossible to mistake for anything else. That’s a good spirit for a company that plans to take its time and get things right.
What’s next
Next on the devlog: a look inside Binturong R.E.D, and how it turns a guitar take into tab. If you want to follow along, the devlog has an RSS feed.
Thanks for being here at the start.