The Origin of RiffAtlas
I should explain who "Ataraxic Resonance" is. The simple answer: we're a small team, and RiffAtlas is our first packaged application. The slightly less simple answer requires a bit of backstory — but the branches do eventually merge.
I started writing software in BASIC on a Radio Shack Color Computer
at the age of 8. What a setup: 16K of "extended" RAM, cassette
storage, and a Chiclet keyboard that fought you on every keystroke.
I'd sit for hours, painstakingly typing in program listings from
magazines, only to be met with the ignominy of
?SYNTAX ERR
— followed by more hours hunting down every last typo.
I suppose some things haven't changed all that much.
Twenty-five years in IT later, I've been a developer, various flavors of architect, and eventually moved into software management. Most of my career has been in the Java ecosystem, with meaningful detours through TypeScript, Python, C++, and whatever else the job called for. It's been a good run.
I was around twelve when I first heard the opening salvo of "Hit the Lights" from Metallica's Kill 'Em All — on cassette, naturally. I had no idea guitars could sound that sharp, or that anyone could play them that fast. I fell in love with metal on the spot, and I remain an unapologetic metalhead to this day.
My tastes run wide but hit hard: Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Motörhead, Wednesday 13 and the Murderdolls, The Wildhearts and Ginger's solo work, and Devin Townsend in all his many musical forms. I also have a deep soft spot for the outlaw/classic country side of things — Marty Robbins, Jerry Reed, Waylon Jennings. Good music is good music, and of course the definition of "good" varies from person to person.
If you forced me to name favorites with respect to guitar specifically: Devin Townsend for sheer skill and compositional depth, James Hetfield for style and feel. I'm not here to argue whether they're "the best" — I'm too old for those well-worn debates, and honestly, that's the beautiful thing about music. All of us on this journey of learning the guitar are travelling down similar paths, but every path's scenery is unique.
About four years ago, I picked up my first guitar: a Schecter Damien 6. Bat inlays, EMG 85/81 pickups — I was in love all over again. Of course, I couldn't play a thing. So I set about learning. I quickly abandoned standard notation in favor of tablature, the format tailor-made for guitar.
It wasn't long before I found myself looking at a score in Guitar Pro while holding a pen and notebook instead of a guitar. I'd painstakingly mark up the page in my own shorthand: which bars repeated, which were similar, margins filled with arrows and measure numbers — all of it an attempt to analyze and weigh which parts to focus on first.
Maybe it's just how my mind works: find what repeats, figure out which phrases give you the most coverage for the least practice time, and start there.
I filled up entire notebooks. And eventually the developer in me asked the obvious question: why am I doing this by hand?
RiffAtlas is the answer. An automated, precise version of what I did manually for far too long — built by someone who needed it, for everyone who learns the same way.
Be first to try RiffAtlas
We're building toward a public release. Drop your email and we'll let you know when early access opens.
One email when we launch. That's it.