Hearmark

Dictate and timestamp notes while simultaneously listening to an audio file. Great for critical listening tasks.

Hearmark lets you dictate and timestamp notes while simultaneously listening to an audio file. Great for critical listening tasks.

This app came out of a personal need - I’ve always used car rides for critical listening, whether it’s working on a new track or album. In the past I got into the habit of just trying to remember things I wanted to fix, or even worse: trying to type out notes on my phone while driving, not to mention having to try to explain where in the song or album my note was supposed to be in reference to. Thus Hearmark was born. Now when I’m on the road, I can dictate my notes while listening, with time references, and all I have to do is press one giant button - much safer than typing, much more effective than trying to remember all the ideas that come up.

Hearmark transcribes your notes into a single markdown file, listed as markdown tasks, separated by filename and with timestamps. I chose this output format specifically for ingesting notes into my own workflow, which relies on the markdown-based Obsidian app. How you decide to ingest the text Hearmark creates is up to you. My method of choice is to store the markdown file on iCloud, and then have a symbolically linked version of the file directly in my Obsidian vault.