Yeah you have a List of Recipes and select the one you use, ofcourse with the “Search Bar” and the “look up things you can use this item for” Function like the U-Keybinding in default NEI. You will be able to select which Items get consumed if there is multiple Options, like two different Wood Types or so. (I might even make it always have you select the Items to be used, just in case you notice you did not wanna consume that one Item you have by accident)
Putting shit into a certain mysterious Shape that you have to look up is really garbage and adds no fun Gameplay at all.
As for the Music, Ambient might take a while, but I am planning on adding a way to add Custom Music Discs, where you can program some sort of MIDI alike thing into them to play wherever you live. NPCs will likely have such Music Boxes for Ambient in their Cities later on too.
People will be able to easily distribute those self made tracks too, since only a String would need to be copied.