9 ms·

Show HN: An attempt to rethink a music sequencer design

305 points by peterrudenko 9y ago

thepaulstella 9y ago
Very cool. I'm looking forward to giving it a spin!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
alnitak 9y ago
Looks interesting. Trying to install it on my phone gets me a "Your device is not compatible with this version" in Android's Play store. What is it you are doing in this app that has special compatibility requiremrents? My phone has a modern qualcomm flagship cpu and latest android.
- peterrudenko 9y ago
  It only runs on tablets for now (i.e. requires a screen about 12x7cm at least). And yes, mobile versions are still quite incomplete, I put all my effort into desktop versions.
  - alnitak 9y ago
    Aha makes sense. Where do I sign up for updates? :-)
hashkb 9y ago
Finally a music tool with version control. I've been wishing for this to happen for so long! The first big player (Ableton etc) to integrate versioning will have a huge advantage.
- dominotw 9y ago
  Can't you just commit your ableton projects in git ?
  - pierrec 9y ago
    Doing what you suggest would require closing and re-opening the project (which can take a while when working with GBs of samples). Moving through the version tree could be as fast and efficient as undo/redo operations, which are usually instantaneous. In fact, DAWs already implement version control! It's just ridiculously limited, since all you can do is undo/redo. Depending on how they manage it internally, adding better version control features might not be that difficult. History and snapshots (a la Photoshop) would already be a vast improvement over what's generally available in DAWs.
  - chrissoundz 9y ago
    Yes, but you won't get the intended output from a git diff or merge etc.
  - virgil_disgr4ce 9y ago
    There's a LOT of binaries involved (in the sense of large .wav files at least), and I doubt the Live file format particularly lends itself to text-based version control
    - wheels 9y ago
      The Live file format is gzipped XML. It very much lends itself to text-based version control. (I've even played around with adding such as a third party.)
      - virgil_disgr4ce 9y ago
        Whoa, cool! Good to know—thanks!
  - radarsat1 9y ago
    I do that all the time with my Renoise projects. Big files sometimes, so not perfectly efficient, but nonetheless it works great.
  - glenneroo 9y ago
    It would be difficult because every few minor revisions they update their DRM which forces you to resave the entire project to a new location.
- wdfx 9y ago
  Somewhat this. However, I am sometimes reminded by my more creative minded friends to abandon the rigid developer mentality of 'commit and keep everything ever; just in case' and instead follow a more creative focus on just making something. I have practically found that exploring too many ideas and branches ultimately delays the completion of any creative process ;)
  - cardiffspaceman 9y ago
    What if the tool does the committing, and automatically does the commits as deltas? Something like the idea that the 'save' is fairly similar to the undo-redo data rather than some optimized object graph or optimized relational database representing one iteration.
    - wdfx 9y ago
      Ardour has snapshots [1] which is a somewhat manual approach to this. I assume you can copy/paste parts of a session between snapshots as a "merge". [1] http://manual.ardour.org/working-with-sessions/snapshots/ http://manual.ardour.org/working-with-sessions/snapshots/
      - rhizome 9y ago
        Hydrogen also has a "save version" action that does something similar.
- robotresearcher 9y ago
  Yes! With branches to try things out. It's hard to get the interface easy, even for text, but this would be great in principle. Version control is the one of the most important ideas with the least uptake among regular people.
- stevefolta 9y ago
  I use Git on my Reaper projects all the time. But I've almost never gone back to an earlier version, and when I have I could've probably anticipated the branch point and just used "Save As". Nonetheless, it feels nice to have history "just in case".
- travbrack 9y ago
  You can do this with Splice: https://splice.com/ https://splice.com/
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- jdietrich 9y ago
  Splice is a user-friendly version control and backup system that supports Ableton, logic and FL Studio. https://splice.com/ https://splice.com/
- yellowapple 9y ago
  If it does this for multiple authors, then it would be invaluable for cases where different composers are handling different aspects (such as if one composer is focusing on percussion and another is focusing on wind instruments, as is sometimes the case when composing music for marching groups).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
dominotw 9y ago
I would really like the equivalent of Unity in the DAW world. Let me script modulators/sound design while doing arrangement/mixing and stuff in UI.
- efnx 9y ago
  In that case you may really like reaktor. I'm pretty sure it integrates with reason and you can do graphical or C programming for it.
  - peterrudenko 9y ago
    Or Bitwig Studio - it has controller scripting API.
- RickS 9y ago
  max/msp might be of interest, then: https://cycling74.com/products/max/ https://cycling74.com/products/max/
  - blacksmith_tb 9y ago
    And/or PD (pure data)[1] which is its FOSS cousin. 1: http://puredata.info/ http://puredata.info/
  - tomduncalf 9y ago
    Max for Live is probably particularly relevant here, as you get the full compositional power of Live, plus the flexibility of Max/MSP
- kennywinker 9y ago
  Logic Pro X has MIDI Scripters, which might do some of what you're looking for, while still being a traditional DAW. Saw a video the other day of Brian Eno describing how he takes a regular drum beat, and adds a stack of Scriptors to it to make it probabilistic and ever-changing.
bmer 9y ago
Looks really cool to me! I love the beautiful UI -- what tools did you use to build it in C++? I am very interested in learning more about UI design in C++.
- peterrudenko 9y ago
  It's built with JUCE, all-encompassing C++ framework like QT, but smaller (and with lots of audio processing classes).
ssharp 9y ago
"Most of the DAW interfaces often seem overcomplicated, and they only tend to get more and more bloated over time." How much can you simplify the interface and still make it do everything producers want to do? Garageband simplified the interface quite a bit compared to Logic, but even that can get complicated and ultimately isn't as flexible as other DAWs. I've been a fairly loyal user of Sonar and FL Studio for over a decade, largely out of habit because that's what I used when I first started and don't care to learn anything different. Especially with FL Studio, early versions of that were extremely simple. At it's core, it's still fairly simple, but allows you a lot of flexibility to do crazy things through automation. Especially in EDM, the DAW has essentially become another instrument for creativity, so limiting that will limit the audience to those with lesser needs. I do think there is a big hole for a cross-platform DAW that's at least halfway decent, so this is exciting to see!
- tripzilch 9y ago
  > I do think there is a big hole for a cross-platform DAW that's at least halfway decent well there's Renoise ( http://renoise.com http://renoise.com ), which is IMHO, amazing. it's just that, it's based on the old-school trackers paradigm (like Fast Tracker, Impulse Tracker, etc), which not everybody likes (but is actually a great fit for cutting up breakbeats and stuff that fit step-sequencer like workflows). Enhanced with support for VSTs, LADSPA etc (and built-in effects of course) and a sampler interface to design instruments that kinda blows the socks off just about anything. so there's that. and I love it :) but I do agree there's a big hole for a DAW with a good piano-roll and "stretchy" timelines like the arrangement view in Ableton. especially the way you can navigate the timeline by dragging on it left and right, but dragging up and down to zoom, such an intuitive way to navigate in sonic material where you often want to be able to zoom from hawks-eye overview to dive straight down and adjust some detail in the 10s of milliseconds, and back. I don't get why nobody has copied this way of navigation, it's IMHO right up there with ableton's timestretch/markers features that make it great. Yes Bitwig copied it, but that's partially Ableton's team. Bitwig is crossplatform, btw. But I never could get it do what I wanted. But I had a sort of temporary/educational license which expired and wowww was that program ever completely useless in demo-version. Speaking of that, it's the main reason why I started using Renoise. It was the only program that was even remotely useful in demo-version (just disabled export-to-wav and render-to-sample, inconvenient, but doesn't make the program useless, you can always record your sound in another way). Of course I got it licensed by now, having had way too much fun with it. It's only like 85 euros (including tax), compare to what you pay for Ableton nowadays, which doesn't even run on Linux. Oh and we all know there's no "best" DAW, right? No shame in using multiple tools, each for which is best at what it does, and just bounce the audio through your OS audio framework (there's equivalents for JACK on Windows and Mac, right?)
vincelt 9y ago
Love the concept! Would be great to have more built-in instruments to try, maybe some could be adapted from LMMS? I also wonder which tools you used to build the UI. Good luck with the project!
webscalist 9y ago
How do I build on linux? Don't have debian.
- peterrudenko 9y ago
  You may check travis.yml (a bit hacky script but it's all I have for now).
- vortico 9y ago
  I don't know how to build from source (haven't checked), but you can extract .deb files with `ar x whatever.deb` and `tar xf data.tar.gz`.
adamnemecek 9y ago
Lol I've been working full time on something like this and wanted to go commercial with it. But it still seems different enough. But the UI is too similar. Btw is that really a Wintersun song loaded in the screenshot? It does look like it could be a Wintersun song. I'm actually kinda inspired by Jari's workflow so I'm guessing I'm not the only one lol.
- sleazebreeze 9y ago
  The developer has a song named "Winter Sun". As a fellow Wintersun fan, I was excited too, but then realized it was not the same.
ptrkrlsrd 9y ago
As a musician I must say that I love the simplicity, version control and workflow of this application! While as a developer I must say that I love seeing a modern cross platform application developed using something else than Electron.
ryjm 9y ago
Man do I miss native desktop apps. This is so well done! Something like this could be a Guitar Pro killer if it had support for writing a score/tablature. Imagine being able to commit changes to a score and have your bandmates pull it down and review, add to it, etc... it could really change the way we write music, especially in a world where you don't have to be in the same room to record an album together.
anigbrowl 9y ago
Intriguing, I'll give it a whirl for a few weeks to see if it can tempt me back from hardware sequencers.
acomjean 9y ago
It has a product home page: https://helioworkstation.com https://helioworkstation.com One of the features is "Incomplete - Helio is a one-man hobby project, that is a work in progress. The author builds it for himself and shares with the world." I give +1 for honesty. Honestly it has the same "piano roll" grid layout many other programs I've dabbled with have (garage band, ableton). It has linux support which is great.
- rhizome 9y ago
  From the video, it appears to me that the main interface is basically a combined piano roll? I did not get the information I wanted from the page or the video.
archagon 9y ago
This looks very nice! I'll have to give it a try soon. If anyone is interested, I've also taken a whirl at solving the problem of overcomplicated DAW interfaces, albeit in a more limited capacity. My first project in this vein is Composer's Sketchpad[1], which aims to explore "freehand composition" by letting users draw notes in strokes directly with their fingers or stylus, bending the pitch and adjusting the length as they go along. The second is MusicMessages![2], in which every note is a button in a giant scroll view, allowing the user to enter and adjust quick melodies with just a few taps. While these apps will never be remotely as powerful as a fully featured DAW, they allow the user to explore certain kinds of musical ideas far more efficiently than with FL Studio or Logic. In my opinion, one of the biggest barriers in creative thinking is the amount of cruft and micro decision-making between the artist and their output, and musical composition is particularly bad at this — there's no "lightweight Markdown editor" equivalent for composition quite yet. Helio is very exciting because it has some of those same benefits while sitting far closer to a professional DAW. I'm very interested to see where it goes! [1]: http://composerssketchpad.com http://composerssketchpad.com [2]: http://musicmessages.io http://musicmessages.io (currently working on a full iOS version as a separate app... will fold the Messages extension into that one)
- armandososa 9y ago
  These are both very cool. Congratulations for doing something so out of the ordinary. As soon as I have some free time I will play with composer sketchpad.
- Joof 9y ago
  I've seen composer's sketchpad before and found it really interesting. I'll have to give it a real try.
- wtf_is_up 9y ago
  I really like the concept of Composer's Sketchpad. I like to play around with FL Studio piano rolls, but it is a little overwhelming. Too bad I don't have any iOS devices because I'd love to mess with your app.
- JuliusKaiser 9y ago
6stringmerc 9y ago
Looks a lot like Melodyne. And FL Studio. A "re-think" would be using depth of space to be able to go "in and out" like layers. It's a nice project and I hope it was gratifying. Reaper has solved the issue of "One Simple DAW to rule them all" for me (used to be Cool Edit Pro 2.0) because it genuinely covers so much usable turf (Max is not in the same conversation as 'simple DAW'). It is the best mousetrap for the money on the market.
bluetwo 9y ago
I would really urge the developer to identify the target audience for this and to define what needs they have that may not be met by the current crop of similar tools. I would also recommend finding some of those people, talking to them directly, and watch as they learn to use this application. For this to survive in a crowded marketplace it is going to have to find and serve a niche very well.
deleted 9y ago
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dharness 9y ago
Beautifully clean, and simple! I've had my eye out for something like this, and I really do feel the other solutions are too big and clunky. That said, I think the font is clutery. The intro user flow is atypical and disruptive. I think it should start on this https://puu.sh/vy4pd/776dde20a8.png https://puu.sh/vy4pd/776dde20a8.png screen instead of inside a project. Then once inside maybe a little walkthrough or some guides? Lastly I think the weird labels (Arps, counterpoint, melodic) on the left hand side are unintuitive for a novice. Also the addition of alt+drag to duplicate would be really nice ;) But all in all, would use!
- archagon 9y ago
  Yeah — I just realized those labels were the default names for different layers, not special modes!
- mortenjorck 9y ago
  Agreed on the typography: "Comfortaa" is not what I would consider a UI font. As an alternative, OSS type family, I would recommend Lato (https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato). It's the family Slack uses, and I think it would look great in the UI for Helio.
uranian 9y ago
I was interested, until I saw the way too minimalistic demo on the homepage. If you call it a DAW with VST support and so, than just a demo of a piano piece with a huge piano roll doesn't really impress. I don't want to be too negative as I really like the idea. But at first sight this is by far no match at all with the great DAW's out there. You can say they are bloated, but no one says you need to use all the features that are available. With most DAW's you can make a similar demo with ease.
- rhizome 9y ago
  I think they use the term "DAW" too much for something that doesn't necessarily satisfy on that level. Maybe they don't think "sequencer" is impressive enough?
cJ0th 9y ago
It's beautiful and the version control feature is something I've been wishing for for a while. In the best case it'll probably still take a while till it is - no pun intended - production ready (in the sense that I would feel comfortable giving up my current sequencer), though. For the moment I am rather happy with Presonus' Studio One (even though the current version is a bit bug ridden) Compared to Cubase it already has a drastically simplified (and enhanced) workflow.
archagon 9y ago
After playing with it a little, a few suggestions: 1. Make it possible to (inertial) pan and pinch zoom when using a Mac trackpad. This would be significantly faster than using the lower navigator for Mac users. Also, I don't think it's a good idea to make the scroll wheel change the x-scale. 2. Add a shortcut for deleting notes when in "feather" mode — maybe middle-click? (I see right-click is reserved for changing layers.) This would make it possible to work on a piece of music without having to use the keyboard or move the mouse away from the canvas. 3. Is there a way to change the division of beats? IMO there should be a way to do this very quickly, so that I can switch between divisions of 4 and 3 for example. Great work! Out of curiosity, how long have you been working on this project?
- archagon 9y ago
  Also, creating a new layer should be simpler — putting it in the New Project menu is weird. Maybe just have a "+Layer" button under the lowest layer? It should also be possible to drag layers and change their order.
IshKebab 9y ago
Looks very nice, well done!
fxj 9y ago
I installed it on a nvidia shield tablet with latest android 7.0 but it is stuck in the "starting the engines" screen.
billconan 9y ago
The ui is really beautiful. It seems that you implemented a complete ui library for this app? Do you use opengl for rendering? or a 2d graphics library? the ui itself can be an awesome project by itself!
fxj 9y ago
It would be great to have this sequencer in caustic. Is it possible to couple them via internal MIDI?
smrtinsert 9y ago
I love the circle of fifths based chord entry system. Very novel.
prando 9y ago
Beautiful UI. Despite what others might comment about its utility and relevance, I see this as a very interesting project to learn audio processing & clean UI design. Please let us know your background. Are you an audio DSP engineer? Is there a list of features that you are planning to integrate? Kudos!
seertaak 9y ago
This looks really nice! Shameless plug: I've created a looper/DAW also (https://zenaud.io https://zenaud.io)
- tchaffee 9y ago
  Please save us a click and some reading and put the supported platforms in your plug? Looks pretty cool, but I only use Linux.
jefurii 9y ago
I dream that someone will come out with a sequencer that's basically a Cirklon with an ncurses UI.
j_s 9y ago
The last DAW discussion I have bookmarked was nearly 3 years ago, a Show HN for Wavepot, a JavaScript programmer's "DAW": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7905910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7905910 | http://wavepot.com/ http://wavepot.com/
lightedman 9y ago
Take this, combine with the capabilities and tab/score display of TuxGuitar, I'd be one happy person.
baldajan 9y ago
As a DAW created by a single person, I must say great job. But one thing that stuck out for me most was the merging of instruments into a single visual track. As a person that designs simple DAW interfaces for a living [1], I highly recommend against that, and instead move to a more traditional instrument/track separated model. Some back story: when we released the first version of Medly, we actually had notes on top of each other, merging the tracks into one. This turns out to be bad for both visuals (as it overcomplicates things) and for interactions. We ditched it for a more traditional format, but added a feature that let you view notes from other tracks when editing. Never regretted that decision since. [1] http://medlylabs.com http://medlylabs.com
- psyc 9y ago
  This is far and away the best thing in this thread.
tchaffee 9y ago
I was recently searching for a Linux sequencer and was disappointed with what's out there so this comes at a good time. It looks pretty nice and I'll try it out soon. Two suggestions: take a look Seq24 which is made for sequencing stuff in a live environment. You might find ideas to borrow from it. Also, on your github page you say "Most of the DAW interfaces often seem overcomplicated". But this isn't a DAW is it? I use both DAWs and sequencers and my DAW interface is complex, but needs to be because it deals with audio and there is a lot of tools I need to work with that audio. I think there is much more opportunity to keep sequencer interfaces clean because they do less.
psyc 9y ago
I like the idea. I'm a composer, and can never find a simple music sketch app that I like. Everything is either too complicated, too expensive, or some other kind of terrible. I guess Garage Band isn't too bad, but I still have trouble with it. My preferred way of working is with the built-in touch-screen sequencers in Korgs and Yamahas. That workflow is damned perfect. On the desktop, there hasn't been anything usable since Impulse Tracker. I played around with your app for a while. I found the UI frustrating overall. I couldn't find any instructions. There are no tooltips. It needs tooltips at least. Copy/paste flummoxed me over and over again. I seemed to hit the "end" of the track after 10 measures?? I could make notes longer, but not shorter. After the first 4 toolbar commands, I couldn't figure out what any of the rest do. I'd really love to have a nice desktop composition sketch app, with a piano roll just like this. Nobody can persuade me that anybody has done this right yet, so as far as I'm concerned you have no competition. I hope you'll keep working on this. I suggest working on the UI.
- kennywinker 9y ago
  Have you had a look at Korg Gadget on iOS? it's not perfect, but maybe it's model works better for you than GarageBand... I'm a fan.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
zensavona 9y ago
I just had a play with this. I must say, my favourite feature so far is the chord suggestion wheel (dunno if this interface has a name). A lot of the time I feel like when experimenting with chord progressions or in the beginning stages of writing a song I miss out on interesting chord combinations simply because when messing around on the piano I forget to use or try certain chords or variations. It's really nice to have this selection there (although including extended chords would be awesome!) Also, I noticed you build it with JUCE. I'd be highly interested in a series or even very short writeup about how you made the ui and it's various components with JUCE. I haven't built anything nontrivial with it yet but audio (and as an extension, UI programming) is very interesting to me.
- ryan-allen 9y ago
  OH this is one of my favourite things (chord explorers), Ableton doesn't have one but Cubase does. I am surprised it isn't more of a feature elsewhere, as they solve the problem of 'I have to learn to play these chords to effectively compose with them'. You don't have to be an expert player to use your ears to write harmonically interesting things as a result. I can't wait to get home and try this!
  - zensavona 9y ago
    I had no idea cubase has this. I sometimes use a plugin called Cthulu (link below) to achieve a similar outcome, but the workflow is nowhere near as nice. https://www.xferrecords.com/products/cthulhu https://www.xferrecords.com/products/cthulhu

305 points by peterrudenko 9y ago

thepaulstella 9y ago

Very cool. I'm looking forward to giving it a spin!

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

alnitak 9y ago

Looks interesting. Trying to install it on my phone gets me a "Your device is not compatible with this version" in Android's Play store. What is it you are doing in this app that has special compatibility requiremrents? My phone has a modern qualcomm flagship cpu and latest android.

peterrudenko 9y ago
It only runs on tablets for now (i.e. requires a screen about 12x7cm at least). And yes, mobile versions are still quite incomplete, I put all my effort into desktop versions.
- alnitak 9y ago
  Aha makes sense. Where do I sign up for updates? :-)

hashkb 9y ago

Finally a music tool with version control. I've been wishing for this to happen for so long! The first big player (Ableton etc) to integrate versioning will have a huge advantage.

dominotw 9y ago
Can't you just commit your ableton projects in git ?
- pierrec 9y ago
  Doing what you suggest would require closing and re-opening the project (which can take a while when working with GBs of samples). Moving through the version tree could be as fast and efficient as undo/redo operations, which are usually instantaneous. In fact, DAWs already implement version control! It's just ridiculously limited, since all you can do is undo/redo. Depending on how they manage it internally, adding better version control features might not be that difficult. History and snapshots (a la Photoshop) would already be a vast improvement over what's generally available in DAWs.
- chrissoundz 9y ago
  Yes, but you won't get the intended output from a git diff or merge etc.
- virgil_disgr4ce 9y ago
  There's a LOT of binaries involved (in the sense of large .wav files at least), and I doubt the Live file format particularly lends itself to text-based version control
  - wheels 9y ago
    The Live file format is gzipped XML. It very much lends itself to text-based version control. (I've even played around with adding such as a third party.)
    - virgil_disgr4ce 9y ago
      Whoa, cool! Good to know—thanks!
- radarsat1 9y ago
  I do that all the time with my Renoise projects. Big files sometimes, so not perfectly efficient, but nonetheless it works great.
- glenneroo 9y ago
  It would be difficult because every few minor revisions they update their DRM which forces you to resave the entire project to a new location.
wdfx 9y ago
Somewhat this. However, I am sometimes reminded by my more creative minded friends to abandon the rigid developer mentality of 'commit and keep everything ever; just in case' and instead follow a more creative focus on just making something. I have practically found that exploring too many ideas and branches ultimately delays the completion of any creative process ;)
- cardiffspaceman 9y ago
  What if the tool does the committing, and automatically does the commits as deltas? Something like the idea that the 'save' is fairly similar to the undo-redo data rather than some optimized object graph or optimized relational database representing one iteration.
  - wdfx 9y ago
    Ardour has snapshots [1] which is a somewhat manual approach to this. I assume you can copy/paste parts of a session between snapshots as a "merge". [1] http://manual.ardour.org/working-with-sessions/snapshots/ http://manual.ardour.org/working-with-sessions/snapshots/
    - rhizome 9y ago
      Hydrogen also has a "save version" action that does something similar.
robotresearcher 9y ago
Yes! With branches to try things out. It's hard to get the interface easy, even for text, but this would be great in principle. Version control is the one of the most important ideas with the least uptake among regular people.
stevefolta 9y ago
I use Git on my Reaper projects all the time. But I've almost never gone back to an earlier version, and when I have I could've probably anticipated the branch point and just used "Save As". Nonetheless, it feels nice to have history "just in case".
travbrack 9y ago
You can do this with Splice: https://splice.com/ https://splice.com/
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
jdietrich 9y ago
Splice is a user-friendly version control and backup system that supports Ableton, logic and FL Studio. https://splice.com/ https://splice.com/
yellowapple 9y ago
If it does this for multiple authors, then it would be invaluable for cases where different composers are handling different aspects (such as if one composer is focusing on percussion and another is focusing on wind instruments, as is sometimes the case when composing music for marching groups).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

dominotw 9y ago

I would really like the equivalent of Unity in the DAW world. Let me script modulators/sound design while doing arrangement/mixing and stuff in UI.

efnx 9y ago
In that case you may really like reaktor. I'm pretty sure it integrates with reason and you can do graphical or C programming for it.
- peterrudenko 9y ago
  Or Bitwig Studio - it has controller scripting API.
RickS 9y ago
max/msp might be of interest, then: https://cycling74.com/products/max/ https://cycling74.com/products/max/
- blacksmith_tb 9y ago
  And/or PD (pure data)[1] which is its FOSS cousin. 1: http://puredata.info/ http://puredata.info/
- tomduncalf 9y ago
  Max for Live is probably particularly relevant here, as you get the full compositional power of Live, plus the flexibility of Max/MSP
kennywinker 9y ago
Logic Pro X has MIDI Scripters, which might do some of what you're looking for, while still being a traditional DAW. Saw a video the other day of Brian Eno describing how he takes a regular drum beat, and adds a stack of Scriptors to it to make it probabilistic and ever-changing.

bmer 9y ago

Looks really cool to me! I love the beautiful UI -- what tools did you use to build it in C++? I am very interested in learning more about UI design in C++.

peterrudenko 9y ago
It's built with JUCE, all-encompassing C++ framework like QT, but smaller (and with lots of audio processing classes).

ssharp 9y ago

"Most of the DAW interfaces often seem overcomplicated, and they only tend to get more and more bloated over time." How much can you simplify the interface and still make it do everything producers want to do? Garageband simplified the interface quite a bit compared to Logic, but even that can get complicated and ultimately isn't as flexible as other DAWs. I've been a fairly loyal user of Sonar and FL Studio for over a decade, largely out of habit because that's what I used when I first started and don't care to learn anything different. Especially with FL Studio, early versions of that were extremely simple. At it's core, it's still fairly simple, but allows you a lot of flexibility to do crazy things through automation. Especially in EDM, the DAW has essentially become another instrument for creativity, so limiting that will limit the audience to those with lesser needs. I do think there is a big hole for a cross-platform DAW that's at least halfway decent, so this is exciting to see!

tripzilch 9y ago
> I do think there is a big hole for a cross-platform DAW that's at least halfway decent well there's Renoise ( http://renoise.com http://renoise.com ), which is IMHO, amazing. it's just that, it's based on the old-school trackers paradigm (like Fast Tracker, Impulse Tracker, etc), which not everybody likes (but is actually a great fit for cutting up breakbeats and stuff that fit step-sequencer like workflows). Enhanced with support for VSTs, LADSPA etc (and built-in effects of course) and a sampler interface to design instruments that kinda blows the socks off just about anything. so there's that. and I love it :) but I do agree there's a big hole for a DAW with a good piano-roll and "stretchy" timelines like the arrangement view in Ableton. especially the way you can navigate the timeline by dragging on it left and right, but dragging up and down to zoom, such an intuitive way to navigate in sonic material where you often want to be able to zoom from hawks-eye overview to dive straight down and adjust some detail in the 10s of milliseconds, and back. I don't get why nobody has copied this way of navigation, it's IMHO right up there with ableton's timestretch/markers features that make it great. Yes Bitwig copied it, but that's partially Ableton's team. Bitwig is crossplatform, btw. But I never could get it do what I wanted. But I had a sort of temporary/educational license which expired and wowww was that program ever completely useless in demo-version. Speaking of that, it's the main reason why I started using Renoise. It was the only program that was even remotely useful in demo-version (just disabled export-to-wav and render-to-sample, inconvenient, but doesn't make the program useless, you can always record your sound in another way). Of course I got it licensed by now, having had way too much fun with it. It's only like 85 euros (including tax), compare to what you pay for Ableton nowadays, which doesn't even run on Linux. Oh and we all know there's no "best" DAW, right? No shame in using multiple tools, each for which is best at what it does, and just bounce the audio through your OS audio framework (there's equivalents for JACK on Windows and Mac, right?)

vincelt 9y ago

Love the concept! Would be great to have more built-in instruments to try, maybe some could be adapted from LMMS? I also wonder which tools you used to build the UI. Good luck with the project!

webscalist 9y ago

How do I build on linux? Don't have debian.

peterrudenko 9y ago
You may check travis.yml (a bit hacky script but it's all I have for now).
vortico 9y ago
I don't know how to build from source (haven't checked), but you can extract .deb files with `ar x whatever.deb` and `tar xf data.tar.gz`.

adamnemecek 9y ago

Lol I've been working full time on something like this and wanted to go commercial with it. But it still seems different enough. But the UI is too similar. Btw is that really a Wintersun song loaded in the screenshot? It does look like it could be a Wintersun song. I'm actually kinda inspired by Jari's workflow so I'm guessing I'm not the only one lol.

sleazebreeze 9y ago
The developer has a song named "Winter Sun". As a fellow Wintersun fan, I was excited too, but then realized it was not the same.

ptrkrlsrd 9y ago

As a musician I must say that I love the simplicity, version control and workflow of this application! While as a developer I must say that I love seeing a modern cross platform application developed using something else than Electron.

ryjm 9y ago

Man do I miss native desktop apps. This is so well done! Something like this could be a Guitar Pro killer if it had support for writing a score/tablature. Imagine being able to commit changes to a score and have your bandmates pull it down and review, add to it, etc... it could really change the way we write music, especially in a world where you don't have to be in the same room to record an album together.

anigbrowl 9y ago

Intriguing, I'll give it a whirl for a few weeks to see if it can tempt me back from hardware sequencers.

acomjean 9y ago

It has a product home page: https://helioworkstation.com https://helioworkstation.com One of the features is "Incomplete - Helio is a one-man hobby project, that is a work in progress. The author builds it for himself and shares with the world." I give +1 for honesty. Honestly it has the same "piano roll" grid layout many other programs I've dabbled with have (garage band, ableton). It has linux support which is great.

rhizome 9y ago
From the video, it appears to me that the main interface is basically a combined piano roll? I did not get the information I wanted from the page or the video.

archagon 9y ago

This looks very nice! I'll have to give it a try soon. If anyone is interested, I've also taken a whirl at solving the problem of overcomplicated DAW interfaces, albeit in a more limited capacity. My first project in this vein is Composer's Sketchpad[1], which aims to explore "freehand composition" by letting users draw notes in strokes directly with their fingers or stylus, bending the pitch and adjusting the length as they go along. The second is MusicMessages![2], in which every note is a button in a giant scroll view, allowing the user to enter and adjust quick melodies with just a few taps. While these apps will never be remotely as powerful as a fully featured DAW, they allow the user to explore certain kinds of musical ideas far more efficiently than with FL Studio or Logic. In my opinion, one of the biggest barriers in creative thinking is the amount of cruft and micro decision-making between the artist and their output, and musical composition is particularly bad at this — there's no "lightweight Markdown editor" equivalent for composition quite yet. Helio is very exciting because it has some of those same benefits while sitting far closer to a professional DAW. I'm very interested to see where it goes! [1]: http://composerssketchpad.com http://composerssketchpad.com [2]: http://musicmessages.io http://musicmessages.io (currently working on a full iOS version as a separate app... will fold the Messages extension into that one)

armandososa 9y ago
These are both very cool. Congratulations for doing something so out of the ordinary. As soon as I have some free time I will play with composer sketchpad.
Joof 9y ago
I've seen composer's sketchpad before and found it really interesting. I'll have to give it a real try.
wtf_is_up 9y ago
I really like the concept of Composer's Sketchpad. I like to play around with FL Studio piano rolls, but it is a little overwhelming. Too bad I don't have any iOS devices because I'd love to mess with your app.
JuliusKaiser 9y ago

6stringmerc 9y ago

Looks a lot like Melodyne. And FL Studio. A "re-think" would be using depth of space to be able to go "in and out" like layers. It's a nice project and I hope it was gratifying. Reaper has solved the issue of "One Simple DAW to rule them all" for me (used to be Cool Edit Pro 2.0) because it genuinely covers so much usable turf (Max is not in the same conversation as 'simple DAW'). It is the best mousetrap for the money on the market.

bluetwo 9y ago

I would really urge the developer to identify the target audience for this and to define what needs they have that may not be met by the current crop of similar tools. I would also recommend finding some of those people, talking to them directly, and watch as they learn to use this application. For this to survive in a crowded marketplace it is going to have to find and serve a niche very well.

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dharness 9y ago

Beautifully clean, and simple! I've had my eye out for something like this, and I really do feel the other solutions are too big and clunky. That said, I think the font is clutery. The intro user flow is atypical and disruptive. I think it should start on this https://puu.sh/vy4pd/776dde20a8.png https://puu.sh/vy4pd/776dde20a8.png screen instead of inside a project. Then once inside maybe a little walkthrough or some guides? Lastly I think the weird labels (Arps, counterpoint, melodic) on the left hand side are unintuitive for a novice. Also the addition of alt+drag to duplicate would be really nice ;) But all in all, would use!

archagon 9y ago
Yeah — I just realized those labels were the default names for different layers, not special modes!
mortenjorck 9y ago
Agreed on the typography: "Comfortaa" is not what I would consider a UI font. As an alternative, OSS type family, I would recommend Lato (https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato). It's the family Slack uses, and I think it would look great in the UI for Helio.

uranian 9y ago

I was interested, until I saw the way too minimalistic demo on the homepage. If you call it a DAW with VST support and so, than just a demo of a piano piece with a huge piano roll doesn't really impress. I don't want to be too negative as I really like the idea. But at first sight this is by far no match at all with the great DAW's out there. You can say they are bloated, but no one says you need to use all the features that are available. With most DAW's you can make a similar demo with ease.

rhizome 9y ago
I think they use the term "DAW" too much for something that doesn't necessarily satisfy on that level. Maybe they don't think "sequencer" is impressive enough?

cJ0th 9y ago

It's beautiful and the version control feature is something I've been wishing for for a while. In the best case it'll probably still take a while till it is - no pun intended - production ready (in the sense that I would feel comfortable giving up my current sequencer), though. For the moment I am rather happy with Presonus' Studio One (even though the current version is a bit bug ridden) Compared to Cubase it already has a drastically simplified (and enhanced) workflow.

archagon 9y ago

After playing with it a little, a few suggestions: 1. Make it possible to (inertial) pan and pinch zoom when using a Mac trackpad. This would be significantly faster than using the lower navigator for Mac users. Also, I don't think it's a good idea to make the scroll wheel change the x-scale. 2. Add a shortcut for deleting notes when in "feather" mode — maybe middle-click? (I see right-click is reserved for changing layers.) This would make it possible to work on a piece of music without having to use the keyboard or move the mouse away from the canvas. 3. Is there a way to change the division of beats? IMO there should be a way to do this very quickly, so that I can switch between divisions of 4 and 3 for example. Great work! Out of curiosity, how long have you been working on this project?

archagon 9y ago
Also, creating a new layer should be simpler — putting it in the New Project menu is weird. Maybe just have a "+Layer" button under the lowest layer? It should also be possible to drag layers and change their order.

IshKebab 9y ago

Looks very nice, well done!

fxj 9y ago

I installed it on a nvidia shield tablet with latest android 7.0 but it is stuck in the "starting the engines" screen.

billconan 9y ago

The ui is really beautiful. It seems that you implemented a complete ui library for this app? Do you use opengl for rendering? or a 2d graphics library? the ui itself can be an awesome project by itself!

fxj 9y ago

It would be great to have this sequencer in caustic. Is it possible to couple them via internal MIDI?

smrtinsert 9y ago

I love the circle of fifths based chord entry system. Very novel.

prando 9y ago

Beautiful UI. Despite what others might comment about its utility and relevance, I see this as a very interesting project to learn audio processing & clean UI design. Please let us know your background. Are you an audio DSP engineer? Is there a list of features that you are planning to integrate? Kudos!

seertaak 9y ago

This looks really nice! Shameless plug: I've created a looper/DAW also (https://zenaud.io https://zenaud.io)

tchaffee 9y ago
Please save us a click and some reading and put the supported platforms in your plug? Looks pretty cool, but I only use Linux.

jefurii 9y ago

I dream that someone will come out with a sequencer that's basically a Cirklon with an ncurses UI.

j_s 9y ago

The last DAW discussion I have bookmarked was nearly 3 years ago, a Show HN for Wavepot, a JavaScript programmer's "DAW": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7905910 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7905910 | http://wavepot.com/ http://wavepot.com/

lightedman 9y ago

Take this, combine with the capabilities and tab/score display of TuxGuitar, I'd be one happy person.

baldajan 9y ago

As a DAW created by a single person, I must say great job. But one thing that stuck out for me most was the merging of instruments into a single visual track. As a person that designs simple DAW interfaces for a living [1], I highly recommend against that, and instead move to a more traditional instrument/track separated model. Some back story: when we released the first version of Medly, we actually had notes on top of each other, merging the tracks into one. This turns out to be bad for both visuals (as it overcomplicates things) and for interactions. We ditched it for a more traditional format, but added a feature that let you view notes from other tracks when editing. Never regretted that decision since. [1] http://medlylabs.com http://medlylabs.com

psyc 9y ago
This is far and away the best thing in this thread.

tchaffee 9y ago

I was recently searching for a Linux sequencer and was disappointed with what's out there so this comes at a good time. It looks pretty nice and I'll try it out soon. Two suggestions: take a look Seq24 which is made for sequencing stuff in a live environment. You might find ideas to borrow from it. Also, on your github page you say "Most of the DAW interfaces often seem overcomplicated". But this isn't a DAW is it? I use both DAWs and sequencers and my DAW interface is complex, but needs to be because it deals with audio and there is a lot of tools I need to work with that audio. I think there is much more opportunity to keep sequencer interfaces clean because they do less.

psyc 9y ago

I like the idea. I'm a composer, and can never find a simple music sketch app that I like. Everything is either too complicated, too expensive, or some other kind of terrible. I guess Garage Band isn't too bad, but I still have trouble with it. My preferred way of working is with the built-in touch-screen sequencers in Korgs and Yamahas. That workflow is damned perfect. On the desktop, there hasn't been anything usable since Impulse Tracker. I played around with your app for a while. I found the UI frustrating overall. I couldn't find any instructions. There are no tooltips. It needs tooltips at least. Copy/paste flummoxed me over and over again. I seemed to hit the "end" of the track after 10 measures?? I could make notes longer, but not shorter. After the first 4 toolbar commands, I couldn't figure out what any of the rest do. I'd really love to have a nice desktop composition sketch app, with a piano roll just like this. Nobody can persuade me that anybody has done this right yet, so as far as I'm concerned you have no competition. I hope you'll keep working on this. I suggest working on the UI.

kennywinker 9y ago
Have you had a look at Korg Gadget on iOS? it's not perfect, but maybe it's model works better for you than GarageBand... I'm a fan.
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zensavona 9y ago

I just had a play with this. I must say, my favourite feature so far is the chord suggestion wheel (dunno if this interface has a name). A lot of the time I feel like when experimenting with chord progressions or in the beginning stages of writing a song I miss out on interesting chord combinations simply because when messing around on the piano I forget to use or try certain chords or variations. It's really nice to have this selection there (although including extended chords would be awesome!) Also, I noticed you build it with JUCE. I'd be highly interested in a series or even very short writeup about how you made the ui and it's various components with JUCE. I haven't built anything nontrivial with it yet but audio (and as an extension, UI programming) is very interesting to me.

ryan-allen 9y ago
OH this is one of my favourite things (chord explorers), Ableton doesn't have one but Cubase does. I am surprised it isn't more of a feature elsewhere, as they solve the problem of 'I have to learn to play these chords to effectively compose with them'. You don't have to be an expert player to use your ears to write harmonically interesting things as a result. I can't wait to get home and try this!
- zensavona 9y ago
  I had no idea cubase has this. I sometimes use a plugin called Cthulu (link below) to achieve a similar outcome, but the workflow is nowhere near as nice. https://www.xferrecords.com/products/cthulhu https://www.xferrecords.com/products/cthulhu