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I'm also a music producer/sound designer and audio engineer. Not being able to change the time signature isn't that big of a deal... Well over 90% of music is

I'm also a music producer/sound designer and audio engineer. Not being able to change the time signature isn't that big of a deal... Well over 90% of music is 4/4 and even other common ones like 3/4 can still be written in a DAW set to 4/4. As a musician, I'd rather see them spend time working on some unique features rather than something niche that can be added on later (apparently somewhat trivially). Seems like a whole lot of puff over nothing.

romwell 5y ago
I once wrote a track where 4/4 changed into 3/4 mid-song, and then back in a beta DAW that didn't have a time signature track at the time (Energy XT2). So while it's possible, it's also annoying. You can't use the DAW click, and clips don't align with (what the DAW thiks are) measures. This is added friction, and you know what it did? It made me stay away from making music like that because I don't want to be clicking around the DAW when I'm making music, I want things to work. Making the 10% use case annoying while prioritizing the 0.0001% use case (how much of music made today is microtonal?) does not result in a general purpose DAW. >apparently somewhat trivially As a software engineer, I can assure you that there is no such thing. The cost of changing something we a bottom level (and the grid in a DAW is such an object) is always high. If it's trivial to add later, it's less than trivial to add now. If it's difficult to add now, then the project is dead in the water because 4/4 is, for all intents and purposes, hard-wired. Either way, it's concerning either from product or engineering perspective.
- BillyDM 5y ago
  Alright, I get it. Non-4/4 time signatures are in much higher demand than I originally thought. * edit - I'm not trying to sound mean. I just want to make it clear for those who may have not read my other comments on this HN post. I thought it was clear that these non-features are only for the MVP, not the released "1.0 version", but apparently I was wrong. The "final" 1.0 version will indeed have support for other time signatures. Although because demand is apparently very high, I will likely add it to the MVP as well. The way I have this designed, it is in fact trivial to add other time signatures later. The backend code only uses musical time as a unit of beats, it does not care about measures. Measures are purely just a visual thing for the GUI. Yes there are special plugins that care about measure like drum sequencers and advanced arpeggiators, but neither of those things are planned for MVP, so it's not like we will have to "rewrite" them. What is not trivial to rewrite is support for non-western scales and microtonal stuff, which is why those are being included in the MVP. The title of this HN post was updated, it now has correctly removed "fully-featured" in the title. Neither I or anyone on the Meadowlark team made this HN post. We got publicity a lot sooner than we thought we would, so we weren't even fully ready to make a full public announcement on the project yet. The design doc is still somewhat of a draft.
romwell 5y ago
Addendum: 6/8, etc might be under 10% of music, but it's played by well over 90% of musicians. The freaking Fur Elise is 3/8, and it's the Stairway to Heaven of keyboardists. This is a rather strange limitation for a DAW.

romwell 5y ago

I once wrote a track where 4/4 changed into 3/4 mid-song, and then back in a beta DAW that didn't have a time signature track at the time (Energy XT2). So while it's possible, it's also annoying. You can't use the DAW click, and clips don't align with (what the DAW thiks are) measures. This is added friction, and you know what it did? It made me stay away from making music like that because I don't want to be clicking around the DAW when I'm making music, I want things to work. Making the 10% use case annoying while prioritizing the 0.0001% use case (how much of music made today is microtonal?) does not result in a general purpose DAW. >apparently somewhat trivially As a software engineer, I can assure you that there is no such thing. The cost of changing something we a bottom level (and the grid in a DAW is such an object) is always high. If it's trivial to add later, it's less than trivial to add now. If it's difficult to add now, then the project is dead in the water because 4/4 is, for all intents and purposes, hard-wired. Either way, it's concerning either from product or engineering perspective.

BillyDM 5y ago
Alright, I get it. Non-4/4 time signatures are in much higher demand than I originally thought. * edit - I'm not trying to sound mean. I just want to make it clear for those who may have not read my other comments on this HN post. I thought it was clear that these non-features are only for the MVP, not the released "1.0 version", but apparently I was wrong. The "final" 1.0 version will indeed have support for other time signatures. Although because demand is apparently very high, I will likely add it to the MVP as well. The way I have this designed, it is in fact trivial to add other time signatures later. The backend code only uses musical time as a unit of beats, it does not care about measures. Measures are purely just a visual thing for the GUI. Yes there are special plugins that care about measure like drum sequencers and advanced arpeggiators, but neither of those things are planned for MVP, so it's not like we will have to "rewrite" them. What is not trivial to rewrite is support for non-western scales and microtonal stuff, which is why those are being included in the MVP. The title of this HN post was updated, it now has correctly removed "fully-featured" in the title. Neither I or anyone on the Meadowlark team made this HN post. We got publicity a lot sooner than we thought we would, so we weren't even fully ready to make a full public announcement on the project yet. The design doc is still somewhat of a draft.

romwell 5y ago

Addendum: 6/8, etc might be under 10% of music, but it's played by well over 90% of musicians. The freaking Fur Elise is 3/8, and it's the Stairway to Heaven of keyboardists. This is a rather strange limitation for a DAW.