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Producing may be faster on desktop for now because they've had a large head start on optimizing the interfaces for mouse and keyboard, but those affordances are

Producing may be faster on desktop for now because they've had a large head start on optimizing the interfaces for mouse and keyboard, but those affordances are still a subset of what you can do with a touch screen. Touch screens won't replace dedicated controllers with physical knobs, but digital knobs are surprisingly usable.

smoldesu 4y ago
> but those affordances are still a subset of what you can do with a touch screen. I disagree. A gesture-based workflow won't replace Pro Tools' keyboard shortcuts, unfortunately.
- musictubes 4y ago
  Touch is far better for performance though. Watching Suzanne Ciani seamlessly integrate her Buchla modular rig with the ipad makes me appreciate just how good the ipad is. A regular computer would be far more cumbersome to use with hardware synths in the moment.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Not really? The iPad isn't velocity-sensitive, and it doesn't have aftertouch or any tactile feedback. A "regular computer" at least has straightforward MIDI routing that you can perform with - the iPad gets outclassed by decade-old Octatracks in terms of performance flexibility.
  - psychomugs 4y ago
    Ciani is the perfect example that I was about to bring up myself. I got to see her perform live at a conference, and out of her whole setup, she waxed poetic most about her iPad.
- psychomugs 4y ago
  Similar things were probably said about smartphones with touch screens being inferior to physical buttons. After using my tablet as a second screen for production, photo editing, CADing, and coding, it's become woefully apparent that the mouse - a tiny singular cursor - is an inferior grandfather to an interface that _also_ supports multitouch, and the only thing holding tablets back is software. Obsidian is a good example of a mobile app that has parity with its desktop version in both maintaining its keyboard shortcuts but also enabling touch interactions closer to the affordances of physical notes. Let's check in again in a few device generations.

smoldesu 4y ago

> but those affordances are still a subset of what you can do with a touch screen. I disagree. A gesture-based workflow won't replace Pro Tools' keyboard shortcuts, unfortunately.

musictubes 4y ago
Touch is far better for performance though. Watching Suzanne Ciani seamlessly integrate her Buchla modular rig with the ipad makes me appreciate just how good the ipad is. A regular computer would be far more cumbersome to use with hardware synths in the moment.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Not really? The iPad isn't velocity-sensitive, and it doesn't have aftertouch or any tactile feedback. A "regular computer" at least has straightforward MIDI routing that you can perform with - the iPad gets outclassed by decade-old Octatracks in terms of performance flexibility.
- psychomugs 4y ago
  Ciani is the perfect example that I was about to bring up myself. I got to see her perform live at a conference, and out of her whole setup, she waxed poetic most about her iPad.
psychomugs 4y ago
Similar things were probably said about smartphones with touch screens being inferior to physical buttons. After using my tablet as a second screen for production, photo editing, CADing, and coding, it's become woefully apparent that the mouse - a tiny singular cursor - is an inferior grandfather to an interface that _also_ supports multitouch, and the only thing holding tablets back is software. Obsidian is a good example of a mobile app that has parity with its desktop version in both maintaining its keyboard shortcuts but also enabling touch interactions closer to the affordances of physical notes. Let's check in again in a few device generations.