<story><title>Show HN: An attempt to rethink a music sequencer design</title><url>https://github.com/peterrudenko/helio-workstation</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomxor</author><text>It is possible to simplify the interface by reducing the number of tools without necessarily removing functionality.&lt;p&gt;The idea is to identify large sets of tools that can be replaced with a handful of powerful combinable tools to perform the same tasks - this is not always easy but if done well can end up not only simplifying UI but providing more powerful, intuitive tools and reducing unnecessary learning.&lt;p&gt;I think Modo has done this fairly well in this regard for 3D modelling and animation (programs which tend to be notoriously full of thousands of discrete tools).&lt;p&gt;This is not limited to DAWs. 3D animation packages, photo editing and video editing packages all historically have this problem... They grow these discrete tools to a large number, it increases the UI complexity, inevitably resulting in tons of stuff hidden under context menus and usually heavily resorting to mode based interfaces.&lt;p&gt;I had hoped this concept would become popular so that things like Photoshop and Illustrator could be simplified.</text></item><item><author>ssharp</author><text>&amp;quot;Most of the DAW interfaces often seem overcomplicated, and they only tend to get more and more bloated over time.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t as flexible as other DAWs.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been a fairly loyal user of Sonar and FL Studio for over a decade, largely out of habit because that&amp;#x27;s what I used when I first started and don&amp;#x27;t care to learn anything different. Especially with FL Studio, early versions of that were extremely simple. At it&amp;#x27;s core, it&amp;#x27;s still fairly simple, but allows you a lot of flexibility to do crazy things through automation.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s at least halfway decent, so this is exciting to see!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Applejinx</author><text>The trick is how much state you have to keep in your head. Something like Blender requires enormous state about even things like what key combinations mean in different contexts: it&amp;#x27;s a poster child for impossibly demanding state requirements.&lt;p&gt;Something like the Flash pen tool is much simpler, but still absolutely requires you to maintain some state: clicking versus click-dragging, remembering not to close a shape by simply clicking on a control point without also dragging out Bezier points. There are expectations before you can begin to flow with the thing.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been working hard on this concept using a Minecraft mod (Snowball Madness: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.airwindows.com&amp;#x2F;snowball-madness&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.airwindows.com&amp;#x2F;snowball-madness&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; ) that suffered the same problem. I&amp;#x27;d made countless &amp;#x27;effects&amp;#x27; so it was nearly impossible to remember what did what.&lt;p&gt;After a drastic functionality-culling process, I began rebuilding things in line with a concept: generalizing. If you can place a block above a snowball and it places the block where the snowball hits, that&amp;#x27;s what it does, no exceptions. TNT used to spawn explosions just for silly fun, but it became &amp;#x27;place TNT block&amp;#x27; altering the type of silliness. Pickaxes used to dig large holes in rock (in some cases, leaving ores hanging) so all the other tools got similar treatments: axes vanishing wood logs, shovels vanishing dirt, hoes turning grass&amp;#x2F;dirt into tilled farmland. Always trying to incorporate &amp;#x27;cheaty&amp;#x27; ways of doing things but predictably so.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s like the old Apple UI guidelines. The default expectation is that you can grope blindly towards a result and things do what you think they would do, allowing you to not think about the process.</text></comment>
<story><title>Show HN: An attempt to rethink a music sequencer design</title><url>https://github.com/peterrudenko/helio-workstation</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomxor</author><text>It is possible to simplify the interface by reducing the number of tools without necessarily removing functionality.&lt;p&gt;The idea is to identify large sets of tools that can be replaced with a handful of powerful combinable tools to perform the same tasks - this is not always easy but if done well can end up not only simplifying UI but providing more powerful, intuitive tools and reducing unnecessary learning.&lt;p&gt;I think Modo has done this fairly well in this regard for 3D modelling and animation (programs which tend to be notoriously full of thousands of discrete tools).&lt;p&gt;This is not limited to DAWs. 3D animation packages, photo editing and video editing packages all historically have this problem... They grow these discrete tools to a large number, it increases the UI complexity, inevitably resulting in tons of stuff hidden under context menus and usually heavily resorting to mode based interfaces.&lt;p&gt;I had hoped this concept would become popular so that things like Photoshop and Illustrator could be simplified.</text></item><item><author>ssharp</author><text>&amp;quot;Most of the DAW interfaces often seem overcomplicated, and they only tend to get more and more bloated over time.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t as flexible as other DAWs.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been a fairly loyal user of Sonar and FL Studio for over a decade, largely out of habit because that&amp;#x27;s what I used when I first started and don&amp;#x27;t care to learn anything different. Especially with FL Studio, early versions of that were extremely simple. At it&amp;#x27;s core, it&amp;#x27;s still fairly simple, but allows you a lot of flexibility to do crazy things through automation.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s at least halfway decent, so this is exciting to see!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bartread</author><text>I think this is an interesting idea, and sounds cool in principle, but the problem is that many users wouldn&amp;#x27;t know how to combine components together to get the tools&amp;#x2F;effects&amp;#x2F;instruments they want, or wouldn&amp;#x27;t want to bother to learn. The point being that all you might achieve with this approach is to substitute one type of complexity for another, and so you&amp;#x27;d still alienate potential users. Maybe different potential users.&lt;p&gt;Depending on the market segment you&amp;#x27;re after that might be OK though.</text></comment>