Music hacking

It's more fun to compute
- Kraftwerk, Computerwelt, 1981

The music people are getting computing right. They use it pragmatically, as a tool, and approach problem-solving with a positive expectation of what computing can give them.

One of the things I like is their approach to user interfaces. Because music has had a long background of electronics usage, reaching music synthesizers, sequencers and beyond, the software user interfaces follow patterns of interaction unlike those found in other domains of application, save video editing. Today a friend showed me some Moog VST emulations, along with pictures of the original: the recreation of minute physical details, let alone the modelling of the internal logic, are surely worthy of study as examples of well-built systems.

Here's a screenshot of the main Ableton Live screen, showing a music session in progress. The tracks are laid vertically in columns (unlike most other multitrack software) in a way that is reminiscent of channels in traditional mixers. The drum machine in the bottom section appears because track 3 (Drums) is being edited, and this section changes according to the selected track.

(right-click > View Image to view it full size.)

One good example of cleverness in GUI usage is illustrated in the following screenshot (forget about the annotated arrows), showing in the bottom right corner a 2D pad allowing to graphically select the value of two variables, one on the X axis and the second on the Y. We've seen such controls on color pickers, but not in their more general form shown here.

Another truly innovative user interface is the Reactable, a multi-user instrument with a tangible user interface that affords the assembly of sound building blocks. I'd love to play one!

I should write more in depth about the adequacy of the music software user interfaces to their tasks, but both lack of knowledge and of commitability prevent me. In the meantime, this is just the idea.