Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Timed Event Editor Framework
From: David Slomin (dgslomin_AT_CS.Princeton.EDU)
Date: to elo 26 1999 - 23:25:29 EDT
On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Andreas Voss wrote:
> Also I think a single track-no is not powerful enough to structure a song.
> If you had a PhraseEvent (an event that can contain other events),
> arranging of a song (like intro, refrain etc) would be much easier. Also
> it would allow to have nested structure (e.g. notes in a chord in a phrase
> in a track in a song).
Here we come to the heart of our disagreement. In my eyes, it is not the
job of a sequencer to impose structure on the song. Certainly most songs
will have structure, but I feel that inherently the form of that structure
should be left up to the composer not the software. That's not to say you
couldn't have another program that used SMPTE/MTC to trigger the sequencer
to play phrases according to an algorithm, but the algorithm would exist
in the second program, not the sequencer. This is what JMax does (at
least as far as I can figure out).
The sequencer itself thus remains a flat, structureless editor. Let me
try to justify by analogy. I propose that Photoshop is a more artistic
tool than the old Print Shop program. Print Shop allows you to place
graphic elements on a page according to predefined structured layouts.
If you want to use it to produce a poster in your own unique layout that
its designers didn't anticipate, you're out of luck. Photoshop also lets
you place graphic elements on a page, but it doesn't provide you with any
predefined structure. As such, it is harder to use than Print Shop, but
it does not suffer from the same limitations, and is thus the choice of
more artists. If somebody created a third-party set of page layout
templates for Photoshop, these would fall under the category of that
"cooperative but external structure-adding tool" that would add the ease
of use back in, without sacrificing the artistic freedom.
If that example doesn't work for you, then compare Microsoft Word (suspend
your Microsoft hatred for a moment here) and LaTeX. While LaTeX is
unarguably the better tool for producing a full-length book, I would argue
that it is much less artistic. I don't say this because it lacks a GUI,
but rather because it is centered around imposing structure on your text.
Unless you fight rather hard against it, every document produced in LaTeX
tends to look just like every document that everybody who's ever used
LaTeX has produced. This is not art. (Using raw TeX rather than LaTeX is
a more artistic experience, but I don't know many people who do that.)
Basically, I don't mind algorithmic music, but I don't want a tracker, I
want a sequencer. Why the most expensive commercial sequencers on the
market have been trying their hardest to turn into trackers is a mystery
to me.
> I agree that there is no "right" way to design a sequencer. If you want a
> pure midi editor, your approach is the way to go. If you want to support
> other musical concepts too, the flat midi event structure is probably not
> the best foundation for the internal structures of a sequencer.
I've tried Common Music. I actually don't mind Lisp (heck, I can think in
Forth if I try hard enough), so that's no the problem, but it still always
feels like programming, not composing to me. Left brain vs. right brain
thing. I like sequencers on the right.
Div.
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