!Epoch, for the next 4 years

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks Colin - sounds good!

I'm currently learning SideFX Houdini so I'm in full on Neo mode as well...

Cheers,

Tom

[mooneh]

I'm not sure if this is for me. I want a nice easy to use sequencer interface and advanced when needed to be for my hardware synths. I'm reading about programming and Lua and so on and that's not something I will do.
I would definitely need something that is easy to use with a touch screen. I was looking at a Cirklon but that is very expensive.

[abstractcats]

Thanks Scott. All is going well; I'm currently tidying up data structures. As usual with these things, one tiny change ripples through and causes many more changes than originally planned. Realising that using lists for everything made parsing user intent trickier than it need be, I added a tuple type. By separating lists from tuples, I can clearly know how a message should be interpreted. So, for example, writing to a table module, which is just a fixed size array module with a flexible bar-chart style UI, the basic component you would likely use if you were making your own step sequencer, you can send messages in many configurations depending on what you need:

• A single value, which will write the value to the first element.
• A tuple of destination and value (12, 56.6), which will write the value 56.6 to element 12.
• A list of destination and value tuples [(12, 56.6), (14, -4.6), (16, 23)].
• A single destination and list, such as (1, [23, 27, 32]), which will write value 23 to step 1, 27 to step 2, etc.

So tuples turned out to more work than I planned, and I also had to create a Lua userdata type to allow tuple processing within Lua, but it's worked out nicely. Generative patches tend to have a lot of code that writes values to various destinations, be they tables, sequencers, or whatever, and making this fundamental aspect as easy and flexible has proven to be a good thing.

I also added a list userdata to Lua, rather than mapping lists directly to Lua tables. One can still extract a list's contents to a table with the list.pack method. This seemed sensible for consistencies sake, and also to allow direct comparisons. Because Lua table comparisons are (unless metatables get involved) done by reference rather than value semantics, { 1, 2, 3 } == { 1, 2, 3 } would evaluate to false. By wrapping lists in my own userdata types, our collections evaluate comparisons as you would intuitively expect.

And sorry for the rather tech-talk heavy update; I've been stepping through Lua garbage collection code, so my mind is currently in full-on Neo mode. If anyone wants me to elaborate on what any of this means, feel free to ask!

Sounds great, and complex!
I've gotten back to studying programming, again. learning C++, and JAVA, for making Android apps. And always learning sound design. I did sign up, for a JUCE account. Don't know much about Lua, yet...Google, here I come !And of course, I'm always up for some beta testing and preset design.

[bungle]

I'm not sure if this is for me. I want a nice easy to use sequencer interface and advanced when needed to be for my hardware synths. I'm reading about programming and Lua and so on and that's not something I will do.
I would definitely need something that is easy to use with a touch screen. I was looking at a Cirklon but that is very expensive.

I think you can rest assured, Colin is not stupid, he knows that 99% of people who will use this will never ever program anything whatsoever in it, this will survive completely and totally by a few users (Colin himself too i suspect) who create a bunch of stuff that others use.
Programable stuff like this never gets a huge percentage of people actually developing and designing in comparison to the huge numbers using the library add ons (Go look at max/Reaktor)
Of course it has to be cheap to warrant any usefulness, Max being near enough free for live users, Reaktor is $99 most of the time, both of these are way more powerful than anything Colin has suggested so far, so i would expect low cost and ease of use, so may well fit the bill for you.

[deastman]

What Colin was describing were the internal workings of the code he writing to create !Epoch. As a user, you aren't expected to code your own multidimensional arrays and whatnot. Unless you feel like rolling up your sleeves and getting friendly with Lua scripting.

Colin, thank you for the techie behind the scenes talk. There are those of us who understand, and appreciate these status updates. I'm knee-deep in Java desktop application development at the moment, and also a fairly elaborate Javascript script for Adobe After Effects. I find it comforting to know that developers far more experienced than me still spend a lot of time rethinking and refactoring their code.

[Shabdahbriah]

Here are some of mine:
Klee Seqs ...

I love the Klee. And it's easy to build something similar in !Epoch because it has all the bitwise processing modules you'd need.

+1 for Klee!

[colin@loomer]

To anyone who feels that the technical side is a little above your pay-grade, can I state that my aim has always been to make something accessible. You can do a lot with just one or two basic sequencers and a single MIDI output module, and I feel that the natural next step will be to explore the various modulation options, and from there eventual interest in the lower-level modules should arise naturally. Or, if you'd prefer, you are welcome to stick to higher-level macros and scripts that other people have built; one of the first goals post-release is to work on getting a nice library of third-party elements together.

Ironically, I'd say the biggest hiccup to getting things finished has been the many times I've made the mistake of choosing the *simpler* option over the *correct* one, assuming it'd either save me development resources, or ultimately make it easier for the end user. It never does! I've learnt that making things simpler in specific cases generally means a heavier price will be paid further down the line; what's that saying about making things as simple as they can be, but no simpler?

[ThomasHelzle]

While I'm all for making things accessible and easy, I don't think the goal can be one-button plugins all the way down.
A lot of people use code and a lot of other people don't. That is just fine. Not every tool is for everybody and doesn't have to be.
I often get the shivers when I see some of the current developments in many areas where the goal seems to be to reach the lowest possible common level instead of challenging people to use their brains.
The biggest joy in life is learning, being challenged, solving problems, exploring new terrain.

Everything else would be an endless bore

Cheers,

Tom

[bungle]

Lets be perfectly clear here, if this thing isn't simple, it wont sell, done and done hahaha
It is well and good professing "Hey i like using code, I am happy this is made just for me" you are very much in the minority, end of story
Wether you agree with this or not is of no importance, the amount of time gone in to this means it needs to make as much return as possible (That would be how the world works in general, and not some second guessing of Collins business) the big returns are on products that work with little to no need for vast amounts of input from the end users, tweakers and experimenters, sorry but we are in the minority, and it is a very very small minority.
Look at all the DAWs available right now, lets say, OK all the tweakers are using Reaper (They aren't, but lets pretend) because Reaper has it's own SDK/API and native built in language for realtime DSP (Jesusonic) strange how small of a market share Reaper has then hahaha, now take in to account the real figures, where people who actually like to tweak, actually in most cases turn round and say "You know what, i tweak all my other crap, i just want to make music"

Like i said, this thing better be simple, or have the faux look of being simple, for the majority of its users, and cost will be a factor too, in fact personally i would have said a player/editor set up may have been better "Here get the player with library for blah, pay blah extra for the editor" the majority of people will never touch the editor.

[mooneh]

One thing Ive learnt over the years is when making music I want something that is inspiring to use. For me that doesn't involve programming code or use your analytic side of the brain. When you start writing you want something that is fast to use and with this way also happy accidents can happen. Then later if you can make it more and more complex that's the ideal sequencer for me and this looks really promising.

[deastman]

Lets be perfectly clear here, if this thing isn't simple, it wont sell, done and done hahaha
It is well and good professing "Hey i like using code, I am happy this is made just for me" you are very much in the minority, end of story
Wether you agree with this or not is of no importance, the amount of time gone in to this means it needs to make as much return as possible (That would be how the world works in general, and not some second guessing of Collins business) the big returns are on products that work with little to no need for vast amounts of input from the end users, tweakers and experimenters, sorry but we are in the minority, and it is a very very small minority.
Look at all the DAWs available right now, lets say, OK all the tweakers are using Reaper (They aren't, but lets pretend) because Reaper has it's own SDK/API and native built in language for realtime DSP (Jesusonic) strange how small of a market share Reaper has then hahaha, now take in to account the real figures, where people who actually like to tweak, actually in most cases turn round and say "You know what, i tweak all my other crap, i just want to make music"

Like i said, this thing better be simple, or have the faux look of being simple, for the majority of its users, and cost will be a factor too, in fact personally i would have said a player/editor set up may have been better "Here get the player with library for blah, pay blah extra for the editor" the majority of people will never touch the editor.

So I guess tools like Reaktor and MaxMSP and Numerology don't sell? Are they economic failures?

Coding is hard. Very few people do it. But somehow, developers of tools for coding still seem to make a profit selling their compilers and debuggers and IDEs and frameworks and libraries.

I predict that !Epoch will be a big success.

[bungle]

Did you just ignore the thread and only read 1 post of mine, i stated in the very previous post exactly why they sell well, they have a huge library of add ons, funnily enough mostly created by a handful of people, which completely proves my point hahahahahaha.
I am making no predictions on anything (unlike you) trying to judge a market place is a dark science at best and normally just guess work.
But you sort of imply that i think epoch will fail what the actual !!!!!! I never even hinted that.

Oh another interesting point, those heros of add on creation, rarely do they have a huge catalogue of music they have created, most (not all) tweakers and builders enjoy that more than actually making music haha

[woggle]

Oh another interesting point, those heros of add on creation, rarely do they have a huge catalogue of music they have created, most (not all) tweakers and builders enjoy that more than actually making music haha

Why are you bringing up Reaper in the !Epoch thread

[colin@loomer]

Again, thanks guys for the continued feedback. My developer-centric world often overlooks the wider picture, and so opinion from a (potential) user base is deeply appreciated.

[whyterabbyt]

Again, thanks guys for the continued feedback. My developer-centric world often overlooks the wider picture, and so opinion from a (potential) user base is deeply appreciated.

My opinion is that the 'middle ground' is actually more active than people give it credit for; as well as the full-on developers, and the folk who only use the factory and third-party stuff, there are those who chop and change larger 'blocks' in these environments, but dont necessarily share as much. But they're not averse to doing some level of customisation and construction. Hence the proliferation of DAWs supporting 'composites' of some sort, as Racks and Combinators and Preset Chains.
This is also where Reaktor 6 very successfully pitched itself with Blocks, but even prior to that the Reaktor UL is full of 'remixes' and 'rebuilds' of other people's creations.