[archagon]

This looks very nice! I'll have to give it a try soon.

If anyone is interested, I've also taken a whirl at solving the problem of overcomplicated DAW interfaces, albeit in a more limited capacity. My first project in this vein is Composer's Sketchpad[1], which aims to explore "freehand composition" by letting users draw notes in strokes directly with their fingers or stylus, bending the pitch and adjusting the length as they go along. The second is MusicMessages![2], in which every note is a button in a giant scroll view, allowing the user to enter and adjust quick melodies with just a few taps.

While these apps will never be remotely as powerful as a fully featured DAW, they allow the user to explore certain kinds of musical ideas far more efficiently than with FL Studio or Logic. In my opinion, one of the biggest barriers in creative thinking is the amount of cruft and micro decision-making between the artist and their output, and musical composition is particularly bad at this — there's no "lightweight Markdown editor" equivalent for composition quite yet. Helio is very exciting because it has some of those same benefits while sitting far closer to a professional DAW. I'm very interested to see where it goes!

[1]: http://composerssketchpad.com

[2]: http://musicmessages.io (currently working on a full iOS version as a separate app... will fold the Messages extension into that one)

[wtf_is_up]

I really like the concept of Composer's Sketchpad. I like to play around with FL Studio piano rolls, but it is a little overwhelming. Too bad I don't have any iOS devices because I'd love to mess with your app.

[armandososa]

These are both very cool. Congratulations for doing something so out of the ordinary. As soon as I have some free time I will play with composer sketchpad.

[JuliusKaiser]

WOW! My goal is to develop niche apps for the music professional market so I have a lot of old ideas and mountains of failed designs to go on when I say those two apps are fantastic. In composition courses we used to make sketches just like that to start a work, as well as make density graphs for Penderecki and company.

All I can say is I wish you the best, I think you have some great designs there.

[Joof]

I've seen composer's sketchpad before and found it really interesting. I'll have to give it a real try.