The project was initially conceived as “vim for music”. All of Typebeat is controlled by the 30 main character keys on the computer keyboard. The result is a workflow that’s a little tricky to learn but fast to use once mastered. (So I suppose I nailed the vim experience in that regard.) If you’d like to see how I use it at top speed, you can check out this 2-minute jam I made recently:
What I'd add is a few tutorial videos to explain the basic concepts from scratch.
What would work to improve the workflow is to ask people to try it in front of you, just like a normal UX research.
> I find this tool an interesting concept, but I couldn't get through the initial step to create a 4/4 kick loop. There's too much internal state going on with no indicators about what's active or what mode I'm in that it feels more like a memory game than a fun music toy.
I think it should be set up such that you can immediately, intuitively start making things as soon as you visit the page. It should feel like a fun music toy.
One web app that does this really well, in my opinion, is http://sampulator.com - you just start pressing keys and you get sound; you press shift and you start recording tracks. It's very simple and intuitive. It doesn't have nearly as many capabilities as your app, but I feel like friction is one of the biggest issues with digital music making, and if you want to stand out, providing something people can wield as an instrument without even thinking about it will be a huge advantage.
Launching soon https://ngrid.io.
I feel like the lack of knobs would make exploration difficult.
On the step sequencer side, having buttons that light up is key for tracking state.
What other online tools like this exist?
aside: it's kind of weird to assume that all projects on GitHub are constantly being updated for free. old projects are inevitably going to outnumber new ones on any system that keeps old projects available, unless that system continues growing at an ever-increasing pace forever and ever.
go full pi appliance. it wouldn't be too hard to make an sd image, perhaps compatible with one/some of those "pi tablet" kits, that would boot straight into this, recognize various qmk-compatible usb ids and offer to push firmware.