The document states this is a non-goal for the MVP, not a non-goal for the final product.
You can't record a cover of Queen's We Are The Champions or Somebody To Love without struggling with the UI if 3/4 is not supported. Or Blondie's Call Me. Or a plethora of other popular music.
"Fully Featured (in our imagination)"
If you cannot use the MVP of the software for your use cases, that doesn't mean it cannot be worthwhile for anyone else.
Edit: Sorry, meant this as a reply to GP
The rule of thumb is that you need to design to support at least 3 different use cases from the start if you want to create something that can viably extend to being a generic product.
To come back to your analogy, a feature that is akin to a rear parking sensor in a car would be something like retroactive recording.
4/4 is not the only time signature... 3/4, 6/8 are really common too. Not to mention 5/4, 7/4, and others. Not supporting other time signatures is like building a car with wheels but without a steering wheel, and then handwaving criticism as "wanting different features".
As a musician/composer it's beyond absurd to have only 4/4 as the option- it's a non-starter. As a software engineer this seems like a fundamental code issue, because it really should be dynamically handled, and time signature is important for other components.
The car without a parking sensor still gets you anywhere you want to go.
This one only drives in straight lines, it's incapable of changing direction.
There is a difference between "has a use case" and "fully-featured DAW". A wheelbarrow has use cases. It's not a car (and not a fully-featured one, at that).
The decision to support non-12 tone equal temperament from the get-go, but not something a simple as a goddamned waltz (or 6/8 beat, think Addams Family theme, or House Of The Rising Sun, or...) is perplexing. Tells me the DAW makers don't have their priorities straight.
May I ask you about what experience with audio production you have that you base your opinion/analogies on? I've been producing music[1] for about 15 years, and used DAWs from Cakewalk 6 to Cubase to Ableton. My opinions are based on this experience.
Again, this is even just a _design_ for an MVP. If it doesn't align with what _you_ find important then that's fine. Just use something else, you've clearly been doing so for about 15 years. I hope you've enjoyed working on your songs, just like the authors of Meadowlark are enjoying working on this DAW.
I'll address these points below.
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>I'm not sure why the amount of audio production experience is relevant in this case.
Because that's what would make you qualified to have an opinion on the matter, or make an analogy.
If you don't use a DAW regularly to make music, you are not qualified to say that lack of 3/4 support is just like having no parking sensor.
You don't have an understanding of which features are important if you are not a user. (Speaking of which, I hope you at least drove a car!).
>I also don't have a horse in this race
Well, you commented on the issue. There's your horse.
>I just find it curious that you seem to be so extremely passionate
As a musician, yes, I'm so extremely passionate about the art and craft of music making - and the tools involved.
Just like literally any other musician. We are passionate because music is how we express passion.
On top of it, I get sad when people express unsubstantiated opinions when confidence on the issues that I care about.
>Why does it matter so much that it doesn't align with what you find the most important aspect of an MVP?
Why does it matter to the developers to say that this is a project "by musicians, for musicians"?
For the same reason, it matters to me, as a musician, to note that their MVP is not heading in the direction of their claim.
If anything, I'm helping that project by consulting them on the product / giving user feedback on the design.
Because I care, and I don't want to see a development effort wasted on something that people won't use because the developers did not understand the needs of the people they are writing this program for.
>I hope you've enjoyed working on your songs, just like the authors of Meadowlark are enjoying working on this DAW.
Well I'm not posting my songs on HackerNews in a post saying "Background Music To Write Code To: By Programmers, For Programmers". That would be dishonest.
It makes sense, therefore, for musicians to comment on the discrepancy of something aiming to be a "fully featured DAW" without having the most basic feature (but shooting for advanced stuff few people need).
>Well I'm not posting my songs on HackerNews in a post saying "Background Music To Write Code To: By Programmers, For Programmers".
Neither were the authors of the DAW, someone else posted it using this title.
(btw I do have plenty of experience using DAWs (going back to Notator on the Atari ST) and have been an amateur musician since childhood. I just don't see how it's relevant in a discussion about an aspirational MVP design. Thanks for assuming the worst, though!)
Great! Made any music in 6/8, or signatures other than 4/4?
That was supported in Notator back in 1990 (along with time signature changes mid-track IIRC).
>I just don't see how it's relevant
I specifically said why, right at the top of my response.
>If you don't want to see development effort wasted I hope you'll contribute to the project
A tempting idea, putting it on my list. See, there's value in these discussions!
Not being able to change the time signature isn't that big of a deal... Well over 90% of music is 4/4 and even other common ones like 3/4 can still be written in a DAW set to 4/4.
As a musician, I'd rather see them spend time working on some unique features rather than something niche that can be added on later (apparently somewhat trivially).
Seems like a whole lot of puff over nothing.
So while it's possible, it's also annoying. You can't use the DAW click, and clips don't align with (what the DAW thiks are) measures.
This is added friction, and you know what it did? It made me stay away from making music like that because I don't want to be clicking around the DAW when I'm making music, I want things to work.
Making the 10% use case annoying while prioritizing the 0.0001% use case (how much of music made today is microtonal?) does not result in a general purpose DAW.
>apparently somewhat trivially
As a software engineer, I can assure you that there is no such thing. The cost of changing something we a bottom level (and the grid in a DAW is such an object) is always high.
If it's trivial to add later, it's less than trivial to add now. If it's difficult to add now, then the project is dead in the water because 4/4 is, for all intents and purposes, hard-wired.
Either way, it's concerning either from product or engineering perspective.
* edit - I'm not trying to sound mean. I just want to make it clear for those who may have not read my other comments on this HN post.
I thought it was clear that these non-features are only for the MVP, not the released "1.0 version", but apparently I was wrong. The "final" 1.0 version will indeed have support for other time signatures. Although because demand is apparently very high, I will likely add it to the MVP as well.
The way I have this designed, it is in fact trivial to add other time signatures later. The backend code only uses musical time as a unit of beats, it does not care about measures. Measures are purely just a visual thing for the GUI. Yes there are special plugins that care about measure like drum sequencers and advanced arpeggiators, but neither of those things are planned for MVP, so it's not like we will have to "rewrite" them.
What is not trivial to rewrite is support for non-western scales and microtonal stuff, which is why those are being included in the MVP.
The title of this HN post was updated, it now has correctly removed "fully-featured" in the title. Neither I or anyone on the Meadowlark team made this HN post. We got publicity a lot sooner than we thought we would, so we weren't even fully ready to make a full public announcement on the project yet. The design doc is still somewhat of a draft.
The freaking Fur Elise is 3/8, and it's the Stairway to Heaven of keyboardists.
This is a rather strange limitation for a DAW.
4/4 with triplets, swung rhythms, etc are not supported by their design.
And while you can record things, editing becomes clunky when the grid isn't there for you. At that point, it's easier to re-record the part. Or switch to another DAW.