Signal: Online MIDI Editor | Hacker News Reader

Signal: Online MIDI Editor

github.com

165 pointsmodinfo22 comments

The project looks interesting. Screenshots would help, as well as a link to the demo at https://signal.vercel.app/edit. The demo asked for MIDI permission, but didn't accept input from my MIDI keyboard until I realised you have to enable it in settings. There's enough lag in the system that most of my notes end up a bit delayed, and the snap-to-grid doesn't seem to be working.

Please consider changing the name. A generic common word is hard to search for, and there is already well-known software named Signal.

> Please consider changing the name. A generic common word is hard to search for, and there is already well-known software named Signal.

People are free to use the name they want, whether it is the NSA or an individual, it doesn't matter

People are also free to smash their own hands with a hammer. Someone saying to them “please consider not smashing your own hand with a hammer because you will be in pain and may lose use of it” doesn’t stop them from doing so, it politely and helpfully gives a suggestion as to why they should think if that’s what they really want.

Hence the "please consider" in front ;)

I got lucky with naming my app: "Video Hub App" and despite being generic-enough, organically around 50 people find my software every day. With a name like "Signal" I suspect almost no one will ever find this software unless they already knew of its existence and searched specifically with "Midi Editor" prepended to "Signal" :/

Of course people are free to use any name, no matter how much it sabotages their project. That doesn't mean it's sensible. Names absolutely matter. At work I use a thing called STACK, because it's the best option available to do what we need to do, but the name is a real problem as it makes it really hard to find anything about it.

Interesting, but would be better if there was at least a screenshot in that Readme.

There's one here: https://signal.vercel.app/

Maybe it should be added to the readme.

That would be good I guess, especially since it looks so good that there is no need to hide it : )

Congrats on the project. I like the layout/design. At first glance it looks intuitive and very approachable. Nice work.

I spent much too long looking for a "Record" button. Is the idea that you're supposed to 'draw' your ideas? I have a MIDI keyboard connected to my MBP, but Signal didn't seem to recognize it.

I'm a hobbyist musician and nearly always sketch out ideas by playing them into the DAW. Only after I've roughed out the idea do I get surgical with editing tools like those on display here. Of course to each his own.

You have to manually turn on input for your keyboard in the settings. Then you get a record button.

at its heart its a piano roll, pretty much all DAWs have them somewhere.

Cool project! Please add a five minute demo video at the top of the Readme. Also I would change the name to something more unique. Naming is difficult but important in products and CS.

> Please add a five minute demo video at the top of the Readme

Or you could just follow the link to the website where there is a fully functioning demo of the app?

https://signal.vercel.app/

5 minute video in a readme ... Are you aware of how much data will need to load to display that? Maybe a link to such a video would be fine. But not 5 minutes embedded into the readme. You might get 30s for that as a reasonable video length.

video compression can be pretty good, and for an editor which is gonna be mostly a static image with just elements switched on and off, surely it can't be "that much". it can't be worse than some github pages with dozens of huge pngs

Love it! This is great way to quickly explore musical ideas online. I couldn't find a way to enable looping while playing. Is this possible in the current version?

Sure. Right click the timeline/bars strip above notes to set start and end point and also enable looped playing before pressing play.

It seems like I have to select the note in the piano roll to adjust the velocity, instead of selecting and adjusting in the velocity area, which is annoying.

Any idea how this compares to the Online Sequencer? I like the idea of the Online Sequencer but it feels pretty limited at times.

Fantastic work!

Ooh very cool! I really like the logo :)

Nice UI

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