Seq App

Electronic music doesn't have to be complicated

The goal of Seq App was to design an intuitive sequencer that would play well with a musician's existing instruments. Essentially the sequencer would allow users to store a series of notes that could be played back and adjusted on the fly. This pattern is looped to form the backbone of a song.

An example of a simple sequence for you to sing in public to those around you:

Do Do So Do Do Do So Do (the sequence then repeats)

Using the app, a musician could record these notes then send them to their bass synthesizer, laying down a juicy bass track that they could jam over.

User Needs

As a musician myself, I'm familiar with the general workflow of composing electronic music. I wanted to create a very simple MVP of a sequencer application that still has interesting features for live performance.

The user requirements include:

Recording a note to one of the eight available "steps"
Playing back those steps in sequence. Also pausing
Adjusting the tempo
Changing the pitch of the sequence in real time
Re-recording notes (while paused or during playback)
Clearing the sequence to start again

Requirements I decided to leave out of the MVP, but could be added at a later time:

Creating sequences of lengths other than eight notes
Saving and recalling sequences
Allowing the recording and playback of chords, rather than single notes for each step
Adjusting the time each note is played (quarter note, half note, etc)

Storyboarding

After I had some general requirements in mind, I storyboarded a musician using the app during a jam session or performance. This allowed me to think about the features within their larger context, as well as when each feature is likely to be used relative to the others.

The user records each note of the sequence one by one by holding down one of eight step buttons. They then press a key on the keyboard. MIDI data (note data used by electronic instruments starting the 1980's) is sent from the keyboard to the app and recorded for that step. Repeat eight times and you have a sequence!

The sequence can then be played and stopped.

To add performance flourishes (too much repetition can be boring!), the user can adjust the tempo and pitch of the sequence. They can also program a new note to one of the steps by repeating the process above. This can be done while the sequence is playing to add variety to the musical sequence.

Control Design

Electronic musicians already have a glossary of design standards that they have learned from various synthesizers, keyboards, sequencers, grooveboxes, and more that have been released over the years. I decided to stick with some of the conventions of hardware design to make my app intuitive to someone who has used hardware before. However, software offers up some great opportunities to have dynamic or precise control that I also wanted to take advantage of.

Based on user research (scouring musician forums for reviews of other music products), I found that knobs that turn clockwise and counterclockwise are the preferred control for many users on hardware instruments. When used in software, the advantages of knobs are quickly lost, since most touchscreens lack the ability to faithfully reproduce the sensation of twisting. Mapping clockwise and counterclockwise movement to up and down swipes are similarly counter-intuitive.

A close second of favorite controls was the slider, which appears on fewer hardware instruments because it can be harder to control than a knob that a musician can grasp with multiple fingers. However, this design makes much more sense in software since position on the screen can directly correlate to the amount of whatever is being controlled.

Since tempo can vary widely (anywhere from 40-200 beats-per-minute are commonly used), a slider would be unwieldy. What I decided was to turn the knob on it's side to allow up/down swipes to correlate to turning this "Scroll wheel". These are traditionally found on keyboards to control pitch bend and modulation, so the precedent was there. Designing for software also allowed me to add a tempo display that can be tapped. The phone's numerical pad then allows for the tempo to be set at a precise value.

My design for pitch bend control and a similar pitch bend wheel on a hardware synth. A small circle shows the current pitch setting and various notches can either be dragged to or tapped directly. The pitch intervals are intentionally limited since 12 notches (one for each note on the octave) would be unwieldy on a cell phone screen. I interviewed musicians to find the most musically useful intervals and included those in my final designs.

Interface and Visual Feedback

Even though changes to settings can be heard, it's important to let the user know that their actions are taking effect, especially in the context of a dark stage with other instruments to worry about.