I’m working on a long paper right now with my colleague at Montclair State University, Adam Bell. (Update: here’s the paper.) The premise is this: In the past, metaphors came from hardware, which software emulated. In the future, metaphors will come from software, which hardware will emulate.
The first generation of digital audio workstations have taken their metaphors from multitrack tape, the mixing desk, keyboards, analog synths, printed scores, and so on. Even the purely digital audio waveforms and MIDI clips behave like segments of tape. Sometimes the metaphors are graphically abstracted, as they are in Pro Tools. Sometimes the graphics are more literal, as in Logic. Propellerhead Reason is the most skeuomorphic software of them all. The main image from the Propellerhead web site makes the intent of the designers crystal clear; the original analog synths dominate the image.
In Ableton Live, by contrast, hardware follows software. The metaphor behind Ableton’s Session View is a spreadsheet. Many of the instruments and effects have no hardware predecessor.
Controllers like the APC and Push are designed to emulate Session View.
Another software-centric user interface can be found in iZotope’s Iris. It enables you to selectively filter a sample by using Photoshop-like selection tools on a Fourier transform visualization.
Music is slow to embrace the idea of hardware designed to fit software rather than the other way around. Video games have followed this paradigm for decades. While there are some specialized controllers emulating car dashboards or guns or musical instruments, most game controllers are highly abstracted collections of buttons and knobs and motion sensors.
I was born in 1975, and I’m part of the last age cohort to grow up using analog tape. The kids now are likely to have never even seen a tape recorder. Hardware metaphors are only useful to people who are familiar with the hardware. Novel software metaphors take time to learn, especially if they stand for novel concepts. I’m looking forward to seeing what metaphors we dream up in the future.
I’m also working on a similar paper, hopefully not quite as long. I’m also a recording engineer by profession of similar vintage. Currently stripping down metaphor types thanks to Lakoff and Johnson. I’m wondering what it would be like if development went completely modular, a MIDI sequencer plugged into instruments, a separate recorder, possibly a timeline one and a loop player one (like Live) all plugged into a mixer of your choice using a system like Jack or Patchage.
At least I’d like to see a system which saved files similar to the Csound orchestra and score. Where I could have a Pro Tools or Logic arrange or edit file and a separate mixer file. I’ll probably change my mind tomorrow though!
Have you looked at the new Sonar? It seems to overcome some of the issues Duignan talks about in his thesis. A “virtual render” of once off events for example. It’s also got a nice touch screen fader thing!
This reminded me of when I was teaching a friend’s brother Reason, but in addition, I had to teach signal flow in order to make him understand how the software works; compared to when I took Theatre Sound and the teacher threw Logic at all the students, which is abstracted enough to feel natural without the accompanying reference.
I wasn’t aware of the KCS grid interface, actually. That’s a fascinating bit of history, thanks for alerting me to it.
I began my sequencing life with KCS (later known as Omega) by Dr T Software on the Atari 1040ST. It had a grid interface that looked a lot like Ableton’s Session View. It was MIDI-only of course. You’re probably aware of it, but since you would have been a kid at the time, I thought I’d mention it.