Open the sources

[Sequential Circuits]

Right, this thread was originally (aside from an open source request) about basic functionality before it was altered. The funny thing is the admission about how sequencing is not its "strength"... I mean, it should be a strength, the thing has a SEQS button right on it! @shankiphonic: Instead of insinuating certain people are "darn kids", I'd insinuate that it's likely a certain someone hasn't tried any other grooveboxes/drum machines in at least a decade. @Painting Silence/Aaron: Have you guys tried zooming-in on anything beyond C7? Most of the samples (if not all the included ones) can't play beyond that (pitch-wise), but try attaching external gear and sequence something beyond that and then try to zoom-in once you've entered those higher notes. You'll quickly realize the issue once you do. I pointed it out to Steve and he said he'll:

add this to our bug database for "consideration."

1. If you have sequences with a large amount of steps (there's up to 256) and a lot of notes played in, it's a real pain finding a certain few notes that you'd like to alter in some way. Now this issue can easily be solved by having the playback stopped at wherever you are in the sequence once the stop button is pressed in SEQS views. The white line position indicator should stay on that point, so say you notice upon playback that you made a flub, you can stop at that point and easy find the note you need to take out. By hitting the stop button twice, it would revert back to the beginning, otherwise the play button starts off at the last stopped point once stopped in SEQS views.

2. Keys view in SEQS has a single view per pad, why does pads view not as well? Adding it would help immensely to beat making workflow and could add very basic features found in every groovebox/drum machine on the market these days. I've attached ChicoC's concept mock up for what that would look like and added a few recommendations of my own since it seems he drew it up before latter updates. Here are a few of my suggestions I made in his suggestion thread:

You can have the same pad selector on the upper right of the screen that the keys view has, which frees up the upper right knob to control parameter amounts for the on screen buttons. I'd personally have ratcheting (retrigger) and velocity replace mute and random. Now other things are free to add in the two events slots. Also the clear button should clear a single pad's sequenced notes within the single pad screens. I'd have 16 notes up on the screen at once (with steps greyed out if the sequence is smaller) and instead of the zoom knob function, I'd have it scroll through the following/prior 16 step pages. Like your mock up, it'd land on the last note played, which makes things much easier to find if you have long sequences. To go back to the beginning you simply double tap the stop button.

It must be stressed that I'm not looking to be negative or to "bemoan" the BB or the 1010 team, as I made the choice to purchase it and I have to live with that. I'm not asking for any esoteric features that are completely unreasonable to expect. The point is, there's plenty of room on the screen to have it be a breeze to sequence with. All it needs are these very slight tweaks and additions to bring it up to par with the competition in the most basic of basic areas.

[Painting Silence]

I actually just noticed that the name of this thread and its creator author was changed by Aaron .. Sorry if my original thread title had been to radical for you but a heads up had been nice, nonetheless.

[Painting Silence]

I do understand your points, but thanks for clarifying again. While I can follow that a Ferrari is not a lawn mower I think your point of reasoning greatly applies to the examples you have stated below. I wouldn't buy a guitar if I wanted a bass, we can all agree on this and so on. Let me use your examples to clarify my points: if I buy a Jazz Bass, and I think the pick up sounds badly, I am allowed to replace the pick up with something I find more suitable, correct? I can replace the frets, I can redo the paint job, I can adjust the truss rod etc etc. All these things are sort of expected as a Jazz Bass, as great of an instrument it is, usually is not adjusted to my play style straight out of the box. So according to your logic, I would rather bring back the bass and get a different one before making adjustments myself. To come back to the black box, I am sure you read my initial points and the criticism I have with the black box. None of it cries for a different product. Being able to read the file names properly I find essential and I am sorry if you disagree. Being able to pre-listen to midi before importing (or at least remembering the last location so you dont have to browse again) I find essential. If you disagree, I happiliy accept this, but these features are not that hard to implement, trust me. They are just not on 1010s priority list as they are not adding to the "marketing effect" of the black box, in opposition to: Oh it does granular synthesis, oh it does multisampling etc. So whilst these features are great to have too, I have never requested them. In fact this comes closer to transforming a jazz bass into a guitar, whilst I would argue that reading longer file names is more like making sure the jazz bass is usable as intended. Last, and I repeat myself here, a jazz bass is mostly a physical item (as are your other examples) whilst the black box is nothing else than a micro controller with a custom firmware packaged in a touchscreen, a few rotaries and a few ins and outs. This offers great potential to fixing these minor shortcomings as opposed to any of the examples you listed below. I hope I made myself a little clearer now but please feel free to further counter my opinion. this is what discussions are for and I appreciate your input. and of course Id greatly agree with "play music".. thats what we are all here for buddy - but some of us just like to customize their bass to make it the greatest instrument ever made from a personal perspective to fully unleash the individual potential that's in every one of us.

[shankiphonic]

I'm afraid my point wasn't clear. I'll try better.
I trust you wouldn't assert, vigorously, at length, that it's a problem for you that a Fender Jazz Bass doesn't play like a Telecaster. You wouldn't pedantically criticize the engineers at Tama because their snare drums don't thump like their bass drums. And you probably wouldn't assert that Yamaha should publish their hard-earned intellectual property design specifications because you know better than they do how to make their alto sax sound like a vibraphone. I expect you wouldn't criticize Bayer because although their Aspirin product is great for headaches, it doesn't cure toe fungus... because, you know, "medicine".
Can we agree to that premise?
If you witnessed such a dialog, you'd likely think: these are absurd claims!

There is no universally all-conditions-suitable guitar, drum, snow-ski, kitchen knife, bicycle, automobile, vaccine, fishing rod, breath mint, eyeglasses, camera, pencil, or music production tool. Anyone struggling with this idea is going to be unhappy.

A Ferrari won't cruise over sand dunes like a Jeep. And a Jeep definitely won't turn corners like a Ferrari. It's very easy to understand the relative strengths of a Ferrari and a Jeep.
The relative strengths of the blackbox are a little more subtle.

It's up to you, and your time investment and creativity to realize how this instrument supports the practice of your art. It's your prerogative if you want to bemoan what you think the blackbox is lacking in critical functionality. It says more about you than it does about the blackbox.

Play music.

[Painting Silence]

so your point is that we dont spend enough time and working hours with the black box and therefore havent quite figured it out yet, is what you say? how about seeing it the other way round, like we have spend so much time and work with the black box that there are a few elimentory features that just kill our workflow? The Black Box is also quite a young product. Behringer clones mostly popular vintage products. The Black Box, besides its praise, is far from gaining mainstream acceptance. And not taking care of the core features is not helping much in my opinion. Of course the black box is a capable sequencer... nobody has argued otherwise.. but is the black box an easy to use, intuitive sequencer besides its possibilities? A few users would kindly disagree here.. and last.. I would also disagree that the UI is "freaking intuitive". For me the Black Box has one of the steepest learning curves, partly due to its innovative workflow. Sophisticated.. but freaking intuitive?

[Painting Silence]

i do get your point about open and closed systems, however we are not asking for additional features but rather the improvement of existing ones. I am sure theres quite a few people asking Roland or Elektron for the same matter and trust me there is quite a few things I would like to change on my TR8s as well, but what you should consider as well is that the Black Box is rather software based with very few hardware buttons (unlike the Digitakt or the TR8). This leaves more room for optimization of the firmware.

[Phil Mercy]

I would have killed to have had this in my teens, (you darn kids)

I didn't really want to pitch in too much in this debate ......but .......

I'm enough of a dinosaur to remember my first foray into the world of hardware sequencing, Alesis HR16, MMT8, and a juno 106. None of these remain in my possession (sadly).
Had somebody back then described the Black box to me, I'd have thought I'd wandered onto the set of a Star trek episode.

Maybe in another 30 years we'll be marvelling at the 1010 Mindbox with brainstem wireless interfacing, AI Mozart note streaming, and a virtual club VR environment workflow. That would be something. For now, I select a preset on the Blackbox and consider myself fortunate

Just my viewpoint, and yours may vary, but I thought I'd share.
Peace,

[arteom]

shankiphonic, yeah I'm running 1.7.4 and seeing the issue often as sequences I'm working on start to get populated.

[shankiphonic]

It's fair to say that the sequencing workflow is not the strength of the blackbox.

Aaron, you are a true gentleman for entertaining so much criticism with so much class.
I don't know how you do it.
The hostility and op-ed criticism of the product on this forum is bumming me out, man.

Fender Just released a Cory Wong signature Strat.
If I had to guess, I'd bet that the decision to produce this model was not based on Mr. Wong's incessent pissing and moaning about the fret markers on the Strat.
More likely, it's that Cory Wong could make any beat up, bent neck pawn shop guitar sound great.

I suppose if I were mad at the universe for not being born Jacob Collier, or If I hated myself because I knew I spent more time GASsing than I do practicing, then bullying the blackbox might seem like a good coping strategy.

The sequencing workflow is not the strength of the blackbox?
The blackbox, with its touchscreen, can capably sequence multiple instruments simultaneously and play itself polyphonically on multiple channels.
An iPhone is the closest thing I can think of to match a blackbox, and an iPhone costs over $1k, and you'd still need to buy software and adapters to get it on par with the blackbox.
A 5-inch square, all-in-one instrument & music studio isn't a thing.
What else is there at this size, and this price-point that can do what the blackbox does?

What the people calling for open source maybe don't realize, is that you think you'd be able to program the blackbox because the UI is so freaking intuitive.
"It must be easy!"
If that were the case, we'd be swimming in blackbox clones by now. Isn't it curious, that with all the good press blackbox has received, that we having seen a BehringerBox clone yet?
It's because this device is serious, next-level, poop.
I would have killed to have had this in my teens, (you darn kids)!
If you're not going to put in the work to learn the blackbox and incorporate into your process, should you really be leaving design notes?

[jayneural]

Aaron, what do you think about the Korg NTS-1/XD/Prologue paradigm ? Opening the FX slots and Pad types only ?

[shankiphonic]

I haven't thought about this in a while arteom. but it's a thing that changed (not for the better) in 1.7.3.
Is it still not fixed in 1.7.4?
https://forum.1010music.com/forum/pr...age4#post19897

[sydilaxe]

Very interesting perspectives for sure. I think another view on music hardware would be to look at these as open or closed systems. I am a huge fan of the Organelle and NTs-1. These are open systems that encourage development and experimentation. They can become whatever the user wants them to be. I look at the Bluebox and Blackbox as closed systems. They are designed for a specific purpose, like a Digitakt or a Mc-707. I see a lot of calls for people to open source the firmware for the 1010 boxes and then being frustrated when they don’t … but very few folks are complaining about Elektron or Roland not doing this. I wonder why the double standard.

[jayneural]

If anyone cared about security in a non connected groovebox… it would at least have a password on startup

They don’t have to open all the source code, they just need to open some hooks to be able to add functionality in the form of plugins/extensions aka shag Korg does with NTS-1/Minilogue XD/Prologue.

[Painting Silence]

Possible way to go. That would filter out irresponsible use of the firmware..

[Painting Silence]

Thank you much for sharing the article about the dangers of open source. I followed it and find it highly interesting. I definitely agree that open source opens up vulnerabilities otherwise unknown and this is of great danger when it comes to user data and website security. However I don't find this argument applicable in the case of the black box as this is an offline device and no sensitive data is stored on it anyway so which vulnerability are you worried about specifically? As for the PR Desaster of course this is a likely possibility so the user goes raging on socials about how a firmware not officially supported by 1010 destroyed his black box in which case 1010 would argue that it has warned using only official builds. So then a shit storm arises about why dangerous builds are available at all is your fear? Well in this case there could still be open source software but it's distribution limited to a closed community. This community has signed an agreement that it will not hold 1010 liable for buggy open source. I think that might be another option? I do well understand your points thanks again for presenting them. I still think however that the black box will be well below its potential with closed source, which is a shame given its sophisticated design.