It looks to be a really well written and maintained C++ project.
It's built on top of the JUCE framework [0]. Builds super easy on Linux with minimal dependencies.
The coding style is C#-like - very easy to read.
I can't say anything about the main functionality though, as I have zero understanding about music composition.
Open source is everyday getting more corporate-like. In the old times people would create open source as a hobby, nowadays they're just thinking on how this will appear on the resume.
I think the sentiment it was trying to get across is that many projects don't have documentation because the task of creating great documentation may seem daunting, so in a sense just saying at least have something. I'm taking it to mean it's a work in progress, but it could have been worded better, of course.
Some popular music production software are skeumorphic aberrations with practical but dated UI. They are very reliable but clunky. It is a shame that FLOSS has very a weak tradition with regard to UI.
Music production software looks right now like an unexplored avenue needing new residents.
> FLOSS has very a weak tradition with regard to UI.
It was not true on macOS pre mac app store. Open source apps extracted as much as possible of what was provided by Cocoa and guidelines, it was working very well. Mac app store, Swift, electron and the general advent of apple killed the appeal for the native app on macOS to open source developers.
Some popular music production hardware are skeumorphic aberrations with practical but dated UI. They are reliable, but clunky. It is a shame that hardware designers have a very weak tradition with regard to UI.
Just installed it. This is great. I wish there were more instruments and built-in sample library. Like a full blown DAW. The composing experience is not as simple as fruityloops or other platforms. Also, I was wondering if I could add midi controller. Could not find much info on that.
> I wish there were more instruments and built-in sample library.
That's costly and time-consuming. Think of all the licenses. There are enough free VST plugins to get you started, though. Here's a starting point: https://www.kvraudio.com/plugins/instruments/free/newest. Change the search to match your platform, and don't forget to look at the effects (although I couldn't see if Helios supports them).
If you are into this, you might be interested in this IDE for music composition I’ve been working on. It’s not out yet, but I’m hoping to launch soon http://ngrid.io.
It’s very refreshing to see a DAW putting the entirety of its focus on host UI and core features like microtonality support, rather than maintaining built-in banks and instruments.
Yes, Helio is nothing without your plugins; but it also implies that your source project is more easily portable to another platform capable of running AU/VST. (Especially if things like tempo automation can be exported, to be confirmed.) Built-in stuff like Bitwig’s modular grid are great, but I know I can’t recreate that exact sound in another DAW.
I was able to connect Pianoteq and create a few seconds long, very simple arrangement using just keyboard & touchpad in about 10 minutes. Helio’s editing interface and approach to patterns and arrangement seem a bit idiomatic and will take some getting used to, but its unique orchestra pit approach to managing instruments jives with me perfectly.
The sequencer looks slick, but for an amateur like me it’s hard to beat the instruments and samples that come with Logic. Maybe I can route the midi output from Helio to Logic through a virtual midi device and try it out that way. Otherwise I’d need to drop tons of cash on a plug-in and sample collection.
No need to drop tons of cash on anything, there are enormous amounts of samples and plugins availlable for free. You just need a little time and stop yourself from searching for more <edit>to actually</edit> start making music ;)
Given that for this sort of project, there's a more or less completely 1:1, deterministic mapping between a MIDI representation and anything else, you can just insert a MIDI->Lilypond (or vice versa) filter and you're done.
Lilypond and MusicXML would both be nice export options. I think there would have to be quite a bit of thought put into configuring what the export would be. Would you map the audio plugins you are using to instruments then represented as staves?
I actually found out about this software a couple of ways ago, when searching for sequencing software for Android, preferably with midi support. Though it seem quite capable and polished, the Android version was a bit annoying to use.
Haven't played with it yet, but yes. Its strengths are: free, oss, multi-platform, and a different way of interacting with the notes. It probably has good handling of micro-tonality, too.
Update: The UI was unusable for me on an iPhone SE 2020. Lots of buttns cut off, labels overlapping. May look into the issues for this later to make sure there hasn’t been one created yet.
Also, I went to poke around the source code:
https://github.com/helio-fm/helio-workstation
It looks to be a really well written and maintained C++ project. It's built on top of the JUCE framework [0]. Builds super easy on Linux with minimal dependencies. The coding style is C#-like - very easy to read.
I can't say anything about the main functionality though, as I have zero understanding about music composition.
[0] https://github.com/juce-framework/JUCE