Comment by leviathant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by leviathant | Hacker News Reader

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'first JS-based grid sequencer'

We're all inspired by other things, and being first doesn't really count for much if you don't promote yourself. Even then, it's a roll of the dice as to if you stand out in the crowd.

If you're just going by "JS-based grid sequencer' I created one in February 2011 as part of an HTML-based emulation of a Boss DR-110 drum machine (Which I later updated to use the Web Audio API to synthesize the drum voices)

https://github.com/leviathant/BossDR110

It's skeumorphic (I was challenging the popular notion "You can do everything in HTML that you can do in Flash" at the time - it wasn't true then, but we're much closer now), I never finished out 'song mode', but it is a JS-based grid sequencer that predates your timeline. As best as I can tell, it was the first click-and-drag Javascript knob done Rebirth/Reason style - it was a little clunky, but I sure as hell couldn't find any remotely similar code to base it off of - but I don't get bent out of shape whenever I see other people making Javascript knobs.

Yes, we're all inspired by other things. Neither of us invented grid sequencers, or music theory.

I know there was no hostile intent, and I'm glad that OP is having fun, but hopefully you understand why I feel a slight pinch when I see something that is so close to what I've built making the rounds on HN with zero acknowledgement from OP.

If we just go by a description of features, we've both built a grid sequencer in JS, with a built in synth that is designed to play on a scale so that everything comes out "sounding good"... With a serverless architecture so that you can share the tunes with anchor tags. It's precisely the same idea. How would you feel? Would you be able to be completely detached?

I did promote MusicToy a bit. The original MusicToy made the rounds on reddit 8 years ago. MusicToy2 has had the same (small) base of active users for about 1.5 year now: https://mt2.musictools.live/

Either way, I should probably look at this as a learning experience. It shows that I didn't promote my project as well as I could have. My project could also use better mobile support in terms of auto-scaling the page for mobile displays.

> 0 acknowledgement from OP.

if it makes you feel any better, I am the author of the website and I posted the same exact link 9 hours before OP and it got 3 upvotes [0] .

then I woke up to a lot of GitHub stars on the repository and turns out this blew up.

HN works in mysterious ways.

> 0 acknowledgement from OP

I have no idea, that seems like a newly created account to me. if you have any queries or issues/feedback, you can always raise it on git or contact me.

I took this only as a learning experience and in no way to promote or market something :)

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23508667

Thank you for responding irshadshalu, I sincerely appreciate you taking the time. I agree that HN works in unpredictable ways. I don't know if you were just more lucky than I was, or if people like your app better because the UI looks better. If that's the case, it's interesting to know.

This HN account is new-ish, but the original MusicToy blog post from 2012 is still around [1].

As far as Git goes, I would appreciate it if you had an acknowledgement somewhere that linked to the MusicToy repo[2], or just mentioned in passing in terms of inspirations/predecessors. You obviously have no obligation to do this, but it won't take away from the success of your app if you choose to do so.

I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors, and may your success encourage you to build more great projects.

[1] https://pointersgonewild.com/2012/04/23/musictoy-music-made-...

[2] https://github.com/maximecb/MusicToy

But parent hasn't acknowledged that you were an inspiration. I find this insistence quite rude. Especially when it's taking well trodden ground in desktop software and putting it on the web.

Well trodden ground? Except there wasn't desktop software that could do this beforehand.

If you can't see the innovation, let me spell it out for you in very few words: the software has an intuitive-enough UI that you need no prior knowledge of the program to use it, and you can share musical ideas in one or two clicks. Please tell us exactly which desktop program allowed you to do this, as easily, pre-2012? Yes, this is novel, since it enables something that wasn't possible before.

This kind of simple edit and share songs definitely existed, e.g. Otomata. So you combined Otomata and Tone Matrix? Cool, I guess, but the ingredients were right there for any number of people to do the same thing independently.

Trying to claim your place as the trunk of the tree that any tool that looks like this branches out of is not reflective of reality and pure hubris.

Also I'd appreciate it if you added a link on Music Toy for both of these apps which clearly gave you inspiration.

Why in the world would the author lie to market for you when you weren’t an inspiration?

I think it's very likely that he has seen one of the multiple music apps I've put out over the years and has actually taken inspiration from it. Either way, it's not required, but considerate to acknowledge your predecessors. Particularly given that the concept is pretty much exactly the same.

I was not aware of any of the music apps you made and came to know about MusicToy first time from this thread (oh and it's great btw, I played around with it a bit)

and my inspiration, as I stated earlier was from a stress-reliver app in play store which I have given credits in the first paragraph of README.

There's so much messaging around "if you build it, they will come" and "my work should speak for itself" that it's easy to feel defeated when someone does the same thing - often, a variation you'll even find to be inferior - but gets more recognition for it because that person was better at promoting.

Speaking for myself, I'm not great at self-promotion. It feels gross. Marketing feels gross - and, if I'm being real, it often is gross. But that's how you get recognition. Spending time to talk about yourself and your work helps to position you for that time that luck just seemed to fall in your lap.

As I was building out that JS Boss DR-110, I rounded a corner where I felt like if I really dedicated myself to putting the polish on - finishing up song mode, scrapping and rewriting the frontend styling, a live demo page with a listing of actual DR-110s for sale driven by the eBay API - I could have made a sizeable splash in whatever that niche world was. Of course, in early 2011 getting consistent timing out of Javascript doing audio playback wasn't possible - that was a considerable hindrance. But it would still be a solid groundwork for someone else's future project. I could have done a few low-key unpaid speaking engagements about it, for sure.

Then what?

Every now and then, I think about going back and rewriting the sequencer, or building an import/export routine, or implementing MIDI I/O, but I have no real desire to get into the world of creating softsynth drum machines & sequencers. It's a fun footnote, it was a good way to kick off some rust - I hadn't been doing front end code for several years by that point.

Nice job on Musictoy, and that's great that you've got a persistent userbase, no matter what the size is!

Thanks for the honest comment. I think you're quite right about the "if you build it, they will come" messaging, and the importance of self-promotion.

It's also OK to build projects that don't necessarily go anywhere. I recently had a music app I was developing and I had hopes for turning that into a business, but I quickly realized that in order to make the app really competitive, to have enough value that people would pay for it, it would become a job on top of my job, and that would really kill the fun. At the end of the day, side-projects like this are mostly about having fun and learning a few things.

I am happy with my small userbase. The fact that a few people keep coming back, and the app lives on its own, without me promoting it, means that some people find genuine value/enjoyment out of it. I intend to keep the app running and free for as long as it doesn't become a maintenance burden.

Invention is a myth

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