Where did the "standard" timeline/piano roll DAW UI paradigms come from?

[Starship Krupa]

Something I've long been curious about: what DAW's or NLE's were the first to adopt the design/layout paradigms that are now pretty much standard.

Whatever their differences, the "classic" DAW's seem to have settled down with a standard layout paradigm.

You know you're going to see a main window with tracks laid out horizontally, track headers at one side, and another window with a piano roll for MIDI editing. The piano roll has a graphical representation of a piano keyboard at the left and a grid where you enter and edit notes. From there, it's down to the finer points of how you navigate those things.

Also, over the years, many DAW's have added an optional "inspector" at the left that lets you access more parameters relating to a focused track. Same with a vertically-arranged "browser" either at left or right that acts as a table of contents for plug-ins, loops and other such things. Most of them now have some sort of layers or lanes or equivalent that allow for different iterations of the tracks.

Cubase has this, Sonar, Pro Tools and of course the REAPERs and Mixcrafts and Studios One and Mixbuses that came later. Even Waveform and Ableton Live have it, with the difference being that the track headers are at the right for whatever reason.

Who were the firsts? Who did the first piano roll with the keyboard at the left? Who first did the horizontal tracks with headers? Lanes? Everyone copies features and workflow from each other, but someone had to do them first.

Later, who was first to have the floatable dockable rearrangeable windows for the views? Who put that inspector over at the left?

The bulk of my experience is with Cakewalk, Mixcraft, and Studio One, all of which are close enough to each other that it's down to specific differences, IMO. I have no experience with pre SONAR X Cakewalk stuff, so I don't know about that.

The reason this came up for me is that I visited with a college professor friend whose specialty is media, and when he wrote a paper on the influence that computers have had on how we create music, he chose Cubase as his starting point. I think that was because he had to start somewhere, and to him, Cubase seemed to be the first widely adopted MIDI sequencer. 

[OutrageProductions]

It probably stems from the logic that written sheet music has horizontal staves, preceded by (most) 'western' languages that have been written in a horizontal form.

I'm not going to lose any sleep pondering a question that relates to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" paradigm.

Followed closely by the "curiosity killed the cat" idiom. ?

[User 905133]

Where did the "standard" timeline/piano roll DAW UI paradigms come from?

I am pretty sure software got the idea of the piano roll from player pianos. As for putting all the different elements together, it might be nice to have a reference book on all the different elements and when they were first used in different DAWs.

Edited June 11 by User 905133
edits

[Xoo]

Atari ST Pro 24 (forerunner of Cubase) and Notator (precursor to Logic) IIRC.

Edited June 11 by Xoo

[User 905133]

34 minutes ago, Xoo said:

Atari ST Pro 24 (forerunner of Cubase) and Notator (precursor to Logic) IIRC.

Interesting (Atari ST Pro 24 Software).

This issue of "Amazing Computing" has an article on "Master Tracks Pro v. Bars and Pipes" (starts on page 30). 

Edited June 11 by User 905133

[craigb]

4 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Where did the "standard" timeline/piano roll DAW UI paradigms come from?

[Starship Krupa]

4 hours ago, OutrageProductions said:

I'm not going to lose any sleep pondering a question that relates to the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" paradigm.

Followed closely by the "curiosity killed the cat" idiom.

I'm not losing any sleep over the question, nor would I ask anyone else to. I'm not trying to develop my own DAW so there's nothing to fix other than satisfying my curiosity.

Speaking of which, do you think I'm putting myself in danger asking about DAW development history?? If so, I'd like to know what pitfalls to watch out for. If it's too dangerous to even speak of, I understand. But a vague hint or two might not hurt?

[OutrageProductions]

58 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Speaking of which, do you think I'm putting myself in danger asking about DAW development history?? 

But a vague hint or two might not hurt?

Who am I  to know where and what the Guardians of the Software Vault may penalize.?

It just seems logical that the progression of a waveform/data stream from left to right may be a natural thing (except in Arabian locales where right to left may be more so, or east Asia where too to bottom prevails).

I do know that the plasma displays on Harrison Series12 & MPC consoles actually could display signal waveforms from bottom to top, which required some acclimatization. 

As for the Inspector/Browser locations... whatever works is fine with me. 

"Mine is not to question why... mine is just to...  mix!"

[Starship Krupa]

24 minutes ago, OutrageProductions said:

It just seems logical that the progression of a waveform/data stream from left to right may be a natural thing (except in Arabian locales where right to left may be more so, or east Asia where too to bottom prevails).

I get the left to right part. People from Western countries would expect the playhead to go from left to right. I was wondering more about the part where the tracks are horizontal, with headers on the left. That doesn't seem like something that DAW's picked up from something else, except maybe seismographs and other paper chart recorders.

I know that trackers, which were a hip thing for a while and never really went away, and actual physical piano rolls scroll top to bottom.

The traditional DAW/NLE layout lets the user watch as events are triggered, get an overview of a whole song or project.

Maybe it's a simple as real estate: monitors are wider than they are tall, so horizontal tracks lets you display the greatest amount of timeline.

Then there's Waveform, and Ableton Live, who put the track headers over on the right for no good reason I can think of, except unless the other stuff in Ableton Live need to be over there.

These features are the way they are because someone thought of the best way to present the information, tried it, it worked, and then other developers adopted it. Draw and paint programs have floating palettes because it works. It's great to have access to those tools right there where you're working so you don't have to look away.

I just get curious about things sometimes. Why is this program that I stare at so much the way that it is?

[ptheisen]

17 hours ago, User 905133 said:

Interesting (Atari ST Pro 24 Software).

This issue of "Amazing Computing" has an article on "Master Tracks Pro v. Bars and Pipes" (starts on page 30). 

Master Tracks Pro on an Atari 1040ST was how I started out.

[jackson white]

18 hours ago, User 905133 said:

the piano roll from player pianos

AFAIK, they scrolled vertically vs horizontal. Heard Beck will be releasing his next album in this format.

[User 905133]

21 hours ago, jackson white said:

AFAIK, they scrolled vertically vs horizontal. Heard Beck will be releasing his next album in this format.

Here's a "piano roll" that's more of an accordian [word plays intended].   ?

[craigb]

1 hour ago, User 905133 said:

Here's a "piano roll" that's more of an accordian [word plays intended].   ?

Are you trying to hurt us? ?

[Starship Krupa]

On 6/11/2024 at 3:52 PM, User 905133 said:

Interesting (Atari ST Pro 24 Software).

This issue of "Amazing Computing" has an article on "Master Tracks Pro v. Bars and Pipes" (starts on page 30). 

That issue of Amazing Computing  is very interesting. Anyone who's curious about this topic should check it out.

There's a screenshot in there of a piano roll that has most of the important elements of the ones we use today, down to velocity display, articulations, etc.

[msmcleod]

As @User 905133 says, it's almost certainly from old player-pianos:



When I used Music-X on the Amiga back in the late 80's, it had a piano roll editor:

[JnTuneTech]

4 hours ago, msmcleod said:

When I used Music-X on the Amiga back in the late 80's, it had a piano roll editor

Nice. When I happened upon a demo disk on an Amiga 1000 in '87, and played some drum samples via a key press - it really fired me up. -As for piano roll mechanics, I was already familiar with that, -as well as the workings of music box (chimes) & such, so when I opened up a few drum editors in the 90's it already made sense to me then. As for track & mixer layouts - I had been using multitrack tape & mixers for a while, and tracks are just like stripes on a linear tape, and mixer channel strips, are well, mixer strips. Most of it seemed like physical emulation right away, for me.

Wish I could find that Amiga demo disk (or virtual one now) I originally used. Just for nostalgia. ? Amiga emulation is so easy now.

[sjoens]

google it

https://hub.yamaha.com/proaudio/pa-history/the-history-of-the-daw/

https://mixdownmag.com.au/features/a-brief-history-of-the-daw-or-digital-audio-workstation/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_workstation

Edited June 16 by sjoens

[Promidi]

Probably from the scroll from a pianola where representation of that scroll is horizontal.

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

The first music software I used was Type A Tune on the Vic 20 in 1982

https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/20923/VC-20 Type-a-Tune/

However the the first MIDI sequencer to use the paradigm of displaying notes that move left to right was likely the Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument) Series III, introduced in the early 1980s. This was one of the first digital audio workstations (DAWs) that included a graphical user interface for sequencing.

Edited June 17 by Mark Morgon-Shaw