The Attributes of Musical Fun
It isn’t a single thing, it’s an alignment of particular stars that create the magic of fun. While this is not meant to be a definitive definition of fun as it relates to music creation, I’m describing what it means for me, and my personal experience of music-making.
Tactility & Speed
Those buttons need to feel as amazing as ripping on Super Street Fighter II Alpha at the arcade. Those faders should feel like they were carved from a solid diamond. I should be hitting the touch targets on that touchscreen 100% of the time, with no misfires or lag. The air between my hand and that theremin should feel like it’s enriched with the dreams of a thousand unicorns. If it feels like I’m finger-drumming on broken glass, that’s going to make me use another machine. (I’m exaggerating to make a point.) Don’t skimp on the hardware controllers, and it’s critical to choose the right size and firmness out of the gate.
Think of a bicycle. There are hundreds of different parts of a bicycle, but when riding, your body only touches three of them: the pedals, saddle and handlebars. These are the controls of your instrument. Make those parts the highest quality you can, because they’re getting the most interaction from users.
I want to feel like I’m playing an instrument, so I need the device to respond immediately to my input. When I play a note, I can’t have 50ms of delay. When I execute a command, I don’t have time for a loading screen. When I press a key and the device respond immediately with the response I was expecting, trust is built. If I can trust my gear, that’s when a deeper relationship can bloom beyond just ‘owner’ / ‘possession’. This is where gear stories come from.
Responsiveness & Predictability
If the device takes too long to respond to my input, or my input is causing unexpected outcomes, those both kill fun real quick. On the flip side, when I have built a solid mental model of the device’s functionality, then I no longer need to rely so heavily on device feedback, which frees me to create faster, with less cognitive load. It ushers in the flow state of music creation.
Predictability comes after experiencing an expected response from a given input action. Every time I turn THAT knob, the volume changes. After a certain amount of these repeated experiences (the amount depending on both the function and user), I start to trust and believe that the machine can be relied upon to repeat that response over and over, even if I’m not consciously concentrating on my input. Eventually, it becomes like driving a car or riding a bicycle; I’m just doing it without thinking about it.
This is ideal state of relationship between user and instrument because friction is entirely removed. The goal is to stack up as many of these predictable functions as possible. For a function to become predictable and enter into the user’s unconscious mastery—for it to become invisible—it must be discoverable, accessible, logical and usable. Many functions of a device never meet these criteria. The ones that meet the least of these feel the most difficult to understand—let alone master.
Opportunity & Discovery
The FM radio on the Polyend Tracker and OP-1 supply sounds I never would have thought to pursue. The Polyend Tracker gives me a fill function where I can purposefully seek random events. The Polyend Play gives me a randomizer that does a similar thing. Give me ways to access controlled unpredictability so I can discover things I may never have planned beforehand.
This is especially true for music producers that use electronic equipment like workstations, drum machines, synths and grooveboxes because they tend to work alone more often than, say, a drummer in a band. When you’re in a band, you can all meet up and there’s already a level of unpredictability supplied by way of other people in the room. But electronic music producers don’t have this luxury of riffing off a bandmate.
In a way, presets are a form of this, too. We can scroll through different presets on a synth and be surprised at a sound we may not have imagined. You could also consider LFOs to be a form of uncontrolled randomness. Effects, too. Whatever it is, creatives thrive on random, uncontrolled inputs. I believe this is a realm of features that hasn’t been deeply explored, and which has a treasure trove of possibility.
Learnability & Mastery
The quicker and easier I can learn the device, the faster I can use it to execute my ideas. The faster I can master the device, the sooner it can fade into the background and simply be the tool I need it to be so I can create my music. In today’s world of everything right now, it’s difficult to ‘sell’ products that have a high learning curve—simply because we don’t have the time for them. Some musicians give up on a one-to-rule-them-all device and end up with the table-full-of-gear approach, because smaller, more focused instruments tend to be much simpler to learn.
This is the holy grail; the flag in the sand we should all be racing towards. When a device is so usable that its features become “invisible”. It’s when nothing else is left to learn. The labels have long since worn off and it doesn’t matter, because it’s been etched onto the fibers of our muscle memory. This is mastery; the flow state.
So how do we design instruments that have a chance to become that holy-grail tool for our creatives? The road to simplicity is routed through the swamp of complexity. When we’ve extracted every ounce of possible flatness from our information architecture, when we’ve stripped all extraneous features, when we’ve ensured our controls are fun to use, when it’s as learnable as it can possibly be… that’s when our product has a chance to become that one device. Now, all it needs is a user.
Also published on Medium
