Here’s a preview of the latest version of the iPhone virtual Mellotron, Ellatron 1.2:
Captured straight off the simulator, this shows that we are in much better shape than yesterday, and clearly shows why the UI implementation needed to be changed.
Previously the keyboard was physically realizable – 3 faces mutually set at 120 degrees in a ‘Toblerone’ shape, one with an F root, one with a C root, and one with the control panel – you just had to rotate in the right direction to get the thing you needed.
Now it’s a bit Escher – there are 7 faces to the ‘keyboard’ now, but still at 120 degrees to each other, featuring fatC, fatF, thinC, thinF, Control Panel, Chord buttons (NOW WITH CHORDS!) and the ‘wait for version 2 you impatient Ellaheads’ Step Sequencer. Also notice that the big triangular buttons have gone, and now both displays are touch-sensitive – I was getting really confused by my own inconsistent user interface and figured Apple would never do that on a product, why should I?
A few bugs still in here, and I need to implement a few things yet –
- fat key overlays for ‘blue touch’ rendering
- fat keyboard layout (to support playing – that’s important!)
- chord programming interface
- persistent options (i.e comes back where you left off)
