Lucidity was the working name for a music software project which has been abandoned. I have released the source in case others find it useful or inspiring, though the project never reached a functional beta release.

Lucidity was conceived in summer 2009. The initial concept was to create a realtime sequencer, where the timeline moved from right to left. The user would place "blocks" in the timeline, which would be played when they reached the left side of the screen. Thus, a DJ would be planning out mixes 2-3 songs in advance instead of simply jumping from one track to the next.

So, what happened? Well, as always, not enough time. I'm a fulltime programmer, and trying to do more code in my spare time is tough, to say the least.

Furthermore, a new DJ software called "The One" seems to offer most of Lucidity's original vision. I'm optimistic that it will solve the problem which I was hoping to solve.

There are some ideas from Lucidity which I still would like to incorporate into other projects. First, I'm still drawn to making search a key feature of content-based software. Make the search capabilities smart, fast, and nearly psychic. And make them easily accessible. I drew much inspiration from Chrome in this regard.

I also like the idea of remapping the keyboard to make obvious keys more useful, and breaking convention with standard key bindings when they don't make sense. Much inspiration here came from IntelliJ, which for instance remaps ctrl+n to something more useful than creating a new file.

Also, the standard keystrokes such as ctrl+q and ctrl+w do not make sense in software which should not be accidentally quit or closed. Same goes with the spacebar in music software, though this is much more useful when composing than when performing.

So, what will become of Lucidity? At the moment, I'm not sure. I'm still quite content using Ableton Live for performing music at the moment, but it has a number of frustrations, namely when searching and browsing for music. Some of the ideas behind Lucidity are likely to be reborn in an add-on to make additional sequencers more useful.

Update: In mid-2012, "The One" was announced. As of early 2013, it is still in private beta. Based on my limited experience with the software, I'm very happy to see that other folks have stumbled across the same idea. I will be eagerly watching The One's progress, as it has fundamentally the same workflow as Lucidity had imagined.