Initially, I actually wanted to implement a two-player sequencer, an idea I got from the Data DUO synthesizer, and the idea of music constantly changing and being modified, added to, subtracted from. However, I felt like I had a hard time kind of defining the types of interactions that I wanted to happen, especially since I started off with three components: two players and the playhead. It was hard to determine what interactions should be distinctly playhead-player interactions versus player-player interactions, and this indecision actually led to poor architecture in the long run. When I finally decided (with the help of feedback from the class and Ge), I felt that I was somewhat limited in what I could further implement just due to how I had initially set up my program and would have to more or less restructure several classes to properly accommodate extensions (an action I unfortunately did not have enough time to do).
Additionally, while I and several other classmates in the feedback were excited about a two-player sequencer, it felt hard to implement when playhead functionality was implemented; namely, the playhead and player would have very similar functiinality (consuming sound pellets), so I thought it would be best to cut out the second player since I couldn't find a meaningful way to incorporate it. As a result, a lot of my design decisions were made based on the time scope I had to work with and the architecture I already had in place. In order to spice things up a little, I decided to more fully commit to a reverse Pacman concept that was suggested through feedback and took inspiration from Ivan's sequencer through how I created different sections for different instruments. Despite the difficulties, I actually did enjoy learning how to tinker with the musical aspects! I feel like I learned a lot on how Ugens work and various filters and how to apply them.
In terms of help received, I relied very heavily on feedback from class on how to progress with my sequencer. For the implementation, I relied a lot on Andrew's drum machine to figure out how I might structure my sequencer, and on
Clint Hoagland's tutorials for how to achieve a chiptune kind of sound.