Pulse.
PulseWell, now that I have been working with Podium for a month or so,
a few workflow-improving features occured as a natural extension of my work.
(NOTE – I am using Podium Free, and I am not familiar with the set of features in Podium 2.41, so if any of these suggestions is already there, sorry for the stolen time)
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1. In the Piano Roll – a dedicated section or tab giving the ability to select a particular instrument from the project, with, let’s say a tick-box, making it visible in the MIDI editor as background MIDI. Thus we can work on selected instruments only, instead of having a mess in the background consisting of all the instruments used in the whole project. And that section could be turned On or Off so that to spare visual space.
Otherwise it can be very confusing in big arrangements and complex harmonies.
Here’s an example video of Cakewalk Sonar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QlKV23mRWU&feature=related
Of course, the possibilities go on and on, so its open to improvements and further suggestions.
2. A very handy workflow improving thing – to be able to change the colour of individual clips, both Audio or MIDI. And likewise, to be able to rename them to our liking. I always introduce a ton of variations on different themes and so on, and this would greatly improve the speed of work, making identifying certain clips a breeze.
3. With regards to Automation; Well, why not remove the background colour and the clip-box of the autom. clip, and leave the main Automation curve/line only, very much like the standard nowadays in other DAWs. When there are ridiculously big number of automations in a project, they tend to lead to great and irritating visual clutter. I’ve tried to find a workaround, and made a dedicated “Automations” Tag, yet this time it was even worse, made working very chaotic. Especially when there are 3-4 or more automations per synth/track, as there are even greater number of clicks and switching between tagged Tracks.
And while we are on the topic of automations, a very important and relieving feature would be In-Track Automations. That would be implementing the standard “VST Paramaters” to the bottom of the MIDI editor as well, not only a simple Velocity value. Theres already a beautiful empty space on the left, next to the “Edit only selected Events, Note Attack Velocity and Note Release” icons.
So a simple “+” button there could reveal all the automatable parameters for the given VST/VSTi.
And even greater would be having many of them. All chosen parameters can appear as a button just next to/under the “+” button, (very much like the tag buttons for the tracks), revealing their respective values when clicked. Thus we could use In-track automations for more in-depth and surgical adjustments, also for trivial tasks, like simple fade-ins and outs, without cluttering the main Timeline, using automation tracks/lanes for more general purposes.
4. MIDI scrub tool. And also all kinds of MIDI love. Invert vertically, invert horizontally. More scales, chords, modes. MIDI effects, arp, the list goes on and on.
5. The ability to undock the Mixer. Very crucial for those with two-monitor set-ups.
6. A native VST plugin preset viewer/changer on the plugin itself. In other words, the same preset browser that Podium already have, but implemented in the plugins’ windows as well. It’s a real pain browsing through presets now. A lot of unnecessary clicks. It is very common for vst/i’s not to have preset/patch/bank selectors.
7. And finally, just a humble idea.
Making send FX Tracks more streamlined and easy to work with. For an example;
A simple right mouse button click on the mixer -> Add Send FX track.
Done. Then to be able to colour it and name it as we want, add the desired effect. That would autotatically make the routings, and appear on the send section of any wanted track.
Well, that was for now. All the best guys.
Vibe On
Light & Peace
CC
kingtubby@CymaticCreation wrote:
Well, now that I have been working with Podium for a month or so,
a few workflow-improving features occured as a natural extension of my work…
Lots of good ideas there – 🙂
Regarding clip colours, that was an idea I raised some time ago. It’s something that Propellerheads do very well in Reason; i.e assign some particular colour to an individual clip, which I find is really helpful when it comes to arranging.
Mart.
thcilnnahojYup, some really nice ideas! 🙂
Let me just comment on these ones…
@CymaticCreation wrote:
5. The ability to undock the Mixer. Very crucial for those with two-monitor set-ups.
While it’s not as dead-simple as just undocking the mixer, it’s possible to have it on another screen using screensets. Most unneeded elements (transport bar, etc.) can then be stripped from the mixer editor profile. The only thing you really can’t remove is the tab bar at the top…
Making send FX Tracks more streamlined and easy to work with. For an example;
A simple right mouse button click on the mixer -> Add Send FX track.
Done. Then to be able to colour it and name it as we want, add the desired effect. That would autotatically make the routings, and appear on the send section of any wanted track.
If you click on the “+” (add effect) button on a track, all available sends appear in the menu as well. If you choose a send that has no return track yet, Podium asks if you want to create one automatically. Do you add sends to tracks in a different way?
Or do you mean that once a send is created it should be present on all tracks?
PulseFor the mixer view, yes, I have already seen posts about it, and accordingly tried the screenset thing, and of course it is possible now, no doubt about it, yet I was refering to simplifying certain things. Just a suggestion for the future perhaps. One button click away.
As for the FX Bus channels, the case is absolutely the same. Creating them is not over-complex, but I just shared a humble idea about simplifying stuff.
That’s exactly how I create them thcilnnahoj, but in the beginning it was very strange and somewhat confusing. It is great having so much control over things, but soon one gets lost in programming (in the Device mapping properties in this case), rather than composing. So again, it was just a suggestion to simplify things, that would mean cleaning up the code as well I guess.
Recently I demoed Studio One. Not to my tase, yet it spoiled me apparantly with its simplicity.
Peace
CC
ZynewaveThanks for the suggestions. The issue with the automation lanes cluttering the track overview is something I’ll try to improve at some point.
The video you linked to in your first post seems to have been removed.
PulseYes Frits, apparantly the user suspended his/her account. Sorry for the inconvenience. It was just a video representation of my suggestion with regards to Instrument choosing in the Piano Roll.
Now that I think about it, a new thing comes to mind concerning automations;
– Giving the choice to the user whether to leave them as separate tracks or putting them over the automated track (which is the case now). Yet from there on a new tab could appear in the MIDI editor of this track like “A” or some kind of button. Or it could be directly on the rack itself in general, next to the Bounce, Solo, Mute and Record buttons.
Once automation curves are moved over the automated track, a new option could come in greatly useful, especially if there are more than one (like one for Cutoff, one for Resonance, one for Osc Type and so on) giving the ability to choose from the list of created automations, therefore making visible only the one which we would like to work on. And if we don’t want to see any of them after finishing the tweaking, yet having them on the MIDI track, a simple right-click on the “A” or whatever button and from there “Hide automations”, cleaning the visual space and therefore the focus distraction factor.
And one more thing; now if we move an automation over a track, it disables the MIDI data in the background.
It would be easier and faster if we could make changes on the fly, seeing both the notes and the curves, like Alt-clicking to the note or curve to bring them in the foreground.
And with the possibility of annoying you all with these long lists, one final suggestion on the topic of automations.
Next to the three default buttons for curve types, another few ones could be introduced, with the simple waveforms: Sine, Square, Saw, Pulse.
+ These forms can have dedicated snap values on the left, so that when drawing a pulse wave as a curve for an example, it can snap to the chosen value. This feature can result in extremely easy to program Trance Gates, Filter Sweeps, Effect Bypass (On – Off) to name but a veeery few.
Preliminary apologies go to all of you guys who will consider reading this a waste of time. I am perfectly aware that not everybody may need such features.
Vibe On
Light & Peace
CC