Pigini's Forum Page

@PV_INC wrote:

@Pigini

There is a reliable way. (in regards to [2])

Zoom the grid to whatever level is needed so that the grid shows 1/4 notes

Set the snap to 1/4 notes

Double click it in the rightmost horizontal half of any cell to create a new note

RESULT: Note appears in the cell next to the cell you decided on

Of course equal note values(1/4,1/8,1/16…) happen to land on grid lines on a grid, that gets subdivided equally. That does not change a thing about what the grid shows and how it works. We don’t have a visible snap grid in podium. Though, the one we have is not without its merits.
With its link to the zoom, you always see a grid relevant to your zoom level. It helps putting in notes without snap, letting them snap to the right timings in a second step.
The Snap range is not defined in the “cell”, but around the correct timing (50% in each direction).

edit: just noticed, that you don’t own a podium license, so a big part of that beta discussion makes no sense to you.

@PV_INC wrote:

[1] Zooming in will subdivide the grid irrespective of snap size. A simple way to understand this is comparing to Cubase. In Cubase, if you select to show the grid as quarter notes, zooming in will always preserve the grid to show quarter notes. In Podium it keeps on dividing the grid as you zoom in and doesn’t care what the snap size. I find this makes it incredibly hard to know where I am and I often wind up being off by one or two cells when trying to guess where a note should go.

The grid, we see in podium, is a global one. It changes according to changes of time signatures in the arrangement view (bar count changes).
I got lost in it myself, occassionally. The way it is linked to the zoom works much better with lower resolutions, though that’s not a favourite option when owning a TFT with a high native resolution.
Maybe it would be in many ways better to inherit only the bar strokes from the global time signature grid and show in each midi parts piano roll the snap grid of your choice.

Right now, podiums actual snap grid is invisible and the snap button triggers time snap and duration quantize at the same time. The grid lines, you see have nothing to do with the snap. It gets more obvious when placing snapped dotted or triplet notes.

@PV_INC wrote:

[2] Double clicking the right half of a cell will make a note appear in the cell to the right of it. The only place you can double click inside a cell to get the note there is in the left half of the cell. Meaning, one has to be super careful when inputting notes (for no good reason, really)

There is no reliable rule in which half of the cell to place a note, since the visible grid has nothing to do with the snap.
The afforementioned “invisible” time&duration snap grid always starts at the beginning of a bar. Choose 1/4 dotted note with snap on, put a few notes in and you’ll see. (In piano roll properties you should disable “Create clone of selected note with pencil tool”, then you can always put in the chosen note value from the quick buttons).
When knowing what the grid shows and how the snap works, I found it not as confusing to work with as I did before. Though it’s still way off from being ideal.

@Zynewave wrote:

New options in the piano roll properties dialog:
“Alt+Double-click+Drag to resize proportionally”
“Create clone of selected note with pencil tool”

In piano roll properties, we have the Note event action Alt+Click+Drag left/right to resize.
We can do that without Alt already, at least in pencil mode.
In select mode Alt+Click+Drag up/down resizes the velocities.

Alt+Double-click+Drag to resize proportionally
Find the double clicking and dragging a bit hard to do (always tend to release the second click). Could the default behaviour get changed or reassigned? How about having selectable shortcut options like the pencil tool actions above? I would like to be able to make the proportional resize the default behaviour, where I don’t need to press additional keys at all. Most of the time, I need the proportional resize.
@Zynewave wrote:

@Pigini: By disabling that last option you will always add notes of the set quantize length.

Ah, that’s much better. Takes care of always putting the last drawn value in. Thanx 🙂 Good achievement/effort ratio, btw.

However, timing snap and quantize snap are still locked together.
Maybe it would be beneficial for other (future) functions too, to disentagle them. It’s keeping us from getting the best possible input options.

Here is what we can do now:
– Quickly put in standard notes, with and without snap.
– Snap places a hidden grid into the bar, that limits the chosen notes to be placed only at time positions, that are multiples of their own value (IMHO, that’s an unnecessary limitation).
– We can choose a shorter note value with snap to get a finer grid and then draw the note longer. By that we can place a 1/4 note after a 1/16 rest.
– We can choose a shorter note value with snap to get a finer grid, place the notes at the right timings and then Alt+Click on quick note buttons to change their length quickly to what we want.
– We can quickly put in standard notes, roughly estimating the rests we want inbetween, then select them and quickly quantize their timings to a chosen start position. Works ok somehow, if one is good at guessing.

Compared to how it was before, we already have much more creative options now, and all without unlocking time snap from quantize.
But coming all the way, wouln’t it be worth considering doing the final step into town?

Here is what we can’t do:
– something like snapping to 1/16 values directly when putting any chosen quick note in, or something like choosing a quarter with snap on and letting it “syncopade” into the next bar.

The second editing stage, we often need now, could be avoided, if we could directly put in defined notes onto a snap grid, different from the chosen note value.

What Conquistador did in his mockup shows a good possible solution for that.
1. selector for (time) snap grid
2. quick note values
3. Quantize on/off (could be just Q for taking up lesser space).

Oh yes, the mockup is a great example of how much better a picture can explain some things.
If I’m not mistaken, your first selector would allow to select the snap grid value (what I called time snap), then there are the quick note buttons, and a seperate quantize on/off button for snapping to duration aswell?

So I could achieve what I want by choosing my snap grid, selecting my quick note buttons and off I go placing them snapped to the desired timings, without getting an unwanted quantization.
That kind of unlocking time and duration snap might work better for the scale function too.

That’s it.
Agree, the buttons would be more accessible in most cases, if they where at the top. Though, I liked them at the left aswell, esp when using the new velocity check on the keys. An undockable floating panel would be ideal for the shortest mouse movements and could speed up the input quite a bit in the long run.

@Zynewave wrote:

The suggestion of a resize option dialog on mouse release is not practical, as the resizing is now done in realtime.

That was only how another host did it. Only wanted to mention, that there are different ways a resize could be done.
@Zynewave wrote:

Support for proportional/percent resizing could be implemented either by an alternative key shortcut on clicking, or by adding a new “Split/Resize Note Events” dialog. This dialog can have a number of different edit options. One of these could be “resize notes” with a related percentage value input box. Another edit option could be “split notes into even slices” with a value input box. That satisfies a previous FR on this thread. Other edit options could be “split notes on quantize grid”, “split notes at edit cursor”, etc.

Oh yes, please. 🙂
I really would like to have that options.
… all of them, the proportional/percent resizing and the splitting.
an extra key shortcut for the proportional resizing would be very practical too. Brilliant.

first things first
about feat. introduced in beta 4:

the quick button panel, when used with the pencil tool is not as good as it could be. it really only mirrors, what could be done with the selector box on top. (it’s quicker, but it could be so much more).

the quickbuttons should set the (fixed) duration for the next notes to be drawn. that’s what I had in mind for them.
as long as the 1/8-button is selected, I always want to draw an 1/8 value, no matter what the last drawn (and possibly edited) note was, no matter what the snap setting is.

edit: actually drawing is not the word, I want to pick&put (select in the quick button panel and put it in with a time based snap guidance, independent from the notes duration)

in many cases, the snap implementation, as it is now, is an obstacle for quickly drawing notes, the way you want them. it sets kind of a grid for durations.
IMHO an additional snap setting, a snapping to timing, could fix that.
maybe change the snap button to a selector box, where first choice:none, second choice: the usual, third choice: snap time. on that option, the selector box with the note lengths on top would define a snap grid, to which time values of drawn notes (selected with the quick buttons on the left) would snap.
or change the way the top selector works if quick buttons are selected to be shown.
Example:
snap option: snap time
selection in top selector: 1/8
choose any note button from the quickbutton list and draw that note, having it snapped to time positions in a 1/8 snap grid.
It does not necessarily need to be done like that.
But the aim is, having quickbutton note values snapped to chosen timing positions, rightaway when drawing.

the main idea with the quick buttons was to have predefined notes, that can be placed at the right timing in pencil mode without the need for editing.

in selection mode, the editing using the quick buttons works excellently.