tumulttumultYes, bundling is helpful, like grouping. But I cannot phantom copy an entire bundle at once, only the individual pieces of it. If I phantom copy a bundle, I cannot edit the second copy and have it apply to the first, since it individually phantom-copied the bundle’s contents, not the bundle as a whole (you already know this though.)
http://forum.cockos.com/showpost.php?p=509232&postcount=52
This person made an insightful post.
tumultAlso, here’s what the current project I’m working on looks like in REAPER:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2316004/reaproj.PNG
I pretty much have to copy and paste everything around manually. It’s hard to work with.
tumult@Zynewave wrote:
I think I understand. Basically you want a phantom copy feature for a selection of track events within a section of the timeline.
As I understand it: The feature you talk about here, does not actually reduce the number of tracks needed in the arrangement. Instead it requires an additional track for placing the folder clips/events that will be the link to the other layer of clips. It is not a tool to play layered sequences, as overlapping sequences will cut out each other. It is an organizational tool for syncing the arrangement of clips within a section on the timeline, and having changes made in one section appear automatically in phantom sections.
Yes! That is exactly what it does. Because Logic tracks actually do not have any signal flow (they only send instructions to the objects in the environment, which do have signal flow), you can create these track folders which hold a whole new set of tracks within them. So you can use it to hide parts of your arrangement from other parts, or make phantom copies of parts from one place to another. But the actual signal-carrying objects might not support polyphony (like audio objects, which only play one audio clip at a time) so if you end up playing two folder clips at once where there are tracks sending to the same objects at the same time, then events will start getting cut off.
@Zynewave wrote:
To make something like this fit into the Podium track structure, I would experiment with extending the use of marker events, instead of adding a new folder event type…
This sounds cool. I think I understand how it works. When editing inside of linked marker regions, any edits to events that line up identically with events in the other regions will have their edits propagated. That would definitely go a long way towards making it easier to deal with complex stuff.
Would it be possible to associate events to markers, so that when I click a marker, it automatically selects some events in the timeline? One of the benefits of clip folders from Logic (and regular patterns from FL Studio) is that I can treat them as a single logical unit when arranging, without having to worry about making individual selections. So if I have a phrase I need to copy around a bunch, but it’s made up of stuff on a bunch of different tracks, I can just grab the clip folder that contains it and phantom copy it around as much as I need to without having to worry about what’s actually inside of it.
You would have to be able to overlap marker regions for this to work, though.
Actually, here is what I am picturing now: what if there was a separate mini-timeline for marker regions? So for example, if I have a chorus made up of synths and drums, and I want to separate the synths and drums into separate whole units that I can move around or phantom copy, I would make two overlapping marker regions over the chorus. Then, I would select all of the synth clips in the chorus, and link them to one of the markers. I would do the same for the drum clips, and link them to the other marker. Now, if I move either of the marker regions, the clips that were linked to them move as well. And I can phantom-copy the marker regions. This also has the added benefit of making it visibly obvious if you overlap two regions which have conflicting event data (trying to play two MIDI leads into an instrument for example) right in front of your face. In Logic and FL Studio, it can be hard to tell where two conflicting events are located.
So that sounds a lot harder to implement 🙂 You’d need a marker editor lane that expands to show marker regions that are stacked on top of each other.
Ok, sorry for ranting. 🙂 But I think you are on to something with using markers as logical units to work with. I think it has the potential to match the weird abstractions you can make with Logic clip folders.
And I think your idea for linked markers is great already. I know I could do a lot of stuff with it, and it would cover a lot of the kinds of edits I already do.
tumult@thcilnnahoj wrote:
It’s the other way around in Podium, though – the signal flows upwards, so MIDI or audio data does not get passed from parent to child. But some kind of feature to easily layer synths, or otherwise send MIDI data to multiple tracks has been requested.
Yes, that’s what it was implying 🙂 It flows from the children through their parents, towards the root, just like Podium.
@thcilnnahoj wrote:
How do these observations relate? You can separate devices (e.g., routings, instruments, effects) from events (e.g., MIDI, automation) in many programs, like Energy XT or Mu Lab, but how would that help with the “bad edit” problem… Usually you’d have linked events (phantom copies in Podium), but if every chorus part should be a little different, I don’t see a way around keeping separate events.
Because sequences aren’t tied physically to the track layout, you can do things that do not make intuitive sense when laying them out. Let me give you an example. Let’s say I have two chorus parts that are slightly different, like I mentioned before. In Podium, because I have to have the sequence events (audio clips, midi clips, automation) on the actual tracks that need to play them, there is no way to encapsulate the entire chorus into one clip. I have to group all of the related clips together (which may be split up across lots of tracks) and then copy all of them each as individual copies. Even if I have made a grouping out of the clips in Podium, I am not copying the chorus as a single object. I have to copy it as a collection of individual objects. I can make phantom copies of them individually, but I can’t make a phantom copy of all of the clips at once as a single object. So for example, If there is only one clip in the second copy of the chorus that I am changing, like a single drum fill for example, I have to copy the entire chorus and then change the one clip with the drum fill. Now I have to worry about keeping my two copies of the chorus in sync.
In Logic, I can put the entire chorus (even though it’s made up of multiple clips across multiple, unrelated tracks) inside of a single clip, except for the one part that will be different between the two copies, the drum fill. So picture this: the entire chorus inside of one clip, and the two drum fills that are different outside of that clip in their own separate clip. Now I can make a phantom copy of the entire chorus, except for the drum fill, which is exactly what I want.
Does that make sense? It’s kind of hard to explain with words.
