Zynewave's Forum Page

@Conquistador wrote:

@Zynewave wrote:

Could you be specific about which of my suggestions are dizzying? The shortcuts I suggested, and that now are available in beta1, are general slide and zoom shortcuts that complement the existing mouse behaviour. They are not linked to pattern building as such. I find them useful when navigating through a sequence in the piano-roll for example.

If that is the only purpose for them then I really have no problem with them at all. 🙂 (I just have no use for them personally but that does not mean other users cannot make use of them or find them very useful).

But you made a specific reference here to Electronic Music…

“While working this out, I was considering electronica music genres, where you often construct the song by laying out repeated patterns, with fill patterns injected at various places. With these new key shortcuts, users that work in this genre can quickly lay out the foundation of the entire song using only the keyboard.”

That is what I found dizzying as the Blocks idea, Session view (Live) e.t.c is a much easier and intuitive way of working with repeated patterns by far. Easily the reason why Live is so popular. There are a huge number, surely the greatest concentration of electronic Music/ Dance/ House/ Minimal House/ IDM e.t.c producers use Live and with good reason. Keybaords shortcuts for that…? That is the long way around.

I’m not trying to make keyboard shortcuts essential. As implied by the “shortcuts” in the name, they are just shortcuts for functions you would normally do with the mouse. There may be users that like using key shortcuts. There is no reason to fear that Podium will become keyboard centric. I’m not a big keyboard shortcut user myself. So if you ignore the fact that I’m trying to make key shortcuts available, are there anything in my suggestions about snap, nudge, shuffle, etc. that is confusing?

Did you read the thoughts I had about section/pattern editing in the topic below? http://www.zynewave.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2294

It seems like tumults FR is a bit different to the blocks idea or the core reason behind Live Session view.

Either way I have seen the suggestions you made there and the Marker idea I think could work as an additional way to work with smaller parts / events in Podium but the timeline could get very busy with different types of markers all over the place to manage. You could have 3 markers between Chorus and Break for instance so in a full song especially a 4 -6 minute+ electronic house or dance track the number of markers used could be massive. No need for that…why not try something like this…

I’m not sure what you mean with “different types of markers”. If you compare the blocks lane in the video, with the marker lane in Podium, they are similar in appearance, except in Podium the markers are indicated by flags, and not bars that extend to the next marker. That is purely a visual presentation that I could change easily. Besides that, then my suggestion in the other topic indicated that there should be a marker at the start of each section. So if you in the blocks example would drag out a block to repeat 4 times, in Podium you would have 4 separate markers. If that turns out to be a problem, I can add a “length” setting to the marker properties, which will make it behave like in the blocks video.

I have not seen evidence in the blocks video, whether it is possible to overlap blocks. An example: In one section of a song you may want to use repeated 2-bar patterns for drum loops, but in the same section you may want to have 4-bar longer evolving synth or bass patterns. The idea I described with marker linking would allow for that.

@LiquidProj3ct wrote:

– End to center vertically on the current selection.

Could it be automatic each time you open a piano roll /drum roll editor please?

I’ve changed it so that it will center automatically when opening the editor, but not when changing the sequence while the editor remains open. Automatic centering would simply be too confusing, if you for example Alt+Click a ghost note to change sequence.

@Conquistador wrote:

@Zynewave wrote:

Is this all too much?

Phew getting dizzy! 😯 I applaud your efforts to take this one on 🙂 but…that is way too much to remember or think about for a simple way to come up with some variation in a Song.

Could you be specific about which of my suggestions are dizzying? The shortcuts I suggested, and that now are available in beta1, are general slide and zoom shortcuts that complement the existing mouse behaviour. They are not linked to pattern building as such. I find them useful when navigating through a sequence in the piano-roll for example.

It sounds like your trying to achieve this kind of simple functionality with “Blocks” the hard way with shortcuts and various commands in Podium IMO.

Really Frits all the shortcuts and commands are waaaay to much for what you are trying to achieve. Far too much compexity IMO. 🙁 The way “Blocks” are presented in the video shows just how easy it can and should be..to do this….

Section arranging is another story. The things I suggested in this topic, is more related to arranging the smaller components that would be part of a larger section. Did you read the thoughts I had about section/pattern editing in the topic below?

http://www.zynewave.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2294

Beta1 is available. Changelog so far:

• Added new shortcut keys for sliding and zooming:
– Shift+Alt+ArrowKeys to slide.
– Shift+Home/End to slide to the top/bottom.
– Alt+Home/End to slide to the start/end.
– Home to center the timeline on the current selection.
– End to center vertically on the current selection.
– Ctrl+Shift+Alt+ArrowKeys to zoom in/out.
– Ctrl+Shift+End to set vertical zoom to default.
– Ctrl+Home to set timeline zoom to full range.
– Ctrl+End to set timeline zoom to the current selection.

• The popup help for the navigator and all scroll/zoom sliders are extended with descriptions of the new slide and zoom key shortcuts.

• Changed the key shortcut for transposing notes in full octaves in the piano roll from Ctrl+Shift+Up/Down to Alt+Up/Down.

• Added “auto-audition” option button to the file browser toolbar.

• Added “include editor tool shortcuts in timeline context menus” option to preferences. The default is off.

• Modified the alignment of buttons in the scrollbar region, and changed “zoom segment” to “zoom selection”.

• Toned down the drop shadow effects in the editors.

This gives you a chance to try out the new shortcuts, and test whether they are intuitive to use. Let me know what your verdict is, and if you have suggestions for changes. If you think that the new key shortcuts for some reason interferes with your workflow, I won’t mind removing at least some of them again.

Edit: Oops. Please ignore the new Snap, Nudge and Shuffle commands in the edit menu. They are not functional. I put them in there for testing purposes. They will not be included in 2.31.

@Pigini wrote:

ugggh! that shortcut madness is giving me headaches again. quite a long walk to learn them all…

The new shortcuts are using keys not used previously, and they are not changing the existing behaviour.

Is the problem that you’d like to use key shortcuts for the functions listed, but the shortcuts I’ve chosen are difficult?

Or is it a problem that the shortcuts exist even if you don’t intend to use them? Perhaps you have concerns that you accidentally activate the shortcuts.

is the palette thingy idea still on the table?

Apart from your response in that other topic, I did not detect a lot of enthusiasm about my suggestion, so I’ll probably only start experimenting with it once I get a touch-screen PC.