Zynewave's Forum Page

@Conquistador wrote:

1. Allow unused notes to be hidden by default? At the top and bottom of a list of drum note names is a list of notes that really should be hidden….

I wanted the default map to include all 128 notes, in case you have a specialized drum map that goes beyond the GM convention. Or even if you just switch to the drum map for a regular note sequence, for specific editing.

2. When using 5 or 6 drum lanes / notes it would be much easier to hide drum note names that are not being used. So all you see is the notes being used. Just 5 o 6 in this example.

How should Podium know which ones you want to use? When you start out with an empty sequence, it can’t hide all drum lines. For specific drum map layouts, the way to do it is still with drum kit presets, where you can arrange the keys any way you like. I’m going to improve that feature as well, so that you don’t have to do it the old way.

3. Mute Solo for drum note lanes as well please?

LiquidProj3ct suggested this too. How should this work:

Should the note mute/solo work like the track mute/solo in the mixer? In other words, what should the mute/solo information be attached to? If the mute/solo state is a property of the track, then all sequences on the track will play with that mute/solo state. Switching back to a piano-roll editor, should then reset the solo/mute states I assume, or else you could get confusing situations where some notes in your piano-roll mysteriously is not playing.

Edit: Ok, I see you added some info to your post about the “fold” button. I’ll consider that. What happens in Live when you remove the last event on a drum line: Does the line automatically disappear, or do you have to press “Fold” again?

Beta2 is up:

• A note sequence can now be shown in the drum map editor without having to create drum kit presets. The drum map will default to showing GM2 drum key names. The View menu in the editor lists both piano roll and drum map profiles. The selected profile type is remembered for each track.

I know some of you have waited a long time for updates to the drum map editor. For various reasons, I made some experiments, and found that it was fairly easy to make the above adjustment. Now you no longer have to resort to voodoo magic to conjure the drum map editor 😉

Note that the track flag for drum map editor is not yet saved in the project file.

To keep the momentum going: Which drum plugins do you know that support custom drum key names?

@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.