Tracktion MIDI Editing Feedback

[jabe]

What if clicking a position to either place or change a note brought up a small floating window with options to choose the note length, velocity, colour, with the defaults for each being either the previous note or another note already starting on the same beat/part of beat? Placing the note would determine pitch and start position anyway, but those should be amendable to deal with mistakes.

[xing]

Here's my thoughts on how the editor should work:

The ideas for the tracker mode sounds interesting, but mouse editing should also be improved:

Where possible, use context rather than editing modes.
-If you click and release on an empty area, add a note.

-If you click directly on a note, select the note for editing.
-If you click near the beginning of a note, edit the start of the note.
-If you click near the end of a note, edit the end of a note (by dragging left/right or using the mouse-wheel).
-If you click near the center horizontally of a note, move the note. The mouse wheel should edit velocity. By default, snap to edit grid, hold ctrl or alt for more precise movement.

-If you click and drag around a group of notes, select them for editing. By default, you should be able to move the group of notes. Wheel should scale velocities. To do other types of edits, provide a context menu.



Simplify the vertical zoom to make common cases faster.
-Have buttons for common zoom settings: 1 octave, 2 octaves, 4 octaves, ...
-Provide a way to specify the lowest and highest visible note directly (c2-c6)
-Provide a way to move up or down an octave at a time easily


-Providing staff lines in the background could be a useful and simpler to implement than full notation. (It's hard to find a specific chord in a song without some kind of reference)

[rpc9943]

I decided to use my lunch break at work to create a mockup of what the drum track could look like and how it would work well for us Tracktion users. It would make the sequencer absolutely awesome, in my opinion. Jules + Co, T users: Check it out, what do you think?



We could even have an option to "switch to normal midi clip" and vice versa.

PS. An afterthought- we could also set parameters for note length or "note off" somewhere in there too...? The less complicated the better obviously.

PPS. We could also save and restore presets for drum kits or synth setups that we create (hopefully if this is available as an option we could set up all sorts of presets in the browser for literally everything so that we can drag and drop single filters with stored settings, racks, and even track presets)

[yul]

Select all/paste for midi notes in a clip. Also, perhaps some operations (ex. transpose) and functions outside the editor i.e when selecting a clip.

[Stuttaton]

PPS. We could also save and restore presets for drum kits or synth setups that we create (hopefully if this is available as an option we could set up all sorts of presets in the browser for literally everything so that we can drag and drop single filters with stored settings, racks, and even track presets)

Storing presets for drum names is already possible, if you use the Tracktion sampler as a dummy before the drum plugin (EZ drummer in my case). But your suggestion would of course be more user-friendly.

[rpc9943]

What I meant by this is we could use the + and - buttons to add and remove rows, to the extent of creating any sized grid, assigning each row a note of our choosing so we can create our own custom grids. Just an idea, but it would be so awesome to have something like this. When I use drum kits I don't necessarily use every note and I'd like to be able to switch the order around. It would also be awesome to set up custom notes for synth usage with my idea of the drum grid too.

ps I use ezdrummer as well- it's my favorite for acoustic drums

RonC

[Stuttaton]

What I meant by this is we could use the + and - buttons to add and remove rows, to the extent of creating any sized grid, assigning each row a note of our choosing so we can create our own custom grids. Just an idea, but it would be so awesome to have something like this. When I use drum kits I don't necessarily use every note and I'd like to be able to switch the order around. It would also be awesome to set up custom notes for synth usage with my idea of the drum grid too.

ps I use ezdrummer as well- it's my favorite for acoustic drums

RonC

Yeah, rearranging the order of the drums would be very useful, since EzDrummer spreads them out a bit arbitary - especially the hihat articulations.

[frankvg]

What I really like in Logic is the colour of the note to indicate velocity. Also the way you can assign the velocity tool to right-click and then drag up or down for velocity.

[Rock]

The determination as to where grids are laid out should be affected by any active quantinization grooves which have been set.

[bbreakz]

-jrlanglois

don't know if this has already been touched on but, would love something like the Fl Studio Keyboard and/or Envelope Controller...



mainly looking to use midi note on/off to control the parameter of a vsti.
it could be something like a macro controller so you could link parameters of different vsti/vsts and drive the automation with whatever you want.


although I haven't tried it yet (will this weekend) it may already be possible to connect something like insertpiz midinotetocc to a vsti inside a Rack Filter. Send midi notes on a different channel to that and have that automate a parameter of the vsti... hope this makes sense.

[jayzotos]

Hello,
I would really like it if the count in worked in loop mode.
Also would be nice to have a groove quantize that extracts the groove from audio or midi clips and can be applied to new clips in varying strength.
Thank you.

[Biscotto]

A simple way to Drag around while writing rather then reaching away from the writing focused area. Almost every DAW has a way to do this. Including Live

MuLab excels at this and so XT and Reaper.

A Mouse Setup Option eventually?

[pough]

My philosophy for MIDI editors is: simple things should be simple, difficult things possible. IMO energyXT gets very close, as does FL Studio. To do the most common actions you shouldn't need to switch tools. The mouse is already a perfectly good tool with two usable buttons (or more). My vote would be for:

Left click: select
Left double-click or Ctrl-left click: add note
Right-click: context menu
Ctrl-right click: delete

That would (IMO) make the easiest actions both useful and non-dangerous (select/menu). The next most common actions (add/delete) would take only slightly more effort and usually be available. More complicated tools would change that, but I think having the main tool be select/add/delete would make most MIDI editing duties easier.

I think I made my other request recently: to have some control over the number of vertical lines. If you focus on one or two bars, you're looking at bazillionth notes. I'd love to have a way to override the default and choose the level of detail. Having a control for that would also allow you to tell us what we're looking at. By the way, is it possible to have triplets be a per-clip thing?

[Biscotto]

But both XT and FL allows to move freely around with the RMB and MMB respectively.
That's is the best way to write "in" the Pianoroll rather then from a midi keyboard.

Anyhow, the Pianoroll experience in Tracktion is far from ideal.
I agree with you: a better Integration of the Mouse is in order here.

[gmore]

Long time T2/3 user with a short time with T4 via Win8.1 both 32 and 64-bit.
Some of my suggestions involve returning to some T2/3 functions(haven't found a workflow improvement to justify the change) - what use to be 2nd nature I now have to really think about, really look for, or as best as I can tell - doesn't exist (see #1).

1: Return R-hold/drag-note snap to grid-line in 'snap' mode, or at least add the function via 'shift' or? If this exists now, PLEASE let me know - at one point in time, 'ctrl'/shift/alt' were intermittent on my machine only via Tracktion - a fix is mentioned in another post via Synergy (which I do not have) so the problem may still exist and I'm not aware.
2: Default to 'selection arrow' upon boot-up (previously mentioned)
3: Do away with 4-way arrow when hovering over the body of a note(R-extend arrow at end of note remains) - this function is a given and in smaller grid/notes editing, blocks the view of the note during movement.
4: R-hold drags the piano up/down like in T2/T3 - the manual says it should work, but requires 'ctrl'.
5: Shift or Ctrl R-Hold any blank part of the clip for up/down function, instead of having to always revert to the piano - or for complete movement/control within the screen view.