Assigning note colors to be triggered by different instruments.

[MEC]

FlStudio has this cool feature that allows you to link a synth to a note color on the same pianoroll. Like for example greens could play a bass tone, Blues could play a cello and yellow could play a piano, is this possible in some way in Waveform?

[HansP]

would something like this be helpful?
https://www.kvraudio.com/product/midi-p ... y-eareckon

[MEC]

HansP kinda but not the same. I mean what do you do in the case when you want to assign the same key to different midi channels? and there are many other scenarios which this can't handle either that assigning midi channels to colors could.
But thanks for sharing. I will download it though, very useful in other ways.

[HansP]

I have a question, might lead to something different..
I don't use that type of UI. What's a color in the first place? My keyboard has only black and white keys.
On screen there is just a row of keys. Each particular key is one key and the same on its own.
But earlier, with the hardware master keyboard, I had used an Atari with some special MIDI live performance software, that could step through settings with the foot pedal, so you had the whole concert preprogrammed (not the playing, but all those program change + channel + range + expression + voice-partial assignments).
The point was, I could stack the processing tool many times for the particular song verse or finale, or whatever. So, the "range" could overlap, and a certain key could play with processor A on the DX7, and with processor B on the Roland MIDI module, with a different channel.
In Tracktion, I can use a rack and do some similar stacking with these sort of MIDI filtering and re-channel tools, and can output to different tracks at the same time also.

[fde101]

I don't use that type of UI. What's a color in the first place? My keyboard has only black and white keys.

Not sure if you caught on to this, but the colors they are talking about are not for different notes - they are for different instruments. In other words, notes might show in blue that play on a bass instrument and in green that play on a guitar, but are both shown on the same piano roll instead of having to switch between two of them. This would allow the composition of the instruments to be reviewed together more easily rather than having to switch back and forth and manually "connect the dots" to figure out who is doing what.

[FigBug]

One option would be to stack multiple midi clips on top of each other, each with a different colour and midi channel. Then when you selected all the clips and opened midi editor all notes would appear at the same time and they'd be in the different colours of the clips.

[Watchful]

It's possible to manually change note color in the MIDI editor window, but it would be helpful to be able to assign a color to a MIDI channel. For example, when dealing with the type 0 formats, numerous channels can appear in the same MIDI clip. Having the ability to have yellow = channel 1, orange = channel 2, etc., would be a major help in determining which event is on which channel.

Additionally, it would be great if it were possible to turn on/off those channels in a combined track, so I could *just* see channel 1 notes. I think this is pretty close to the OP's request.

Unless there's an undocumented way to do these things now...?

[MEC]

Fde101 and Watchful get what I'm talking about. Here is a video of how it works in FLStudio.

https://youtu.be/6PsxHZrr_To

[urlhttps://youtu.be/6PsxHZrr_To[/url]

[MEC]

In the first video Seamlessr shows how the color notes work with a Multitimbral instruments and this other video shows how seperate Vst's are setup in Flstudio's Patcher to work with color notes. FLStudio Patcher is like Waveform's Racks. Sorry, is in French.

https://youtu.be/tZiwkHtColQ

[MEC]

It's possible to manually change note color in the MIDI editor window, but it would be helpful to be able to assign a color to a MIDI channel. For example, when dealing with the type 0 formats, numerous channels can appear in the same MIDI clip. Having the ability to have yellow = channel 1, orange = channel 2, etc., would be a major help in determining which event is on which channel.

This is the ideal situation in where color notes would be most useful, but there are many other uses for it, like for example: grouping the same color notes to change their key or their velocity or position, etc..

[Watchful]

I agree with MEC that note colors in the MIDI editor are underutilized and could have a lot of logic applied to them.

[fde101]

One option would be to stack multiple midi clips on top of each other, each with a different colour and midi channel. Then when you selected all the clips and opened midi editor all notes would appear at the same time and they'd be in the different colours of the clips.

Wouldn't this also feed them to the same instrument, defeating the purpose?

EDIT: sorry, missed the point of using the different MIDI channels... yes, as long as those can be split up within a rack and routed to instruments that will handle the distinct channels this should do the trick...

[Watchful]

Here's my specific problem.

I have a hardware synth that can export its internal patterns as a MIDI file, which it does by merging all 16 channels into a single track. This is because the manufacturer doesn't know what type of DAW you'll be sending it to. Since that's basically a type 0 MIDI file, that's reasonable as every DAW on earth (a) can handle one track at least and (b) you still retain separate MIDI channel information.

My issue is that in Waveform, all the notes appear the same color: it's impossible--as far as I know--to identify which note is on which channel without a fair amount of guessing and work. And it would be great to parse those out into separate tracks--which I'm willing to do, but it's a huge dump of notes all the same color, often overlapping. Maybe this is already doable, but I can't figure out how to "turn off" channels I don't want or isolate a particular channel. I think note color is one way to do it, provided I could somehow get Waveform to sweep through a clip and say "All channel 1 notes are yellow, all channel 2 notes are orange, all channel 3 notes are red..." and so on. And then find a way to select just, say, the red notes.

And I think that's MEC's question, too: there could be ways to assign note color based on velocity, based on pitch, or even based on duration. That could be useful for search and replace functions and so on.

[MEC]

Watchful, I totally get what you are talking about. This other video goes to the heart of what you are saying regarding having to deal with large quantities of notes from several midi tracks on the same piano roll. The guy shows how they can all be sorted by color.

https://youtu.be/Xwe-sZkhe8M

[MEC]

This example is from Reaper DAW. Their use of note colors is far more extensive than anything I've seen.


https://youtu.be/0ciCQT2LsNE