Potential improvements / bugs for track variations

[Blobby19]

Hi,

first of all I wanted to mention that RapidComposer is really a very great tool!

But I figured out some strange behavior and I am not sure if I am doing something wrong, if it's a bug or simply meant to be like that:
1. When I add track variations and enable the envelope, there seem to be some track variations which update per note (e.g. Velocity), some which update per phrase (basically at the beginning of the phrase, e.g. Humanize), and some which seem to not have any affect except for the first value (e.g. Delay Notes or Transpose). I would have expected that at least all the variations are updated for the following phrases. I haven't found any information about that in the manual nor somewhere in the web.

2. The amplitude and offset of the function generator for track variation envelopes is always between -1.0 and 1.0. This fits for most of the variations, but for example for Transpose it should be between -36 and +36, otherwise the curve is pretty small and it is difficult to manually scale it. Similar for Delay Notes, and probably others as well.

I hope my description is clear enough. Would be nice to get some feedback if this is intended.

I saw this video about a similar product and was actually wondering how this behavior could be achieved with RC. The variation envelopes seemed to be the perfect fit. But perhaps somebody even got a better idea.

Thank you and have a nice time!

Greetings,
Tobias

[musicdevelopments]

Hi Tobias,

you are perfectly right, I realized some (big) issues with track envelopes.
I already fixed "Delay Notes" and will test all other variations, because some of them do not work well since the rewrite of envelope editing. Open this video in a new tab or window to see the fixed "Delay Notes" in action:

https://www.musicdevelopments.com/DelayNotes.mp4

Of course the track variations should be the perfect solution for what you want to achieve, and what was presented in the video. I'll check the function generator too, which was a recent addition.
A new beta version will be available with these bugs fixed in a few days, and of course a maintenance update will be uploaded too. Please let me know if you need the beta download links.

Thanks!
Attila

[Blobby19]

Hi Attila,

first of all thank you very much for your fast response, I didn't expect this.
Your short video looks great, exactly what I was hoping for.

It's not urgent for me, please take your time, I know how complex this stuff can get and you probably have more important topics on your task list. I am already very grateful that you are planning to improve this!
Just one minor thing regarding the "Transpose" variation. I guess there is currently no way to ensure that the output of a variation still fits to the current chord or scale right?

I just have the feeling that this combination of variations and the envelope are (or can become) a really powerful tool, and because I found so very little information about it it seems to get a little bit lost. After I learned for example about this "Tempo rubato" (short note movement forwards and backwards) I realized that there are very little tools/daws who support this easily. The daws who support it do it usually via tempo mapping. WIth some minor UX improvements (saving and reusing envelopes for example) this could be a big selling point. Perhaps in combination with custom scripts for variations, or even generator parameters which change over time.. sorry for the offtopic, just some ideas floating in my head.

Have a nice day!

Greetings,
Tobias

[musicdevelopments]

Hi Tobias,

I am very happy when someone understands the capabilities of RapidComposer so deeply.
Your "saving and reusing envelopes" idea is great! I added it my to-do list for V5. Maybe an envelope browser could be added, from where you can drag-and-drop envelopes.

I added a 'scale steps' option to the Transpose variation, which can be automated as well:
https://www.musicdevelopments.com/Scale ... nspose.mp4

The function generator scaling is fixed too. Thanks for reporting these problems!
I expect v4.7.2 will be uploaded on Monday.

Thanks!
Attila

[Blobby19]

Hi Attila,

wow, this look's really great! Didn't expect that fast result after my "feature wish".

To be honest, I am not a professional musician and I am not sure if I actually "understand RC so deeply". I just love the technical part of music, actually I am working as a software developer as well, and therefore I like to think about the possibilities of such tools and how they could be improved. I didn't want to extend this topic into a feature-wish-list, but because of your comment I thought I can at least mention some things, and you simply do with them whatever you like.

1. While having this specific "scale steps transpose" is already a big improvement, I thought about a dedicated variation for ensuring that all the notes are part of the chord/scale which were created by the variations beforehand. I am not sure if this is even necessary or if it ensured already ensured by the design of all the other variations. Just thought it might be helpful.

2. One part that I really liked about the other tool was the flexibility of these envelopes. They are not only automation lanes which go from the beginning to the end of the track, but rather also little "boxes" (like phrases) which can be copied, resized and moved around. Of course this can also be done by copying the individual points of the envelope around, but having envelopes also like little snippets makes it a lot more convenient and allow for more "happy accidents". I am not sure if this goes into the direction that you want to head to with RC, doesn't make sense to simply copy other products if it does not fit.

3. As a developer myself I of course appreciate any software which allows me to extend it by myself with custom extensions / scripts. But I totally understand that custom generators or variations are rather complex and very error-prone. And most likely a lot of typical musicians don't want to mess with stuff like that. Might be that RC is even already so complex that it's not recognized enough compared to other smaller similar tools.

Just some ideas, as I said, feel free to ignore them. I think you're really doing a great job with RC!

Greetings and sorry for the long post,
Tobias

[Blobby19]

Hi Attila,

I just wanted to mention that your fix really works very nice. I think this functionality has a lot of potential.

I would have a couple of further questions:
1. I feel like the track envelope works different compared to the screenshot in the user manual now. When I create a second point in the envelope pretty far to the right, higher or lower than the first one, then the following notes move to the vertical location of the second point, and they don't move along the line to the second point. I think it is similar for all three magnet settings. Is this expected behavior?
2. When I set a track variation "double note" in front of for example the transpose and create an envelope for the transpose value, then the two "double notes" always transpose the same. When I create a phrase variation "double note" this is working different. I assume having so many variation combination is rather complicated, therefore perhaps this is simply expected behavior. Could even be nice to have these different ways of combining variations, the only thing missing would be phrase variation envelopes for full flexilibility.
3. I got some weird behavior when I enable a region and use the variation envelope function generator on the region. Somehow the function even modifies the envelope after the region has already finished.
4. Double click on a variation value works somehow.. strange. It doesn't really use the value and afterwards the variation behaves different until I recreate it. Hard to describe. Setting it via the slider is completely fine.
5. Is there a possibility to render the track variations to the phrases? Like it is possible to render phrase variations.

Just some minor topics but I thought I'd mention them here. I hope the description is fine, otherwise I can provide more details if necessary.

Thanks again for your great work and have a nice time!

Greetings,
Tobias

[musicdevelopments]

Hi Tobias,

thanks for all your feedback!

1. I feel like the track envelope works different compared to the screenshot in the user manual now. When I create a second point in the envelope pretty far to the right, higher or lower than the first one, then the following notes move to the vertical location of the second point, and they don't move along the line to the second point. I think it is similar for all three magnet settings. Is this expected behavior?

No, this was a bug, which I fixed today. This stopped to work after "the big MIDI CC editing rework" (v4.5). During envelope editing an exponential curve was added between points with an extreme parameter, instead of a linear segment.

2. When I set a track variation "double note" in front of for example the transpose and create an envelope for the transpose value, then the two "double notes" always transpose the same. When I create a phrase variation "double note" this is working different. I assume having so many variation combination is rather complicated, therefore perhaps this is simply expected behavior. Could even be nice to have these different ways of combining variations, the only thing missing would be phrase variation envelopes for full flexilibility.

Very good observation! I fixed this. There is an internal distinction between variations, when they are added to tracks. Some are allowed to be applied after phrase variations, some others when all phrases have been rendered. In the last update 'Transpose' became a per-phrase variation, while "Double Note" remained a global variation, so in the end Transpose was applied first, then "Double Note". I should check all other variations, because others may behave similarly.

3. I got some weird behavior when I enable a region and use the variation envelope function generator on the region. Somehow the function even modifies the envelope after the region has already finished.

I'll check this.

4. Double click on a variation value works somehow.. strange. It doesn't really use the value and afterwards the variation behaves different until I recreate it. Hard to describe. Setting it via the slider is completely fine.

I fixed this too.

5. Is there a possibility to render the track variations to the phrases? Like it is possible to render phrase variations.

It actually works like that, track variations are also rendered to the phrase. (I think Transpose is an exception)

Thanks!
Attila