New Drum Editor / Groove Quantize Tool

[jthibeault]

I would like to see a revised drum editor.

When Metro first had the drum editor (6 or 7 years ago?) displays were a lot lower resolution and it was easier to manipulate the drum notes. It seems that Metro's drum editor never got the vertical zoom capabilitiy that the note editor got. On modern displays the drum notes are very tiny and somewhat more difficult to select (especially on a notebook trackpad).

What I would like to see is a drum editor that is similar to Digital Performer, which was a ripoff of what Vision had. I recently played with one of the last versions of Vision that was released before Gibson murdered the company. I think Opcode got the drum editor right.

I would like to see drum notes represented as vertical bars (I feel that bars are easier to manipulate than the current symbols used). I would like to be able to look at the drums with either each row showing velocity or compressed (just note on or off). I would also like to see vertical zoom capability, to focus on just a few drum notes and to futureproof the app for the coming days of higher resolution monitors.

I would also like to see a new groove quantize tool. Wouldn't it be cool if you could have , say, a floating pallet with a graphical representation of the groove (velocity offset, timing offset)? Instead of copying from a selection, you would be able to modify this on a 16th or 32nd note grid.

I don't know if this is possible, but maybe you could represent the groove quantize as a curve (a graphical profile of the timing and dynamic "influence"). This way, you could add a quantize tool that, when selected, would show this influence curve. You could move the the pointer, which would be displaying the curve over the notes that you want to influence. When you click, the notes would snap to the new velocities/timing where the influence curve was located (selectable from a 1/4 bar up to 16 bars). Or you could have the influence occur in steps of 10% so that each click would influence the notes more.

This could also be used for regular quantize, where the pointer could switch to showing a profile of the quantize grid, which could be represented by vertical bars.

Just my 2 cents...

[Jerm]

I very much like both ideas and you have excellent points.

With that said, this would be a lot of work to implement these suggestions. A compromise is possible in the near term. UI changes are, for me, the most difficult to implement. I will be giving this more thought but certainly the drum editor should have a vertical zoom.

Thanks for your input!

[Jerm]

Perhaps you could post a picture of the way you invision the drum editor to look like?

[jthibeault]

[Jerm]

Nice Job. jthibeaulm, what do you do for a living?

How do you vertically zoom the individual drums?

[jthibeault]

How do you vertically zoom the individual drums?
I didn't put it in the concept drawing, but there should be lines dividing each drum that can be grabbed and resized. If that's too much work, I think overall zoom would do the trick.


What do you do for a living?

Actually, I investigate medical device failures (which become FDA device failure reports). Not really my dream job, but it pays well. Music is a hobby.

I have been tinkering with Photoshop for the last 10 years and I can do some basic stuff. In this case I used GIMPShop (opensource version of Photoshop).

[kelldammit]

man, with those expand/collapse arrows, i could easily imagine not needing vertical zoom at all. they were more than large enough to see easily on my macbook...
nice idea, and great visualization.

[Scoot]

Looking at the picture, it almost makes you want to draw with the pencil across it to change volume/velocity levels.
So if something like that came about each drum on the left would need to have a 0-127 type range with it?


No you wouldn't need a zoom if you had the spreadable up/down arrow drag down option (whatever it is called.....Metro uses it to extend things horizontally to view more in the tracks window).

[Jerm]

What about the quantize? each vertical bar represents what? a 16th note, a 32nd note? Does it depend on the zoom level, note edit quantize setting?

I could imagine the pencil tool allows you to draw in multiple notes by dragging and the velocity tool allows you to modify velocities of multiple notes by dragging but does not create any notes. To delete notes (drums) you must set the velocity (vertical bar) to zero.

Ideas?

[kelldammit]

Looking at the picture, it almost makes you want to draw with the pencil across it to change volume/velocity levels.
So if something like that came about each drum on the left would need to have a 0-127 type range with it?

now THAT is a cool idea. the horizontal space represents time (as determined by the grid lines/note edit quantize), the vertical is velocity. if you could draw the velocity curves right over the sequenced notes directly...that would be amazing!!
one curve, instead of editing dozens of separate notes...
something like that would work great in the standard midi editor as well...

kell

[Scoot]

I was thinking that this could work as a subset of the 'drums' view for velocity setting - like one uses to go into a controller to set pan and reverb etc. But it's a lot of work for something so minor.


IF this was to become the drums standard view and you were in 16th note and the blue horizontal area takes up a square (grid space).......if you were to go to 32nd note does the blue area take up 2 squares?

Otherwise you wouldn't be able to put in notes other than 16th's in-between.


CAN THE PICTURE ABOVE BE WIDTH REDUCED TO MAKE THIS TOPIC EASIER TO READ?
(Bar 2 could disappear without harm).

[jthibeault]

IF this was to become the drums standard view and you were in 16th note and the blue horizontal area takes up a square (grid space).......if you were to go to 32nd note does the blue area take up 2 squares?

No, like other sequencers, there would be an extra column of blocks in between the 16th note bars. Have you ever used Vision (Opcode), DP (MOTU), Logic (Apple/Emagic), Sonar (Cakewalk), Traktion (Mackie)? That is how all these other apps work. Since drums don't typically need a duration, you can get away with the symbol for the drum hit being a fixed width
(meaning the width of the current edit grid resolution). For drums that do need a variable duration, you could switch to regular piano roll view.

CAN THE PICTURE ABOVE BE WIDTH REDUCED TO MAKE THIS TOPIC EASIER TO READ? Wink
(Bar 2 could disappear without harm).

Sorry, I have 1440 horizontal lines of resolution. I'll fix it. It looks good on my Macbook!

[jthibeault]

What about the quantize? each vertical bar represents what? a 16th note, a 32nd note?

Yes, exactly! The width of the columns is the edit grid resolution.

Does it depend on the zoom level, note edit quantize setting?

I feel it should depend only on the note edit quantize. There have been many times when I just want to zoom in and focus on a certain set of notes and not be bothered with the zoom level telling me what my edit grid should be.

I could imagine the pencil tool allows you to draw in multiple notes by dragging and the velocity tool allows you to modify velocities of multiple notes by dragging but does not create any notes.

Yes, this is how Vision, DP, and Logic work. This is how it should work.

To delete notes (drums) you must set the velocity (vertical bar) to zero.

Maybe, maybe not. What if you accidentally dragged a note drum to zero? Poof, now it's gone. I would limit the bottom of the velocity edit range to 1 instead of erasing it. The quick way to delete notes should be to switch to the pencil tool and click the note to delete it (like toggle on/off).