Piano roll workflow improvements and suggestions.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 30/06/2012 07:42:35

1a. Two ways to do this, both are not as intuitive as flstudio imo but it's better then nothing.

1. If you have the selector tool selected and you hold ctrl to add a note let go of control while still holding down the mouse button and you can move the note up or down.

2. if you have the paint tool selected just click and then hold the ctrl key to move the note.

In a way I sorta like it because it allows you to either move the note around or adjust the volume.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 01/07/2012 18:25:31

I can't really complain much about it because overall it fits most of my previous habits and it was easy to adopt to the new ones. The one that is giving me trouble is the navigation method.
I use, beside other DAW, Live and the zoom and scrolling is very close to S1, S1 being a little too sensitive when scrolling left and right it's too easy to engage the zoom. Live is more stable and it's less sensitive to the up/down/left/right mouse movement on the time line. But I'm getting there.

NOW the one I miss, big time, is the ability to move around the piano roll with a right click, or other options, rather then click and drag pass the edges for up or down scrolling, which can also select notes you do not need to work with. For some one trying to write fast and naturally like being with real pencil and paper and the left hand on the keyboard, this is a slow down method that effects the workflow.
Even in Live I have the choice with Shift+Alt to move freely around, even though the Right click solution is by far the best one and you can see it being implemented more and more often in other DAWs, XT, MuLab, Reaper etc.

Any chance to add an option to have this "free" moving around for fast writing, implemented in S1?

I must be quite satisfied with S1 for this to be the only major issue I'm having difficulty with.

Hope for the best,
Regards

I have two suggestions that will increase the speed and fluidity of the workflow:

"stealing" notes in the Piano Roll: Basically like a copy/paste type thing. You hold a button and click a note, and the length and velocity of that note is copied. Now all the notes you draw are that length and velocity. Hold the button and click a different note, and it steals that note. You have no idea how often i do this in Logic!

Drag To Loop: I don't see why this isn't the standard way of doing things! if you drag the upper corner of a region, it makes loops. It's that easy. Look at this Logic screenshot (not mine):

Look at the blue and green regions there. The first bar is bright, and the other bars are darker. The dark ones are loops of the bright ones. You just pull them out of the end of the regions! and if you move the region, the loops follow. Change the midi regions, the loops change with it. Move a region closer to another one, so the loops overlap the following region, and they collapse back in!

I am so addicted to this simple way of looping that it's not even funny! It's such an organic way of doing things! It's THE main reason why i'm not already using Studio One 2 as my main DAW, because then i'd have to click the "D" key a bunch of times to loop the region, and i don't much feel like spamming my keyboard when making stuff. If i could just pull it to the correct length, i'd be set! I mostly use it with MIDI regions, where the drums play the same thing throughout most of a song or part, and i just pull it out to that length in a second. It's also a REALLY good songwriting tool, because you can pull it out to a super long length and just record over it, and then replace or refine the drums in different parts later. And if you're recording, and you find out the part should be longer, and you run out of drums to record over, it's easy to fix by just pulling it out more and recording again.

It's one of those that SHOULD be in Studio One last week, really. They do so many things right, and beat Logic at their own game in so many ways, and then this tiny little thing that makes Logic great simply because nobody else seems to be doing it, DESPITE it's simplicity, comes along...

I am 90% sure i'm converting to Studio One, but it's for everything else than the writing workflow. I am almost debating whether or not i should just use Logic for writing, export the MIDI, and record it in Studio One. I hate this idea, but it might be the only way i can write freely :s

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 06/07/2012 06:07:45

Vertical piano roll doesn't make sense, as it wouldn't be following the direction of the playlist (timeline)?

Also, rather than creating my own thread, here are my suggestions for the piano roll after 2 days of struggling with it.

First, I come from FL Studio, which has probably the most fluid piano roll of any software. Even the playlist (arrangement) view is super smooth to navigate. Studio one does a lot right, but here are my suggestions, for what they are worth

Some things in Studio One that would be a great place to start:

1)Let us choose how mouse buttons function in the piano roll. I'd like to assign right mouse button to delete, but can't. Click and hold mouse button to delete multiple notes would be fast. Right now, right click shares the same menu as middle mouse. Why the redundancy?

2)I'd also like to make it so I can click only once to draw a note, instead of twice. Double clicking takes twice as long and really does add up in time lost. Again though, if these were simply options everyone will be happy, rather than my idea seaming superior for everyone when it might just be me that appreciates or needs it.

3)Zooming. Go play with FL Studio for a few hours to see zooming and the shortcuts that accompany it done right. Also, if you added the ability to use keyboard+Mouse functions in Keyboard shortcuts, a lot of my requests I'd take care of my self.

Anyways, great software, everything in the GUI is laid out well, but I would like to see more attention given to faster arranging.

I would give anything for the piano roll to retain note length of the last clicked length. It really really gets annoying having to resize each individual note. I guess that is something that comes from my use of FLStudio.

Also another thing that would be nice is automatic note preview on/off. In FLStudio when you click a note you can hear it previewed. Now I know in Studio one you can do the same but there are two things that are not nearly as nice.

1. When you click it plays a preview of the note in a generic length. Would prefer this be coupled with the above re-sizing idea and play back the preview in the length of the current note.

2. It would be really awesome if the note preview automatically turned off the preview while the song was playing. So when it's stopped you can hear the notes as you enter them, but when it's playing it just places the note and you hear it when the song gets to that point in the song. It helps not get in the way of other currently playing notes especially for drums. This would be great as an option if everyone here does not like the concept. For me it makes things a lot smoother then having to go click it off by hand each time.

The previous note length feature is a life saver. In indian music which I am working on the note length vary very often. In cubase which I used to work also the note length remained same as quantize length. But there I could change the quantize length with shortcut keys. I dont know whether we can do it in S1. Either remember the last clicked note length or provide an option to change quantize length through keyboard shorcuts as in cubase. It would really help who compose using piano roll than who use it to correct an already recorded performance.

Moderators please let us know something of this sort is in pipeline

for Horizontal Piano Roll. That would be pretty nice. Plus, single-axis scroll wheels could scroll the time.

Also, how about "stretching/compressing" selections...
Like if you select a few notes, you can "scale" each of their start and end points (So you could effectively double the length of a section by dragging a point at the end of a selection).

How about adding a "quantize to scale" function, so selections could effectively be "fit" to the selected scale.

Finally, the ability to insert chords and inversions would be nice too. I'm trying to think of an example, but maybe right click, then insert chord, then select the chord you want, and a little dialog below the chord would let you change the type & root note and select the inversion.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 16/08/2012 22:15:55

I'm not sure whether I just haven't found it yet or if these functions aren't available but one thing that put a damper on my enthusiasm when I first tried S1 last year is that there didn't seem to be much options in terms of selection criteria in the piano roll.

For example, in Logic I often use functions like "Select all notes between this and that velocities" and such - basically making it faster to apply operations only to certain events which match a set criteria.

I've just bought the upgrade to version 2 and haven't had as much time to play w/ it as I'd like, so these might have been addressed - or not.

If not, well, I think anyone using the piano roll could benefit from it.

At any rate, I've decided not let that stop me from enjoying the rest of the cool stuff in S1.

MF_Kitten wrote:

Drag To Loop: I don't see why this isn't the standard way of doing things! if you drag the upper corner of a region, it makes loops. It's that easy. Look at this Logic screenshot (not mine):

:s

You know that you don't even have to drag the clips, right? - just click L on your keyboard and the clip will loop until the end of the project OR until it hits upon another clip in the track. I was used to dragging loops in Sonar, but Logic made it even faster. Plus you don't have to convert the clip to a loop first - it will loop anything.

Agreed that it's an awesome functionality and that it would make for cool features in S1, whether it's by dragging or using a keyboard shortcut.

Some excellent points have been raised in this thread. I particularly like the idea of being able to move MIDI notes up and down to audition pitch as you draw them.