By
jamos
Mon Jul 03, 2023 4:05 pm
There are large number of improvements that could be made to the sequencer, that are not deep architectural changes. An arranger mode would be nice, and of course "everybody" wants dIsK sTrEaMiNg, but let's leave those aside for the moment. Here are several small changes that would improve the usability of the sequencer, without a huge amount of work.
- when a project is being loaded, or a sample deleted, etc. Please show the name of the object involved. It's too easy to slip and load or delete the wrong thing. Showing the name would help, and of course software has been doing this for a gazillion years.
- in the list editor, please remember the last event type inserted. This way a person can add a series of events, say mutes, without having to scroll to the bottom of that 120 odd item list every single time. It gets old.
- in the grid editor, add a select all notes command. Also, allow the shift key to add or remove events in a selection. Ironically the second feature already exists, but only with an external qwerty keyboard.
- also in the grid editor, change the scroll behavior when nudging. This is a little hard to describe, but here's the problem. If I wish to move all notes in a sequence a few ticks backwards or forwards, first I tediously select them in the usual way; then I scroll and zoom to the beginning of the selection. Then, when I hit nudge and turn the wheel, the scroll position immediately jumps to something near the center of the selection, rather than staying at the beginning of the selection as I want it to. This is means I have to repeatedly scroll to beginning of the selection,
- when acting as a clock master, allow midi clock to run continuously, rather than only between the start and stop events. This is absolutely necessary to synchronize to external devices.
- clean up the junk midi that is sent out at various stages. For example, when the stop button is pressed, a whole lot of all notes off and sustain pedal off messages are sent. And almost off and sustain off messages also sent after every program change, which is absurd. And this is not documented, but apparently when a project is loaded, the initial program, bank, and of course the whole slew of sustain off and all notes off messages are sent for every sequence in the project that has an initial program. This is ridiculous. The program and bank should only be sent for the initisl sequence, bot all of them.
- Automation editing is weak. It should be possible to copy and paste automation events. It would be nice to be able to use the full height of the screen when editing automation; as it stands, vertical accuracy is difficult to achieve. Also nice would be smoothing and filtering functions for automation (filtering to remove the massive amounts of redundant events that are generated when drawing a curve).
- reordering tracks, programs, sequences. Purge unused programs. Etc.
None of these should be difficult to do.