Re: What a BEAST needs

[Tim Janik <timj gtk org>]

On Sun, 17 Aug 2003, Daniel MacDonald wrote:

> What is the bottom half of the MIDI event control
> strip for? It doesn't seem to do anything but take up
> space at the moment so I'm presuming it is
> anticipating some future function?

select non-velocity events and you can actually make
use of the bottom half (it's just that velocity events
happen to have only positive values).

> Reading 0.5.4's TODO list I'd like to add:
>
> LOADING/ SAVING OF CUSTOM SYNTHS- I know Tim said this
> would require big changes to the BEAST but something
> needs to be done about this.

i don't remember saying this requires major changes.
in some way, it is already possible, that is, take your
song or whatever you have that contains your custom synth,
delete everything from it except the synth and then save it.
from there on, you can merke it into existing projects.
this just needs better GUI support, i.e. saving of specific
synths within a project without forcing the user to delete
the rest, and loading/saving menu items from/to a Synth
Library directory.
in any case, it doesn't require major changes to beast ;)

> Customisation of keyboard shortcuts. Well, I wouldn't
> be that bothered if the BEAST used the space bar to
> play and stop songs and sounds like every other music
> program ever (almost).

all shortcuts setup by default use ctrl, if i added
support for pure space bar, that'd interfere with space
bar uses in text fields. is space really that common amongst
other music apps, and how do they handle interferance with
text fields?

> Pushing Ctrl+p/Ctrl+s to
> play/stop is a very inefficient way of working when
> you are constantly starting and stopping the current
> sound or song.

in any case, you can change keyboard accelerators in menus
while menu items are being displayed. just press the new
key you want to have assigned to a menu item.
if that doesn't work for you and you run gnome, you might
need to enable keyboard accelerator changing in your
gnome preference settings.

> The piano roll editor should have it's own set of
> playback controls. Both the piano roll and song editor
> need to have a 'return to beginning' and 'return to
> marker' button.

yes, this missing gets on my nerves as well ;)

> Currently BEAST only supports one fixed time signature
> per song- it would be good if you could change it
> mid-song. Of course this is all part and parcel of
> seeing tripet/ tuplet support being added I suppose,
> which is even more important.

timing as displayed at the GUI is majorly broken currently.
i still have to find a calm moment to sit down and implement
proper time signature display for the track view and the piano
roll widgets.
what are triplets/tuplets again though?

> A dynamic BPM varying feature would be great- dynamic
> speed adjustment could well be implemented by adding a
> speed control strip to the song editor window similar
> to the piano roll MIDI event strip, but in the form of
> a singular line or curve instead of multiple discrete
> bars.

that requires master track functionality which beast doesn't
have at the moment - and it might take a while till i get to
that. though, sending me a song that could greatly be improved
by adding a specific feature to beast could improve my motivation
to concentrate on a specific feature ;)

> How about adding 1/32 and even 1/64 note values to the
> piano roll?

it might sound silly, but the major stopper for that currently
are the icons. if someone could rework the note and quantization
icons currently being used to properly support three and four
flags, i'll add 1/32 and 1/64 settings.

> Linking of Multiple parts (eg a hi-hat part, bass drum
> part and snare rhythm) as one pattern.

i'm not sure i understand how that'd work...
can you be more specific about this?

> Suppose this
> could present problems if you could change time sig.
> mid song though.

> Those are the main show stoppers for me. I'll consider
> BEAST a 1.0 when all that is sorted out on top of the
> other main ones listed in the TODO such a wave
> previewing, playback of notes when placed on the piano
> roll, filters and a mixer.

mixer is one of the major items in planning.
what specific filters are you missing though?

> dan@transelement.co.uk
>

---
ciaoTJ