Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards what feature would be REALLY cool in a midi sequencer?

Or, if your creativity ain't flowin' so freely at the moment,

what one feature of your midi sequencer do you use the most or like the best?

I know the "red dot" guy is in our midst who's gonna say 'RECORDING!',
but i'm hoping someone can help me with some ideas to add to my small, yet "hopefully useful some day" sequencer.

Thanks in advance

...Steve

1. Voice control
2. Automatically detect and match my tempo - kind of an automatic metronome. Maybe a simpler version of this would be to allow a tap setting like on my standalone metronome.
3. Options to retard. or accel. the metronome automatically. Or at least by voice control and control on the computer.
4. Cerebral interface, so we can even ignore the voice control. JK.

Hope that gets the juices flowing.

Rich

so the metronome is the main feature of a sequencer you use the most or like the best?

I can't do voice control - not an area i know anything about... But you can (of course) adjust the metronome from my sequencer.
(bump the BPM up/down by 1/10)

Not by tapping yet, though.
I might get around to that... Not sure...

I mean, i guess it IS the main feature of a sequencer... But, hmm, i was hoping for somethin more glamorous

At the moment, I'm workin on stuff that'll help
me practice:

1) lasso-ing a bunch of notes to move em to another track (seperate left hand notes from a mixed together piano track) so my sequencer shows the sep hands in different colors when printed.

2) note level textnotes for fingering cues.
you know, a 1 by the note when your right thumb
needs to change position to play it, etc.

Since i'm a neophyte keyboard player, I'm lookin
at VERY simple midi files that still are nice enough to want to learn and printing em out to practice.

It currently prints on a portrait page - a piano roll going down the page and starting in another column (or 2 or 3) space permitting.

It makes it easier to line up fingering and such.

Anywayyyyz, thanks for the metronome suggestion.
I wouldn't think it'd be tooo tough to set BPM
based on a couple piano keydown events.

I don't think I'll have voice/cerebral control any time soon, tho


I could clarify my original question as...

What feature of a sequencer helps you MOST when you practice?

Thanks in advance again

...Steve

Recording!

Actually, I would love to have the ability to fix minor mistakes, such as:

- making a note that is too soft louder, and vice versa
- removing notes that don't belong
- moving a note up or down a whole step or half step (I sometimes hit the wrong bass note )
- adjusting the pedal: sometimes you press it down for too long, sometimes not long enough
- trimming the recording: you select the bit that you want to keep, and the program removes the rest

Stuff like that.

Thankyou! I was waiting for that!


- making a note that is too soft louder, and vice versa

Check. Hover over a note and scroll wheel adjusts the velocity.

- removing notes that don't belong

Check. Drag a rectangle with right mouse button to select notes to either delete or move to another track.

- moving a note up or down a whole step or half step (I sometimes hit the wrong bass note )

Ding ding ding! transposing a note/section is goin on the to do list.

- adjusting the pedal: sometimes you press it down for too long, sometimes not long enough

Check. Display the hold control and click where it should have ended and delete the poorly placed one.

- trimming the recording: you select the bit that you want to keep, and the program removes the rest

Check. Hover over the first bar you want. click the [ toolbar button. Same with the ] toolbar button. And click the red X to trash everything between.

Stuff like that.


Thanks! It's good to know I'm sort of on track at least.

I guess it boils down to how EASY it is to do these things versus being able to do things in a flexible way. (Like trimming takes quite a few clicks right now. But lets you trim several sections out.)


But transposing is something that's definitely goin on the todo list.

Thanks,

...Steve

Not really a sequencer feature but sort of...

What would be cool would be a velocity-switching arranger... in other words, a feature that allowed high-quality arranger accompaniment to sense when the player's overall velocity is getting louder or softer and transition from "verse" to "chorus" sections or vice versa accordingly. It would allow accompaniment to follow not just your chords but your expression, a bit more like a real band would. It would also free up your hands more from button-pushing to playing, for those pianists who use arranger instruments or devices.

So if someone makes it, remember that I invented it...

About "bars": my tempo is all over the place (often intentionally). But in MIDI files, the events are stored as notes inside measures. So in Red Dot Forever, I simply fix the tempo to 120 beats per minute and forget about it. However, that means that the measures don't make any sense. It would be nice if the program could try and recognize (as good as possible) what constitutes a bar and what not.

That means measures aren't a fixed width on the screen, but can vary in "size". It also means you can display an approximation of the tempo and how it changes through the tune. And it would help if the program automatically "fixed" up the recording, so it would be easier to import in a notation package. Probably pretty tricky to implement, but you asked for cool features.

Another cool feature would be a 3D display. The horizontal plane would be the notes, displayed like a keyboard. The vertical plane would be the velocity. That might help with The Pro's suggestion too.

An intelligent quantize-option that still allows for rubato and cresc. & decr.

This is good stuff!

To "The Pro": can you point me at any of these "arranger instruments or devices"? So these are playing background midi to match what you play? Some sort of "algorithmic composition" or somethin? It's probably beyond me until I get more basic sequencer features into ditty, but I'd like to check into it...


To "mahlzeit": yeah I hear you about tempo... I can't think of any good way to "record tempo changes live"... Unless you can sync YOURSELF to a metronome track with the tempo changes already in it - but that tosses out the tempo changes you "feel" while playing... It'd be a good feature, but it's still in the "hmmmm, not quite spec'd yet" category... I -sort- of have the 3D display already - the piano roll colors the notes based on velocity - velocity 0 is a cool green and velocity 127 is a hot yellow with color graduation in between.


To "Arjen": So the rubato thing would refer to quantizing start time/duration you mean, right? And cresc/decr to velocity quantizing? I'm not sure i even want to implement quantize... I guess it's a popular feature, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go down that road yet... It just seems like something a computer shouldn't do to me... If my notes suck, I'd rather tweak the few I messed up or just re-record... Well, I just don't know enough about what quantize is supposed to do and how...


In any case, I've gotten more ideas here in ONE DAY than in my previous FIVE YEARS of begging for ideas...

Thanks yet again. And I'm definitely up for hearin' more. If it's easy, it'll probably show up in a couple weeks (transposing).
If it's hard, I'd still like to hear about it to mull it over...
My sequencer is free, by the way.
And if you don't mind me pluggin' it... (sorry)
It's at http://shazware.com/ditty/
But it's, umm, not done yet...
Will it ever be done?
I juuust don't know...

Arranger instruments and devices are very common. Any auto-accompaniment keyboard qualifies. Semi-Pro arrangers include the Yamaha Tyros (1 & 2), Yamaha CLP-series pianos, Roland G70, Korg Pa1X and many more. Arranger devices include the Yamaha QY700, Ketron MidJay and more. They all follow your chord input via MIDI and provide backing instruments in real time that lets you change from intro to verse to chorus to outro on the fly by buttons or pedals. My suggestion was to have this switch between segments by MIDI velocity with an adjustable threshold.