To be fair it isn't really my suggestion, it is just how DAWs work in general, I didn't start the thread or poll, but the vote of the few that voted was pretty conclusive, there is a certain amount of 'square wheel' here, and Beatmaker at some point simply needs MIDI tracks as it needs (and has) audio tracks, Beatmaker is too good not to support something as standard as that.
Again, just want to be clear on this, the 128 banks (Aside from the fact they should be on pads as i have posted elsewhere and will post an FR for, instead of arrows) were badly needed, they are a huge huge huge feature for the 3.0.2 release, nobody should even consider saying other wise, i can easily use 10 banks or more just layering the **** out of drumkits to make a beat, i have always used kit layers to make beats and find it is a great way to work.
But taking another different workflow and making an example, some people like to create different MIDI parts for each individual hit in their drum sequences, so they will have a part for the hihats, they will have a part for the snare, they will have a part for the kicks, then they will arrange those on the timeline, i sometimes work this way myself.
This can be done in BM3, but it amounts to using an entire bank, for one snare, an entire bank for two hihats, and entire bank for one kick.
Not only does that become a pain in terms of simple tidiness, but you also then lose the ability to have a drum bus, buses are a great reason why so many banks should exist too, but using individual banks to get individual tracks in the sequencer loses the ability to use banks as buses.
There are lots of reasons to want this feature, I have heard zero reasons not to have it.
I think intua gets the message already, or they would ask for more clarification. Let's wait and see. I don't want this thread to become 10 pages of beating the same points to death.
@Heyez said: @drez I get the psychological part of it, the wasted pads can kind of nag/feel unnecessary etc, but I'm struggling to see how if people just use pad 1 in separate banks for separate instruments, there's almost zero workflow/function benefit from the effort of intua adding dedicated instrument tracks? At least as far as I can see. Just seems like a lot of hassle for functionality that already exists? I'm not saying I'm right. Trying to see it from yours and that other guy's side but still not really feeling like there's an issue/benefit. Hence me repeatedly saying I must be missing something... Guess just one of those things.
The single pad in a bank as a workaround is a lot of overhead. I now require all the clicks of moving through a bank system when I just want a midi track. Can I do that? Well, sure I can. That doesn't mean I want to. I end up having to dive through hoops that are unnecessary. To get to a AU/IAA/Audiobus plugin every single time on a single pad when that's the only thing going on in the whole bank takes a ton of taps. That's what I do the majority of the time I'm writing melodies, i'm not in the sampler. Even if I AM only in the sampler, the single pane of glass editing you could do with just MIDI in view instead of all the pads would be a smooth editing workflow.
My Dad always said If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. What we have with Pads for all linear based MIDI tracks is using a hammer when its not required and is not elegant. A simpler workflow for a process I am in easily 50%+ of the time would speed me up tremendously.
You can either get what I'm saying or not, that's cool, but it doesn't feel like it needs to be explained further to grasp the concept. I think @5pinlink has explained it enough. I totally understand exactly what he is saying. I don't think he can explain it much differently to get his point across. And I am totally on board with it.
Is part of the issue that if you use a bank as an instrument in its present set up i.e. place a piano for example to write a melody, on pad 1 of a bank and call that your piano bank instrument, that to get to the AU instrument you need to tap on the pad and then the keyboard symbol to get to the keyboard and AU instrument page ? And it's cumbersome ? Rather than if you had separate instrument and Midi tracks you could click on the track and it would take you straight there ?
Yeah, that's part of it. If you are in the pads view, you can get to the AU plugin with the keys at the bottom by tapping the keyboard icon. But if I don't NEED pads...why would I have to work through all of that? Its visually busy and requires a some more taps to get where you always want to be anyway.
Like I said above, I surely CAN do it. It works. I just don't LIKE it. It feels like I'm always working around a drum machines workflow to do things that aren't designed for it. Does that make sense?
@Heyez said: @drez I get the psychological part of it, the wasted pads can kind of nag/feel unnecessary etc, but I'm struggling to see how if people just use pad 1 in separate banks for separate instruments, there's almost zero workflow/function benefit from the effort of intua adding dedicated instrument tracks? At least as far as I can see. Just seems like a lot of hassle for functionality that already exists? I'm not saying I'm right. Trying to see it from yours and that other guy's side but still not really feeling like there's an issue/benefit. Hence me repeatedly saying I must be missing something... Guess just one of those things.
The single pad in a bank as a workaround is a lot of overhead. I now require all the clicks of moving through a bank system when I just want a midi track. Can I do that? Well, sure I can. That doesn't mean I want to. I end up having to dive through hoops that are unnecessary. To get to a AU/IAA/Audiobus plugin every single time on a single pad when that's the only thing going on in the whole bank takes a ton of taps. That's what I do the majority of the time I'm writing melodies, i'm not in the sampler. Even if I AM only in the sampler, the single pane of glass editing you could do with just MIDI in view instead of all the pads would be a smooth editing workflow.
My Dad always said If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. What we have with Pads for all linear based MIDI tracks is using a hammer when its not required and is not elegant. A simpler workflow for a process I am in easily 50%+ of the time would speed me up tremendously.
You can either get what I'm saying or not, that's cool, but it doesn't feel like it needs to be explained further to grasp the concept. I think @5pinlink has explained it enough. I totally understand exactly what he is saying. I don't think he can explain it much differently to get his point across. And I am totally on board with it.
Is part of the issue that if you use a bank as an instrument in its present set up i.e. place a piano for example to write a melody, on pad 1 of a bank and call that your piano bank instrument, that to get to the AU instrument you need to tap on the pad and then the keyboard symbol to get to the keyboard and AU instrument page ? And it's cumbersome ? Rather than if you had separate instrument and Midi tracks you could click on the track and it would take you straight there ?
Yeah, that's part of it. If you are in the pads view, you can get to the AU plugin with the keys at the bottom by tapping the keyboard icon. But if I don't NEED pads...why would I have to work through all of that? Its visually busy and requires a some more taps to get where you always want to be anyway.
Like I said above, I surely CAN do it. It works. I just don't LIKE it. It feels like I'm always working around a drum machines workflow to do things that aren't designed for it. Does that make sense?
Makes total sense. Well I've always thought there should be more 'shortkeys' on the left of the screen. There's lots of room for them. One could be a button that takes you straight to the bank AU instrument page. There's lots of ways this app could be streamlined to 'get to places' quicker.
I think 5pin was talking about other stuff too like buses so maybe there are other benefits for these instrument tracks.
I'm very openminded to whatever makes the app smoother to get creative flow down quicker. Feel confident with whatever suggestions knowledgeable forum producers come up with coupled with intuas knowhow will Make it get there.
We do have to keep one thing in mind when we look at the UI vis a vis adding in new buttons and such, at some point, this thing has to go iPhone, so Intua must be keeping an eye on that at all times too, so while it seems there is plenty of space, that may not be the case
If the iPhone version is the reason why there aren't more shortcuts in BM3 columns then that's a pretty big deal and doesn't bode so well for future...
It would be kind of like NI letting their Maschine phone app ui dictate their desktop software ui... Just in a bid to make the two compatible. They'll be crippling/limiting each other
I wish Intua could rather let the iphone version be the sampler in performance mode, released as a universal AU, without all the timeline sequencer stuff. A simplified UI for the small device. This AU could be sold for $5-10 and act as a gateway to tempt others into BM3. If they really wanted iPad BM3 owners to get a free iPhone version, then make it a bundle.
Creating the full BM3 experience on iPhone sounds like a lot of UI tweaking and later maintenance work, which would delay feature updates and bug fixes for the iPad version.
@bleep said:
I wish Intua could rather let the iphone version be the sampler in performance mode, released as a universal AU, without all the timeline sequencer stuff. A simplified UI for the small device. This AU could be sold for $5-10 and act as a gateway to tempt others into BM3. If they really wanted iPad BM3 owners to get a free iPhone version, then make it a bundle.
Creating the full BM3 experience on iPhone sounds like a lot of UI tweaking and later maintenance work, which would delay feature updates and bug fixes for the iPad version.
Comments
To be fair it isn't really my suggestion, it is just how DAWs work in general, I didn't start the thread or poll, but the vote of the few that voted was pretty conclusive, there is a certain amount of 'square wheel' here, and Beatmaker at some point simply needs MIDI tracks as it needs (and has) audio tracks, Beatmaker is too good not to support something as standard as that.
Again, just want to be clear on this, the 128 banks (Aside from the fact they should be on pads as i have posted elsewhere and will post an FR for, instead of arrows) were badly needed, they are a huge huge huge feature for the 3.0.2 release, nobody should even consider saying other wise, i can easily use 10 banks or more just layering the **** out of drumkits to make a beat, i have always used kit layers to make beats and find it is a great way to work.
But taking another different workflow and making an example, some people like to create different MIDI parts for each individual hit in their drum sequences, so they will have a part for the hihats, they will have a part for the snare, they will have a part for the kicks, then they will arrange those on the timeline, i sometimes work this way myself.
This can be done in BM3, but it amounts to using an entire bank, for one snare, an entire bank for two hihats, and entire bank for one kick.
Not only does that become a pain in terms of simple tidiness, but you also then lose the ability to have a drum bus, buses are a great reason why so many banks should exist too, but using individual banks to get individual tracks in the sequencer loses the ability to use banks as buses.
There are lots of reasons to want this feature, I have heard zero reasons not to have it.
I think intua gets the message already, or they would ask for more clarification. Let's wait and see. I don't want this thread to become 10 pages of beating the same points to death.
Yeah, that's part of it. If you are in the
padsview, you can get to the AU plugin with the keys at the bottom by tapping the keyboard icon. But if I don't NEED pads...why would I have to work through all of that? Its visually busy and requires a some more taps to get where you always want to be anyway.Like I said above, I surely CAN do it. It works. I just don't LIKE it. It feels like I'm always working around a drum machines workflow to do things that aren't designed for it. Does that make sense?
We do have to keep one thing in mind when we look at the UI vis a vis adding in new buttons and such, at some point, this thing has to go iPhone, so Intua must be keeping an eye on that at all times too, so while it seems there is plenty of space, that may not be the case
If the iPhone version is the reason why there aren't more shortcuts in BM3 columns then that's a pretty big deal and doesn't bode so well for future...
It would be kind of like NI letting their Maschine phone app ui dictate their desktop software ui... Just in a bid to make the two compatible. They'll be crippling/limiting each other
I wish Intua could rather let the iphone version be the sampler in performance mode, released as a universal AU, without all the timeline sequencer stuff. A simplified UI for the small device. This AU could be sold for $5-10 and act as a gateway to tempt others into BM3. If they really wanted iPad BM3 owners to get a free iPhone version, then make it a bundle.
Creating the full BM3 experience on iPhone sounds like a lot of UI tweaking and later maintenance work, which would delay feature updates and bug fixes for the iPad version.
Ohhh .. I would love that!