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Developer
Posts: 746
  
Location: England | Hi everyone,
A slight update to fix various problems with keyboard shortcuts:
Download reViSiT v1.2.6 Pro from http://www.nashnet.co.uk/experiment/download.asp.
(not registered? Register for free, as part of the reViSiT Experiment) Best,
Chris |
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Expert
Posts: 512
Location: Netherlands | Bugs gone, sofar. \o/
But having spent some time with the pattern zooming for a while, I can definitely say that in its current state it's flawed. I need a term to describe the notes and events in an opened step, so I introduce 'micronotes' and 'microevents' (and other things micro).
- It'd rather see the whole pattern 'opened' rather than just the step, as navigating around is unfocused. One of the key aspects of tracking is overview, while working at row 40 you can see what's on row 16 and anticipate to it. Not when working within an opened step. You can't see what's in the previous opened step and the visual reference of your input in context of the whole pattern is gone (the screen distances are different).
- The concept that micronotes/microevents belong to a step, rather than being a member of the pattern like all mainrow-notes, doesn't work for me. I prefer to move micronotes around like any other notes. I can't ins/del these notes in context of a pattern, only in context of the row they belong to. I can't transpose them, or alter them with volume amplifications effects (alt-k, alt-k-k, ctrl-j etc.) or fx-column effects and perhaps more things. This may all be enough for the incidental drumsound, but I'm currently working on an orchestral piece which includes a harp glissando. I'm using these substeps for 32th harp notes. But when I want to amplify the whole, it'll only amplify the mainrow-notes. If I want to transpose them an octave, alt-q/a only works on the mainrow-notes, not the subrow-notes, which I've to change manually. At this moment, these subrows cost me more time and frustration than the old fashioned alternative of using two channels and the SDx command. And within minutes after this post, it's probably what I'm going to do. With that in mind, I'd say the concept is a bit of a failure.
What I would do:
- open up all subrows for the whole pattern upon a command
- enable the same features for subrows as you have on mainrows (transpose, amplify, interpolate, ins, del etc.) Simply see them as 32th or 64th notes rather than subnotes of 16th notes.
One thing I can hear you say already is: "when all rows are opened, the rendered image (the pattern) I'm displaying will be way too large for the allocated memory". That may be. With which I wonder whether that way of displaying your pattern is the best solution there is.
/me trying to make it a better tracker, not trying to be a pita :D |
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Developer
Posts: 746
Location: England | Hi CS_TBL,
(Nice tune, the other day, by the way.)
But having spent some time with the pattern zooming for a while, I can definitely say that in its current state it's flawed. I need a term to describe the notes and events in an opened step, so I introduce 'micronotes' and 'microevents' (and other things micro).
Yeah, I've been trying to find a term to describe them. Trouble is, there's already confusion about the terminology for the cell's themselves - are they "notes" (some don't contain note on's), "rows" (IT2 term, but easily confused with the whole horizontal row of the pattern), "cells" (ugly but accurate, sounds like a spreadsheet), "events" (perhaps the best, but doesn't describe an empty cell).
For the bits visible when opened up, I've been using "subrows", but I like the word "micro-" - it encompasses all it offers, such as fine control, detail and high resolution. Now, just to decide what to stick after it! Any thoughts, any one...?
- It'd rather see the whole pattern 'opened' rather than just the step, as navigating around is unfocused. One of the key aspects of tracking is overview, while working at row 40 you can see what's on row 16 and anticipate to it. Not when working within an opened step. You can't see what's in the previous opened step and the visual reference of your input in context of the whole pattern is gone (the screen distances are different)... One thing I can hear you say already is: "when all rows are opened, the rendered image (the pattern) I'm displaying will be way too large for the allocated memory". That may be. With which I wonder whether that way of displaying your pattern is the best solution there is.
The "overview" argument can also be used against opening up every row, as it eats up significantly more screen space. In your example, working on row 40, it's unlikely that you'd be able to see row 16 at all, if you opened all the rows up (with 6 frames-per-row resolution), as it would appear over 200 visible rows away. With partial-opening-up, you still get to see row 16, albeit without its subrows.
However, I do sympathise, and I've always wanted to give the user the option, but currently this is hindered by the drawing algorithm. As you observe, the problem is that subrows cannot currently be cached in memory, since they could potentially be huge (think of high pattern resolutions, with 32 subrows, and high resolution screens). The drawing algorithm is very efficient for normal pattern drawing, but wasn't designed with subrows in mind. At some stage I will re-write it completely to support more flexibility - and perhaps also have the option of choosing individual rows to open up, regardless of where the cursor moves.
Also, in part, it was this desire for pervasive visibility, fully-opened high-resolution editing that encouraged me to also implement the rows-per-beat setting - though this has the disadvantage of being only song-wide. Here, a per-pattern rows-per-beat setting is more desirable, but is not currently supported by the sync algorithm.
- The concept that micronotes/microevents belong to a step, rather than being a member of the pattern like all mainrow-notes, doesn't work for me. I prefer to move micronotes around like any other notes. I can't ins/del these notes in context of a pattern, only in context of the row they belong to. I can't transpose them, or alter them with volume amplifications effects (alt-k, alt-k-k, ctrl-j etc.) or fx-column effects and perhaps more things. This may all be enough for the incidental drumsound, but I'm currently working on an orchestral piece which includes a harp glissando. I'm using these substeps for 32th harp notes. But when I want to amplify the whole, it'll only amplify the mainrow-notes. If I want to transpose them an octave, alt-q/a only works on the mainrow-notes, not the subrow-notes, which I've to change manually. At this moment, these subrows cost me more time and frustration than the old fashioned alternative of using two channels and the SDx command. And within minutes after this post, it's probably what I'm going to do. With that in mind, I'd say the concept is a bit of a failure.
Firstly, you have to note that the number of subrows is tied to the pattern resolution - the "frame rate" - so isn't always going to be a power of two (32nd, 64th, etc.). Users must be able to choose arbitrary divisions (e.g. to support triplets, etc.). Because of this inter-dependency, subrows are implicitly subordinate to the main rows. Practically, you can't issue effects from subrows that affect resolution. Nor can you have effects that affect sync or song-playback (repeats, breaks, etc.). Also, largely thanks to the IT2 effects legacy, you have to note that many effects behave differently, depending on whether they are on-the-[main]-row or not.
However, without changing the behind-the-scenes row-subrow relationship, it should be possible to make the difference less pronounced in the user experience, just by modifying the interface. This will include support for subrow selections and editing macros (interpolation, etc.). This was left out of the initial release for two reasons: firstly, it's more complicated than you'd think and takes time; secondly, leaving this "known UI failing" in gives me something to study for my research. As it stands, the feature is still well-suited to minor micro-edits, such as grace notes or rhythm programming.
reViSiT 1.3 will largely be targetted at novice users, in an attempt to attract and retain more users who are new to tracking/IT2/reViSiT, but it's possible subrow interaction might receive some attention too, on account of it also being tied to my research.
Best,
Chris |
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Expert
Posts: 512
Location: Netherlands | As it stands, the feature is still well-suited to minor micro-edits, such as grace notes or rhythm programming.
Exactly, and it's just that, a solution for grace notes and percussion rolls (or smoother CC changing). It's not a solution for structural composition using smaller note values.
I did some Lilyponding to point out the problem (use it in your thesis if you want):
The problem is the cloaking of important notes while inputting notes in the subrows, you just don't get a clear overview of what you have, which is why I think the whole pattern should be opened. A 32th notes resolution (in the F12 screen) is a solution of course, but at the price of your notes being extremely separated (as can be seen in the cello and bass part here too), which cloaks the overview as well.
 (revisit32.png)
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 revisit32.png (50KB - 0 downloads)
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Expert
Posts: 512
Location: Netherlands | Minor thing: to be fully in line with IT's navigation: when the cursor is not in the most left cell (the one-char note cell) a shift-tab is to go to the most left position of the channel it's on, not to the channel on the left. |
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Expert
Posts: 512
Location: Netherlands | btw, as for 1.3 and novice users (new to tracking etc.).. I'm not sure the interface should 'suffer' in any way from that. A good tutorial -with a comparison to traditional music notation- would be better I think. Think about a video tutorial on youtube.. I'd say that's way more practical. |
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Developer
Posts: 746
Location: England | I've adjusted the tab behaviour for the next release, to mirror before. The subtle difference between this and other channel hopping was lost in the move to the new keyboard handler.
However, there is no reason to think that anything will be lost with the new features for mouse and novice users. reViSiT is designed so that, in the program, you can avoid using the mouse at all, and will always be so. However, perhaps like IT2, it lacks certain features that might help beginners learn the keyboard. One way is to use the mouse as an optional extra stepping-stone to keyboard operation, and an extra alternative in a few limited situations. The basic notion is to have right-click context menus, allowing new users to see what commands are available and select them. However, they will also: firstly, be able to access these menus using the keyboard ('Alt'+cursors - faster than mouse, but not as fast as direct shortcuts); and, secondly, be able to see what keyboard shortcuts exist to work faster. In the latter case, this is all about learning how to use reViSiT as it is used by experts already.
So, you see; if you don't open the menu, your user experience won't change a bit. There are going to be a couple of other innovations too, but these will be fairly discreet, or at least disable-able.
Chris |
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Regular
Posts: 60
| I think it's a very good idea to make RV a bit more accessible to people who are quite alien to tracking, especially to people who never used impulse/scream tracker (most newcomers in audio production don't know these anymore anyway). I tried to persuade some people to just try ReViSiT and they liked it (the idea all the way), but just couldn't get into it very quick since most is done by keyboard shortcuts, a farcry from all the drawing and dragging done with a mouse in most daws.
To put it short; it is essential that ReViSiT has a mouse-setup to warm up newbies who just want to track music fast and easy. Like Cubase and most daws, at first you're clicking away with your mouse until your index finger and wrist go numb, until you discover the configurable keyboard shortcuts and notice that using these increases workflow like nothing else. But most people got to slide into this behaviour whilst getting comfortable with the program itself.
This sounds nostalgic, but it reminds me of the days when beginner trackers used FT2 and the 'advanced' stepped over to impulse tracker since it ultimately had more control and flexibility, but really took your time since the mouse only helped to press a few buttons which were hard to do by keyboard. Now people can get easier into tracking by using renoise since it's the old ft2 idea and the mouse plays a large role in it, but people do miss the 'best of both worlds idea' that ReViSiT has (being a VSTi seq/sampler).
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Member
Posts: 9
| hi all
christ thanx for your amazing soft i use revisit with aodix ,work fine
a little bug or not ? when i up or down octave /or* that dosnt work with midi keyboard (perhaps is aodix) and when i stop play in aodix RV don't stop alone (i use free pattern for compensate this) in midi mode
and a little request (big request ) :possibility to play more than one pattern at simultaneous 
an other request possibility to listen sample before load ,in big bank of sample is more useful :p
good work amazing for free software
bb
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Developer
Posts: 746
Location: England | Hi Onukore,
Thanks for the feedback. The base octave feature only sets the range for the QWERTY keyboard notes - since you can only get to 29 pitches, you need to be able to move about the full range. The MIDI input range depends on your device, which will usually be much larger. The MIDI messages themselves specify up to 127 pitches, so an subsequent octave shift just makes things confusing.
As for stopping playback in Aodix, it's likely the host isn't sending out all the right signals when stopped - MIDI Note Off / Reset messages or a VST Time Info stop signal. In my quick tests, this appears to be the case and will be the same for other VSTi's - you will get hanging notes if you stop during a note's duration. Sadly, there are unlikely to be any more updates/fixes for Aodix, so you'll have to keep to using your workaround. As such, you might think about writing a quick note in the "VST Host Tips and Workarounds" topic, on the Help & Support forum:
http://www.nashnet.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=3138&posts=3&start=1
Both an improved sample/instrument load screen and multiple-pattern triggering are both high on the "to do" list, but will be features coming after the end of the reViSiT Experiment.
Best,
Chris |
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Member
Posts: 9
| thx a lots
best regard chris |
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reViSiT v1.2.6 Pro update available
