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A few words about DAW’s and iOS and note editing.
First of all I would like to bet for excuse to come up with the same concern about „indirect addressing“ of note-events again and again. But I belief that the approach of most current timelinie-oriented DAW’s is not the best for a touchscreen-device, regardless of it’s screen-size.
I’m writing again about this topic, not because I have a need to express my frustration, or whatever, but because to stimulate developers to think again about their „pinch and zoom“-approach, which is necessary every time one has to handle more than maximum 16 notes at once on the screen, cause if there are more and therefore smaller events displayed a precise editing is not possible because of the finger that touches the event within the given grid will hide the event itself and nearby grid-parts. An exact placement or resize of such small events is physically impossible - at least for me.
Another problem is, that with smaller events, it is no more possible to place handles onto the event itself (eg. to resize) so it is also necessary to zoom in until the handle appears and is touchable. Even with only 16 notes it is often not possible, to grab the resize-handle, if the note is a shorter one.
Please imagine, your favorite mac/pc-daw would have only a touch-screen and the note-editing would work like it is currently implemented in cubasis or beatmaker 3. Do you think he horsepower of your machine would make note-editing better? Or the more complex software on this machines? I don’t think so. It would be exactly the same pinch an zoom fest like on the iOS-devices.
So - what makes note editing on the desktop-counterpart so fast, precise and easy? My answer is: The mouse-input. The mouse acts as an indirect handle to position a small pointer in a very precise and fast fashion. So my dream sequencer on iOS would have a mouse-driven interface. This would allow for very precise and fast note editing, in no way worse, than on the PC/Mac. But I now we won’t get this - at least not soon.
What could be a valid alternative? Right- indirect handles. We had them already - first in the fabulous Nanostudio, later in Beatmaker 2 and now the only current DAW, which offers this type of handles is MTS (Multitrack Studio).
I have tried to warm up with MTS which is a very capable DAW, but my impression is, it is more aimed to professional musicians with it’s not so conventional and not so visual interface - imo. of course. Sadly I’m not a „real musician“ but make my tracks in a more loop-oriented way, like many of us - i think. And when it comes to arrange my tracks, I prefer a more visual way, like in Cubasis, or Auria. But when it comes to note editing, nothing beats the named older apps, or MTS - precise fast and comfortably.
So my wish to the developers of current DAW’s is to rethink about the „touch the note directly and zoom in and out, if the handles are not visible - approach. It is imo. painful and ineffective - otherwise I think Cubasis is my current favorite when it comes to learning-curve vs. features. And it allows me to experiment with loops in a way, I like. Beatmaker 3 may have more features, but I fear I’m to stupid to get into it - it is way to complex and interlaced imo. for the casual user.
So I beg the developers of Cubasis and Auria to think again about an option to enable indirect handles, like they where implemented in Nanostudio. Only as an option, people who prefer the current implementation can have it as standard and people who are thinking, indirect handles would be better could activate the optionally.
Thanks for reading, sorry for my bad English and have a nice day!
Comments
NanoStudio is still king for me. Otherwise i think that huge and complex DAW's just won't work nice on small touch screens. I never edit midi within my iOS DAW's, except NanoStudio where it works good, even on iPhone.
I would also love to use a Mac/Pc to edit longer melody-lines. Sadly I only own an old 2011 Macbook Air which hardly meets the minimum specs for Logic. I think it makes no sense to invest about 200€ for a DAW which my Mac can't really manage, without lags and loud fan-noise. So I'm more or less ipad only. But I remember the note-editing with Nanostudio, years ago and it was a dream, in comparison with the direct handles in Cubasis, Auria and Beatmaker 3.
I hoped Beamaker 3 would hold on with the note-handling of the previous version.
Maybe NanoStudio 2 will be your answer then.
I think it's the only iOS DAW i'm interested in yet.
I hope so. But i think we are not the only people who prefer the Nanostudio style note editing and I remember that the developer of MTS had implemented this in no time, after I suggested it in his forum. So I'm wondering, why we can't get it from the big players at least as an option.
Good question...maybe because they don't really work with touch screens themselves?
I mean half of the iOS apps are so "non touch ready" that i wonder why that is so.
Or are they waiting really until iOS gets mouse input support? I don't know.
When it's more easy to use synths with my trackpad rather than my finger on a touch screen there is something not optimzed. But what do i know?
Reaper runs great on that machine, I have an 11" 2011 air with 4gb ram and reaper flies on it. I use harrison mixbus to mix now though, and it runs well to a point, once I get a few hungry plugins going its tougher. But it sounds amazing so the workarounds are worth it. But without any plugins, for midi editing, etc, it also runs smoothly, as does ardour, which mixbus is based on. Ardour would be great for midi as well.
But I agree, nanostudio's sequencer is still the easiest to use of anything I've ever used.
Unless I misunderstand, BeatMaker 3 has these handles.
Yeah, and those drag / move handles were definitely designed by Matt in NS. It's his idea, one of most brilliant ideas in all iOS apps ever made
If i good remember, Matt somewhere at public forums mentioned that (in contrast to BM2->BM3 dramatic changes) he doesn't plan to dramatically change Nanostudio's famous sequencer in NS2 - it will based on same rules and structure, just with added some new goodness .. so i bet also drag handles will stay there, many people love it (that's why Intua steal it in BM2, and i'm wondering they leaved it in BM3)
Nanostudio 2 will be the Real king of iOS DAW on which we all are waiting.. :-)) I bet handles will be there too, they are simply Nanostudio trademark :-))
The drag handles are superb in BM3 ?
Full screen length horiztontal handles to move up and down.
Full screen height to move left and right or change length.
Cubasis can be operated this way too!
Please - could you explain how? I know of the left-handed buttons to set what to change - lenght, position and so on - but this is not the way, it has been made in Nanostudio, Beatmaker 2 and MTS. Besides - since the new udpate this settings doesn't work anymore somehow, at least when I've tried to activate the note-length setting and dragged a small event. In the end I was only able to change it's positon. So I have allways zoom in until the length-handle is visible. But perhaps I've done it wrong.
But however - this buttons are convenient, but far away from the usability of Nanostudios implementation.
I know - it's all a matter of taste but I have also the impression, the developers of the current DAW'a are not using their apps much for more complex note-editing. I would think this constant zoom in and out should drive them nuts.
What I'm hoping and begging for is not a complete change - just offering a Nanostudio-like way of note-editing as an option. The developer of MTS has proven that it's not like reinventing all from the ground up. He was very friendly and responsive and has implemented it very good, very fast - as an option - so there are no users who loose but a whole bunch of users who won a new way of interacting with the sequencer.
So this should also be a way to win new customers, which logical be in the interest of the developers.
I never used NanoStudio but from this I sort of gather what made it a good MIDI editor.
To me a good solution would be two modes: select & draw. In select mode you interact with the grid with two fingers, moving the roll across to more bars etc. and two finger pinch/zoom allows detailed editing. The zoom should be massive, if you want to put two note spaces on the entire screen so be it.
In draw mode you'd use one finger to select & draw notes, erase those already on the grid and press & hold existing notes to extend length.
To me that would be perfect. Of course you'd have editing for velocity, etc. but for the most basic operations of editing notes and creating arrangemens this simple 1 finger touch draw/2 finger touch editing & zoom would make working on a cramped tablet ir phone with bare hands more easy to accomplish.
Select a note or pattern. Dotted lines extend from the start/end of what you’ve selected. These are handles that can be dragged to change the note/pattern length without obscuring it with fingers, and without zooming in.
With Auria, you tape the note, the menus are all above, they are not "tied" to the note. I'm not an expert by any means in midi, but it seems easy enough to get it to work. As in many things with zoomable screens, the handles don't often appear until you zoom in enough. This doesn't bother me at all. All personal taste.
Right view, wrong app. That’s Cubasis; we were talking about BeatMaker 3.
That said, Cubasis works too. Once you’ve selected a note you can slide it left or right from above/below the note, and change note length by holding the Length button with your other hand. No need to zoom in to precisely grab an end or to obscure the note itself with your finger.
If you stubbornly work any sequencer among these mentioned, bashing your head hour after hour against it's GUI, you will eventually bend it to your will or it'll bend yours to its. Having said that ima say MTS for the win, with the new "radial" access. Bear in mind I've spent many hours softening my thick head against its interface, and that for me it was already a very smooth workflow groove (recording, sampling, resampling, chopping, stretching) and with the last update it's even more groovy. (I'm not currently a pro musician by any stretch, I do not play one on TV, and I'm not a shill of the devs). My second would be BM2 (yes over BM3) but that will switch after I bash my head against BM3 a bit longer. The GUI isn't the only thing to like about MTS...one (weird) other thing I like is that it stably hosts iMPC Pro as IAA
I have a mid 2010 MBP that I added an SSD and 8g of ram to and it runs Reaper 5 and Cubase 9 without any notable issues. I don't know if you can do upgrades to an Air, but it might be worth investigating. Better than beating your head against the wall in iOS, anyway.
I'd have to agree that laptop software is understood to be in play somewhere in here, at least alongside iOS. Benefits for my stubbornness with MTS is that its cross platform, so (hard won) fluidity of production on the tablet, finished with depth available on laptop/desktop.
@Littlewoodg An iPad/iPhone to make noise and an MBP to capture and edit it all is a good great combination.
a natural
No ram upgrades for air, and it has an ssd already, but that is easy to upgrade at least, I used an m2 adapter so an m2 size can work on the air, it works great.
I second that! Working with the menus (which include quantize length and other advanced features) frequently saves you a lot of time when you don't want to do a lot of zooming in/out. And with Auria, you can view all your MIDI tracks in the piano roll at the same time, choosing the track you want to edit in a small box. That's really useful and cool, specially when you need to orchestrate several instruments together. In fact, I really love Auria's piano roll, but it took a while for me to understand it well.
Thanks for the tip with the adapter - but my concern isn't to few ssd-space but the fact that my air has only 4 GB of RAM. The minimum specs for logic are 4 GB. So - I think I would fast seeing a wall or the beachball spinning with a few more tracks.
Regarding cubasis: Someone wrote one has to press the "tools"-buttons and the note at the same time to modify it. That was my fault. Before I pressed the tool-button first and afterwards dragged the note - and I meant to remember that this worked in older versions - but anyways - my fault.
Yes - all a matter of taste, regarding how a midi-editor under iOS should look like. But I still would favour the Nanostudio style of handles above anything else. And it has a reason, why nanostudio is still the workflow-king in the minds of so many people.
edit.: Thanks to the member, who mentioned reaper - I've tried it, but couldn't find my way into it. I have cubase elements on my air and it makes my device way to noisy. With a few plugins it felt also underpowered. My current Air 2 and 12,9" Pro (2015) are feeling ahead of my Macbook - and in the end I've bought the Pro first and foremost for sequencing but am struggling to find the right sequencer.
I think I will dig again into MTS. It is the only current DAW with this kind of editing and has otherwise many bells and whistles, which makes it quit unique. Somehow in the past I've always returned to Cubasis, but perhaps I find my way into MTS this time.
Maybe beatmaker 3 has also the kind of handles I'm looking for, but I had the impression, it's way to complicated for a person like me, who just wants to lay down some tracks on a casual basis.
about the Cubasis way of using these handles:
select the note by either touching or lassoing
press and hold the handle button on the left (lenght, up/down, left/right, velocity)
swipe anywhere on the screen to edit
seems to me like the mentioned handle way...
Yes - in some form it is comparable. But I think it is more straightforward to mark note(s) and afterwards chose a handle to move/resize/change lenth/change pitch like it's implemented in MTS nowadays and originally in Nanostudio. I'm not a big fan of the two-hands operating-mode. Cubasis seems to want the user to do so, cause the Drawing, Marking and Lasso tools are so far away from the editing-screen. I try to get comfortable with it but mostly use only one hand to operate cubasis, which makes this layout not so comfortable. I would prefer to have al editing tools nearby the editing-screen.
edit: ok one way to get around the distance between editing screen and the tools in the upper screen could be to drag the editing screen to fullscreen - so this issue is solved. But it'S really hard to forget nanostudio when one had collected their first experiences with it's excellent workflow. The cool thing with NS was also, that the handles where not only working for note-events but also for parts of the song-editor. It was so fluid and smoothly.
and the handles where always colliding with these events in my book...