Zenbeats Version 3

dermichl

@DMfan said:
@dermichl

Feel bad you haven’t got an answer yet from anyone here in the forum but I have put forward your question to the dev directly. I assume this must be a feature request yes, having to do with how Zenbeats displays the content of subfolders.

The dev team is most likely deep into something right now, it’s pretty quiet in other channels as well except for an arp video on Youtube.

Patience.

/DMfan🇸🇪

Thanx for stepping in! It‘s not what I call a showstopper but a chance for improvement...

DMfan

@dermichl said:
Thanx for stepping in! It‘s not what I call a showstopper but a chance for improvement...

Yes, it needs to be addressed if a user works with a lot of samples. It will easily become a large mess otherwise….

/DMfan🇸🇪

Schmotown

@DMfan said:

@dermichl said:
Thanx for stepping in! It‘s not what I call a showstopper but a chance for improvement...

Yes, it needs to be addressed if a user works with a lot of samples. It will easily become a large mess otherwise….

/DMfan🇸🇪

Same issue here. It’s nearly impossible to find / use 3rd party samples and loops that have been moved into the user’s Audio Samples folder, especially when they’re interspersed with the bazillions of files that come with Roland’s own packs. Thanks to anyone who submitted this to the ZB team for consideration.

FYI, n-Track handles this beautifully, nesting audio and midi files within folders however you have them organized. It’s the best content browser experience I’ve seen.

DMfan

@Schmotown
@dermichl
@tahiche

Matthew has confirmed he is aware about the discussion.

/DMfan🇸🇪

MatthewAtZenbeats

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for the late reply, but I have been following this topic. Some notes below

@carlcaulkett said:

@carlcaulkett said:
I’ve also found a Roland webpage, which from the picture and caption, appears to talk about Zenbeats 3.0.5 on the iPad, Amongst the items is one which reads “Fixed MIDI import issues in LoopBuilder”, although I notice that the item is marked “Bug Fux” 😮 I cannot work out how to carry out this operation, though…

I’m still getting used to the Roland terminology. By “Loopbuilder” I guess they mean the Clip view rather than the Timeline view, Indeed, in the manual which is linked from Zenbeats 3.1.3, it shows a menu with both Import and Export Midi options. These are not present in the actual software.

In fact the only option I can find anywhere in the software that deals with the transfer of Midi data is the one on the settings menu of a clip that already has data, and that is limited to Export Midi.

Maybe the whole Midi transfer issue was a problematic one for Roland and they have temporarily (?) shelved it. Could you shed some light on this @MatthewAtZenbeats ?

We have some improvements planned on this but I don't have a timetable I can share.

@carlcaulkett said:

@DMfan said:
Just tap so a new loop opens up, then long- press inside the loop. To make sure Zenbeats reads the MIDI file you might want to restart the app. For me it works right away though.

Ah! Got it. I was trying the long tap after having already double tapped to create an empty loop. Doh!

The only issue I have now is that if I copy and paste a clip from the Timeline view, I get a clip in the LoopBuilder that just plays once and then stops.

Loops copied from Timeline to LoopBuilder typically have Loop mode set to Off. To change this, Enable Loop mode in the pattern inspector.

However, if I export that clip as MIDI and the import it again into a new clip using your method, the clip repeats as it should, until it is explicitly stopped.

I guess this means that can import MIDI files from elsewhere, or copy from the Timeline view, it’s just that this latter procedure needs an extra couple of steps…

Thanks for your help and patience 😀

Schmotown

Special thanks to @sinosoidal and @MatthewAtZenbeats and their teams. I had reported some incompatibilities when using Imaginando plugins within Zenbeats and it seems they got together and resolved the issues. Excellent service, as usual.

carlcaulkett

Another thing that I thought I had seen, but now cannot find, is the ability to swap the chosen instrument for another on an instrument track. I have one of the ZC instruments chosen, but if I long tap on the instrument name all I get is the option to add a MIDI effect. I suppose I could add a new track with the desired instrument and move the notes over, but this seems very clumsy. What am I missing?

carlcaulkett

@carlcaulkett said:
Another thing that I thought I had seen, but now cannot find, is the ability to swap the chosen instrument for another on an instrument track. I have one of the ZC instruments chosen, but if I long tap on the instrument name all I get is the option to add a MIDI effect. I suppose I could add a new track with the desired instrument and move the notes over, but this seems very clumsy. What am I missing?

Problem solved. It looks like the options to Change or Delete an instrument are missing if the track is a child of a group track. I’m sure this cannot be by design…

I had been experimenting with locking tracks earlier, but all tracks are currently unlocked… or are they??!!

No. I’ve just added a new child track, and I cannot swap there either…

carlcaulkett

Hello @MatthewAtZenbeats, could I put in a request for a new feature? It would be really handy if, after doing a multi-select on a bunch of notes, there was a way to move them, en masse, either left/right or up/down. This could be done with on screen buttons, or, better still for those of us on iPads with Magic Keyboards attached, with the cursor keys. This could be the first steps in a whole heap of improvements to the piano roll 😉

I’m going to investigate getting round the problem by exporting the MIDI to Atom2, manipulating it there, and then reimporting it back into Zenbeats…

dermichl

@carlcaulkett That‘s already there:

Select all notes you need to manipulate (via the multi tool) and open the inspector...
you can easily move and transpose your selection and adjust the note length:

carlcaulkett

@dermichl said:
@carlcaulkett That‘s already there:

Ooh! Thank you very much - I had it in the back of my mind that I’d seen it somewhere, but couldn’t remember where. That really improves things 😀

Having said that it was easy to use Atom2 to export/tweak/import - and, even better, early experiments suggest that using Atom2 as a replacement piano roll might be a good solution…

carlcaulkett

One other question which I don’t think I have asked: Is it possible to reorder the sequence of Audio Effects for a given track?

Schmotown

@carlcaulkett said:
One other question which I don’t think I have asked: Is it possible to reorder the sequence of Audio Effects for a given track?

Sure. Long press the right half of the button, pull it a bit to the right, and slide it up or down the stack of other effects. If that’s unclear, I’ll make a video later.

carlcaulkett

@Schmotown said:
Sure. Long press the right half of the button, pull it a bit to the right, and slide it up or down the stack of other effects. If that’s unclear, I’ll make a video later.

Thanks for the reply. I had tried that before and not managed to get the buttons to move when I let go of the button. I’ve tried it just now and it works! I don’t know what I was doing wrong…

Schmotown

@carlcaulkett said:

@Schmotown said:
Sure. Long press the right half of the button, pull it a bit to the right, and slide it up or down the stack of other effects. If that’s unclear, I’ll make a video later.

Thanks for the reply. I had tried that before and not managed to get the buttons to move when I let go of the button. I’ve tried it just now and it works! I don’t know what I was doing wrong…

I didn’t get it at first, either. It’s a sensitive operation. IME, Zenbeats rewards those who scale its learning curve. Great to see you’re on that journey

MatthewAtZenbeats

@carlcaulkett said:
Another thing that I thought I had seen, but now cannot find, is the ability to swap the chosen instrument for another on an instrument track. I have one of the ZC instruments chosen, but if I long tap on the instrument name all I get is the option to add a MIDI effect. I suppose I could add a new track with the desired instrument and move the notes over, but this seems very clumsy. What am I missing?

Editing> @carlcaulkett said:

@carlcaulkett said:
Another thing that I thought I had seen, but now cannot find, is the ability to swap the chosen instrument for another on an instrument track. I have one of the ZC instruments chosen, but if I long tap on the instrument name all I get is the option to add a MIDI effect. I suppose I could add a new track with the desired instrument and move the notes over, but this seems very clumsy. What am I missing?

Problem solved. It looks like the options to Change or Delete an instrument are missing if the track is a child of a group track. I’m sure this cannot be by design…

I had been experimenting with locking tracks earlier, but all tracks are currently unlocked… or are they??!!

No. I’ve just added a new child track, and I cannot swap there either…

Thanks for pointing that out. Will log the issue with the missing "Change Instrument" option.

vdk_john

hi!

I'm trying Zenbeats (also got the unlock for iPad) and liking it so far.

I have some minor issues and questions; some of them I already posted to their support, but will mention them here anyway as I saw @MatthewAtZenbeats is following this thread (one more reason for liking the app!)

I'm on iPad OS 16.2 (updating to 16.3) - iPad Air 4th gen.

• One possible bug that I found is that when you re-open a project, all the MIDI FX that were disabled are now enabled again; not sure if this is known
• Piano Pro (aka Pro Keys) which I use for sounds, doesn't reload after saving -> closing -> reopening a project (gets stuck loading the sound). This doesn't happen in other DAWs

• Undo doesn't work after resizing notes in the part editor?

• unlock upgrade: it doesn't seem to be possible to unlock all platforms at discounted price if I already unlocked one or more platforms, or is it? (e.g. like apple store bundles)

• it doesn't seem to be possible to step-record MIDI, correct? Is this something planned?

• I saw it's possible to stretch audio clip, but can that be done for MIDI too? (how FL Studio / NanoStudio 2 do it)
• I'm confused by the "duplicate" behaviour of MIDI notes... they don't get duplicated right after the current one and it seems to duplicate based on the whole bar?
• If in the part editor I drag a note on top of another, the existing one gets deleted. That's a bit annoying when moving a selection left or right. Would prefer to see the note of a different colour or with a symbol if two or more notes are overlapping
• MIDI FX do not receive input from the virtual keyboard, correct? I think I saw this mentioned a couple of times. Is this a planned improvement?

many thanks

Telstar5

@MatthewAtZenbeats said:

@carlcaulkett said:
Another thing that I thought I had seen, but now cannot find, is the ability to swap the chosen instrument for another on an instrument track. I have one of the ZC instruments chosen, but if I long tap on the instrument name all I get is the option to add a MIDI effect. I suppose I could add a new track with the desired instrument and move the notes over, but this seems very clumsy. What am I missing?

Editing> @carlcaulkett said:

@carlcaulkett said:
Another thing that I thought I had seen, but now cannot find, is the ability to swap the chosen instrument for another on an instrument track. I have one of the ZC instruments chosen, but if I long tap on the instrument name all I get is the option to add a MIDI effect. I suppose I could add a new track with the desired instrument and move the notes over, but this seems very clumsy. What am I missing?

Problem solved. It looks like the options to Change or Delete an instrument are missing if the track is a child of a group track. I’m sure this cannot be by design…

I had been experimenting with locking tracks earlier, but all tracks are currently unlocked… or are they??!!

No. I’ve just added a new child track, and I cannot swap there either…

Thanks for pointing that out. Will log the issue with the missing "Change Instrument" option.

@MatthewAtZenbeats strikes again with exemplary customer support to the rescue and on the quick. Only a small handful of developers on iOS are up to that task on that level. We never take it for granted. It’s awesome . Thanks again , Matthew .

vdk_john

could someone please confirm the following (or am I missing the obvious?): currently when adding a MIDI FX (e.g. Helium) which adds "outputs" / midi buses, those are ignored by Zenbeats? (e.g. in Cubasis I can select those as inputs for other tracks)

thanks

MatthewAtZenbeats

@vdk_john said:
hi!

I'm trying Zenbeats (also got the unlock for iPad) and liking it so far.

I have some minor issues and questions; some of them I already posted to their support, but will mention them here anyway as I saw @MatthewAtZenbeats is following this thread (one more reason for liking the app!)

I'm on iPad OS 16.2 (updating to 16.3) - iPad Air 4th gen.

• One possible bug that I found is that when you re-open a project, all the MIDI FX that were disabled are now enabled again; not sure if this is known

--Known and will be fixed in 3.1.4--

• Piano Pro (aka Pro Keys) which I use for sounds, doesn't reload after saving -> closing -> reopening a project (gets stuck loading the sound). This doesn't happen in other DAWs

-- I will add this plugin to our list to check out.--

• Undo doesn't work after resizing notes in the part editor?

--Correct, resizing notes is not included in the undo stack currently.--

• unlock upgrade: it doesn't seem to be possible to unlock all platforms at discounted price if I already unlocked one or more platforms, or is it? (e.g. like apple store bundles)

--We currently do not offer upgrade discounts to the All Platform Unlock.--

• it doesn't seem to be possible to step-record MIDI, correct? Is this something planned?

--We don't have a step record feature, currently, but it has been added to our backlog. How critical is this feature for your workflow?--

• I saw it's possible to stretch audio clip, but can that be done for MIDI too? (how FL Studio / NanoStudio 2 do it)

--Not possible yet, but it is something in our backlog--

• I'm confused by the "duplicate" behaviour of MIDI notes... they don't get duplicated right after the current one and it seems to duplicate based on the whole bar?

--Currently, we duplicate the notes based on the bar, in the MIDI editor. Would it be helpful to you if we had the option to duplicate to the next grid line instead?--

• If in the part editor I drag a note on top of another, the existing one gets deleted. That's a bit annoying when moving a selection left or right. Would prefer to see the note of a different colour or with a symbol if two or more notes are overlapping
• MIDI FX do not receive input from the virtual keyboard, correct? I think I saw this mentioned a couple of times. Is this a planned improvement?

--This is something we have discussed and hope to implement improvements in the future.

many thanks

vdk_john

hi @MatthewAtZenbeats
Many thanks for your reply!

-- I will add this plugin to our list to check out.--

Thanks; by the way, Rhino by Aurora DSP is also acting strange... it loads with the iOS user interface rather than the tablet one

-We don't have a step record feature, currently, but it has been added to our backlog. How critical is this feature for your workflow?--

Not critical, mostly a nice to have. But when a piano roll allows it, I find it quite nice to enter notes with step recording and then move them and use midi stretch to maybe change tempo / placement on the piano roll of some of them. Midi stretch for me is also great if you improvise without the metronome and then want to adjust what you played with the selected bpm. (per clip tempo detection would be, I guess, an alternative)

However in terms of what's more "critical" for me (in quotes as it's an hobby / I'm not a pro) I'd say, these two (plus the issues with some plugins) are the main ones:

resizing notes is not included in the undo stack currently

If in the part editor I drag a note on top of another, the existing one gets deleted

I'd really love if the piano roll could get some of these features (cough lk cough ):

• auto crop of bars to notes
• moving notes left of right wraps around (but I'm not sure, it can be nice in some cases but certainly not a must have)
• double click a note on the left of the piano roll (or long press) to select all the notes with that pitch

And currently the only way to zoom in and out is by using the buttons next to the scrollbars, correct? (no pitch to zoom)
...but on the left of the scrollbar there might be enough space for a "shift" button (again, see lk )

thanks again for your help and I hope this is somehow useful feedback

p.s.
also found an issue with atom piano roll where if the note is on the first "step" of the piano roll and the clip is armed it's played constantly even if zenbeats is not playing. however I don't really need to use atom within zenbeats and I think it can be mitigated by using automation on atom launch parameters

ipadbeatmaking

@vdk_john said:
hi @MatthewAtZenbeats
Many thanks for your reply!

p.s.
also found an issue with atom piano roll where if the note is on the first "step" of the piano roll and the clip is armed it's played constantly even if zenbeats is not playing. however I don't really need to use atom within zenbeats and I think it can be mitigated by using automation on atom launch parameters

I found the same issue with Atom and I would like to see it fixed in the next Zenbeats update hopefully. Atom is essential to my work flow and this bug is the main reason I haven't used it too much lately. Thanks

Sirt

Where is the new song option from the opening page?
To make a new song I have to open an existing song then select new song.

wim

@Sirt said:
Where is the new song option from the opening page?
To make a new song I have to open an existing song then select new song.

All those entries on the left are Templates for different starting points. You can reorder them to avoid having to scroll. Scroll down on the left column and pick either Timeline Song or LoopBuilder Song if you want to start a completely empty project.

[edit] Correction, the two templates I mentioned aren't completely empty. They still add one drum track, which I always delete. I don't like people assuming how I like to start a project.

DMfan

@CapnWillie said:

Hey @MatthewAtZenbeats , any chance you guys can write a script for Arturia’s new MiniLab 3?

Currently they offer Ableton, Logic and Bitwig. It would be really great to have Zenbeats among them. Especially for iPad as it is already a great companion to Roland MV1 and J-6.

The Oled screen and clickable selection knob lets you cycle tracks, instruments and presets within a DAW. The pads allow clip launching and transport. The top four knobs map to key sound design parameters on built in instruments, the bottom 4 map to effect (delay, dev, chorus, etc) parameters on built in instruments. The faders control the mixer (vol, pan, send, etc). Shift + keys/pads control arp, chord, midi channel, program changes.

👍

If you never ask, you’re always going to get a no…. although my I feel it is Arturia’s ball, not Roland’s since Roland is also selling their own controllers.

Arturia seems to have more or less left the iOS scene sorry to say.

/DMfan🇸🇪

ipadbeatmaking

@CapnWillie said:

@DMfan said:

@CapnWillie said:

Hey @MatthewAtZenbeats , any chance you guys can write a script for Arturia’s new MiniLab 3?

Currently they offer Ableton, Logic and Bitwig. It would be really great to have Zenbeats among them. Especially for iPad as it is already a great companion to Roland MV1 and J-6.

The Oled screen and clickable selection knob lets you cycle tracks, instruments and presets within a DAW. The pads allow clip launching and transport. The top four knobs map to key sound design parameters on built in instruments, the bottom 4 map to effect (delay, dev, chorus, etc) parameters on built in instruments. The faders control the mixer (vol, pan, send, etc). Shift + keys/pads control arp, chord, midi channel, program changes.

👍

If you never ask, you’re always going to get a no…. although my I feel it is Arturia’s ball, not Roland’s since Roland is also selling their own controllers.

Arturia seems to have more or less left the iOS scene sorry to say.

/DMfan🇸🇪

Could be. Although Apple (Logic) and Bitwig apparently added their scripts after it launched. Also, if Zenbeats wants to catch up or at least be mentioned in the same sentence as the big guys they may want to throw their hat in. As you said, a try beats a blank.🤷🏽‍♂️

I couldn’t find any decent portable Roland midi controllers (besides the J-6 which i adore). I’d def be interested in any that are mapped to control Z3.

First off, beautiful view!

I agree, scripts are essential and what essentially separate the adults from the kids with DAWs. And with Zenbeats being a desktop DAW, its peers are Logic, Bitwig, Ableton, etc. What I think Roland (Zenbeats) really needs to do is open up a scripting api like Ableton, Fl Studio, Bitwig, etc that would allow enthusiasts to build their own scripts for personal use, sharing, or selling and let us actually maximize our controllers with it.

And while we're on the subject I'll rant: I lost my Roli blocks compatibility to the zenbeats update and I guess there's no intention to bring it back. I also requested the knob for the piano roll editor to have midi learn fixed, instead its been removed entirely. Really?

DMfan

@CapnWillie said:

@ipadbeatmaking said:

Scripts etc.

This is an interesting topic, and my view is that compatibility is a priority for the dev team. I’ve reached out, see what Matthew has to say.

/DMfan🇸🇪

iansainsbury

@CapnWillie said:

Nice set up there, Capn. I bought a Verselab when it first came out, and sent it back after a couple of days' head scratching. I've learned a lot since then, and have just bought a used on to rejoin the party. Your enthusiasm was one of the main reasons for the repurchase. Just thought you should know...

tahiche

@DMfan said:

@CapnWillie said:

@ipadbeatmaking said:

Scripts etc.

This is an interesting topic, and my view is that compatibility is a priority for the dev team. I’ve reached out, see what Matthew has to say.

/DMfan🇸🇪

Indeed controller compatibility and options is a big plus for a DAW. I believe the “API” approach such a as Ableton and Bitwig is definately the way to go. Not only does it open the app to any controller and multiple ways of working but it also means devs don’t have to be constantly adding new controllers and requests for a growing number of devices.

jaijai

I love the Roland mv 1 and love Zenbeats, but the integration could be extended a bit more. Editing and arranging the vocal parts would be awesome.
Import and export of clips with Zenbeats or even song transfer. Patch editing etc. There are so many great things to come up with.