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Comments
Imagine coming out to the parking lot of a Walmart where you parked your red generic car. It is now filled with only red generic cars of the same brand. Even if you know pretty much where you parked, you still have to look for it. That's pretty much how the Ableton look come across for me - everything looks so similar that I get lost (even when I know where to go).
Not being a clean look is a bad choice of words but I'm not sure what to call the above experience: sameness-syndrome, cluttered .. nah I don't know
Not really but I come from graphic design so the skeuomorphic designs has always pleased me.
Yes, and build on that so certain audio parts have different shades of that first tint (inst: e.g more like purple and time plug: more to the turqouis, I don't know ... ), or something to that extent - making families
I will try, my brain is flooded and new stuff is cueing up: "try me, try me!"😆 I really need a stop and a reset.
One of the things that I find annoying with Mela 6 is when swiping left / right or up / down is it’s very easy to accidentally change parameters. I wonder if there could be a fast or long swipe gesture or a double tap to edit a module?
Yeah, this is my only gripe with Mela ..
What a great developer.
My main reason: Time.
In my experience, spending more time with one app than just a little time split over several apps often makes a big difference - picking one app and trying to get the best out of it makes so much more sense to me and gives me so much better results.
I can only speak for myself but indeed, I've shared a lot of my ideas and findings on patchstorage.com already, and there are many great patches shared by others too, including a lot of impressive Mozaic tools.
I really appreciate that, thank you.
TBH, I don't want my grocery list items to be different colours
. But I think I kind of understand; maybe you want grocery list items that belong to the same sections grouped by colour?
So, do you want each lane to be different colours or modules to be different colours?
Is this for your own presets or to easily understand presets made by others?
As a side note, once more modules start supporting nesting (i.e. the sublanes feature), a lot of presets may require less number of root-level lanes (and hence less vertical scrolling).
Ah another question, what's your host and how big do you keep the Mela plug-in window? i.e. how many lanes can you see at at once?
It's good, keep the feedback flowing
This is interesting, and wondering how this applies to Mela. Because Mela doesn't have a static layout to understand how the preset works, there's no way around it but to actually look at all modules in the chain and see how sound transforms and how the signals flow. I imagine this is the case with all modular plug-ins.
I have a different analogy, say you are trying to understand a paragraph, looking for certain words in a paragraph might not be easy (because everything looks the same, and the same 26 letters are used), but it's not going to give much insight unless you read the whole thing. But if you colour words differently, say verbs red, nouns blue etc. It will be much harder to read the paragraph.
Would you say Drambo's approach to randomly colouring module title bars is appealing to you?
Cool, so I'm guessing miRack's UI is more your thing?
I'm not sure there's a good solution for this unless I add fat vertical and horizontal scroll bars that are permanently visible. The main reason is that there's no way for the app to know whether you want to quickly change the parameter value or scroll. The assumption is that the adjusting dial/slider is more likely the user wants over scrolling. I want to make sure that dials and sliders are always responsive, even if the module is currently scrolling. e.g., the user may quickly scroll and then adjust.
So the best way to do scrolling in Mela is always to touch the module sidebars, that way no parameter will be changed.
Another thing that's on my to-do list is to add undo/redo. It will let you fix accidentally adjusted dials.
Anyway, I'll think about this some more. Maybe there's something I can do.
I wonder if there could be a fast or long swipe gesture or a double tap to edit a module?
By editing a module, do you mean triggering a menu for functions like Delete/Duplicate/Rename?
Regarding the UI. I personally think the colour options you have provided (and the clever skin saving presets I just discovered!) is good enough. I suspect that users who don’t like the flat design will not be happy with small tweaks and you will never please everyone. I would much prefer to see you put your time into presets which for such a premium priced synth are a bit on the thin side.
This is the way! Pick the apps that speak to you the most and go deep.
I think users who use Mela regularly will have a better experience, especially if they want to use it for more than just a preset player. If you are using it regularly, you can quickly create whatever you want from scratch or take an existing preset and modify it to meet your needs. And when the new modules are added, you already have enough intuition to quickly figure out how they work and integrate them into your presets.
Having said that, I don't want to discourage those that use Mela as a preset player. There's nothing wrong with that. And in the future, I plan to have the Perform View more enhanced. So it's not just 8 dials, but it can have more types of controls like XY etc. So when you load a random preset, you can have everything hidden except the Perform View, which will have a much simpler UI and easy to see what controls do.
Good to hear.
You’re absolutely right. I’m not trying to please everyone, but I ask a lot of questions to get more detailed answers because feedback often highlights useful insights. When someone suggests a solution, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right approach or something that needs to be implemented, but understanding the reasoning behind it helps me make more informed decisions that benefit a wider range of users.
At the moment, I prioritise new module creation over new presets. Each update usually adds new presets, but not in big numbers. I try to make presets that demonstrate how various modules can be used. The approach I take is that presets should help users learn and be inspired to create their own presets.
But as I said in my previous post, I also want to optimise Mela to be used as a preset player, which naturally means more factory presets. So, I'll try to make more presets this year.
Cheers for the feedback.
MiRack, you're joking right (I've repeated it a few times already: I'm not modular people). Drambo I'm not using (well, it has happened).
It's certainly an interesting discussion and I have taken your points. Don't forget that you are very used to what you self are creating and thus the signal paths, what not, are clear as day -- while for a a new user, the sameness I'm on about feels, more(?). Do I have a solution, no I do not.
I'm not forgetting, this is exactly why I'm asking a lot of questions
Anyway, thanks for the feedback 👍
No problem, I (and many others) really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. 😃 I wish I could be of more help.
Yes, exactly colour coded categories was what I was thinking. Like filters are blue, sound generators are red, envelopes are green, effects are etc., etc.
More the modules, if I am reading rou correctly.
Mainly my own. But I guess if all presets were like that it would make for an easy experience. (e.g. User scenario: I like this preset but it's way to bright, where is the filter, scroll till you find a blue module and done).
Got it, thanks for the feedback 👍
@Nikolozi i don’t suppose you have any WiP versions of the physical modelling synth you posted to demo of that you can share, or even just a screen grab of the setup as I’ve been trying to figure out how to approach it but can’t get my head round it…
I've attached a preset with basic wiring to make a resonator using the Feedback and Delay modules. The basic idea is that you want the Delayed signal to be fed back. And the amount of delay gives you the pitch (The inverse of delay time is the note frequency). To make things easier the Delay module has Pitch mode, so the delay amount can be set using the Pitch signal. And you create the Pitch signal by converting incoming MIDI notes to it (either using MIDI-to-Poly or Note-to-Pich module). Also, you get different harmonics depending on whether feedback is positive or negative. You can flip the polarity of the feedback using the Phase Inverter module.
I think Jon went deeper, and his preset is more complex. His inspiration came from Erica Synths Steampipe. We had some discussion about it here. Saw you asked him for the preset in YT comments, pretty sure he'll be happy to give it to you.
I will make a video on this at some point, exploring this area a bit more deeply.
Also, you might be interested in checking out the Leads > Comb-Pluck factory preset. It uses the Comb Filter module.
By the way, when I created the Comb-Pluck preset, the Comb Filter module didn't have the Pitch mode, and that's why the Frequency is modulating using MIDI Source's Key Track. Therefore, it's now much simpler to make Comb Filter to follow note pitch.
Hope this helps.
(deleted double post)
Sweet, thanks @Nikolozi something to go at there 🙏
Those of you who want to have a better understanding of the Pitch signal type in Mela might be interested in the following video I just posted.
Thanks for the video, I learned quite a bit.
I was sure there was an UNDO but I must have dreamed.
Any plan on such feature: Undo/Redo? It's quite needed as it very easy to change stuff when trying to position the Lane/s.
That's just getting used to I guess but, such function is very much needed anyway with a this app when building stuff...
Good to hear
Oh yes, it's been on my to-do list for a long time. Hopefully this year
This video sparked me to buy the other two collections. Mela is quite powerful now. I’d like to pitch giving us the ability to:
*name/rename the lanes
And
*the ability to move the lanes up or down.
That might help me feel more freedom & less like I have to plan exactly everything out ahead of time.
Thanks for listening!
Nice 🧡
This is something I want to do, and the main reason I haven't done it yet is that I'm still tinkering with design ideas around how lanes and sublanes will interact with each other, and what lane's toolbar will eventually look like. It might be that you could drag an entire lane as a Sublane module into another lane. And/Or with the future Stack module (parallel sublanes), you could drag lanes in/out. And so sublane name will become the lane name and vice versa. Anyway, it should happen soonish.
You can already do this, grab a lane by dragging its top area and move it up or down.
Always happy to hear feedback 👂
Here are a few questions that have been bothering me:
What exactly do “lanes” represent? Is it just a renamed channel or a leftover naming convention? And titles are taking up too much necessary space. Why is “Bus” visually just a variable that’s limited to four? And last question, do you have a plan to break module color uniformity?
Great questions. I guess, if it helps, you can think of it as a channel strip with modules being inserts. Lanes are a necessary concept; it's what groups sequence of modules. The lane lets you know that MIDI/Audio/Pitch/Poly signals flow from left to right through modules in a lane.
I guess you might also be asking why it's called a lane and not a channel. It's a matter of taste, and I think in this context lane works better than channel.
By that, do you mean the header / toolbar of a lane takes up too much space? If that's what you mean, I kind of agree, as lanes no longer have Audio/MIDI I/O, the header looks kind of bare. I'm considering making it vertical and moving to the left to align with module sidebars. But these design decisions are still up in the air and will evolve as I try to finish the Stack module and bring the sublanes feature to maturity.
When I was working on version 4, I figured 4 buses would be enough for most things and making them a dynamic number was adding complexity to the app (and in my experience, it turned out to be true, I almost never need 4). And the plan was to make it dynamic when users started requesting more buses. I think you are the first person who asked this
So, in summary, there's no reason why it's only 4, other than it requires a bit more work to make it a dynamic number.
By that, do you mean that different modules could have different tint colours or something else?
As previously mentioned, I'm happy to introduce more colours, but I haven't figured out a good strategy yet that I think will improve user experience.
oh and if you find yourself needing more buses, I would like to hear more about your use case to see if there's a way I can improve Mela to make your life easier.
You got it right! 👍 Sorry for the ambiguity!
More work instead to just assign another Bus(?), this does not sound inviting to me. 🤭 I hit the ceiling right away in my first project; give me at least 16 buses. 🙏
About color uniformity, it would be fantastic to have the option to change lane color. You already have a custom color designer. As it is for now, when a project grows, everything becomes monotonous and hard to navigate.
But the most annoying thing was the absence of undo functionality, because with constant lane scrolling, taps almost always hit the X/Y pads and irretrievably altered the chosen settings. Mela needs Undo/Redo more than any other app, imho.
I’m happy how Mela grows, it has a unique modular approach, and soon it will be great for making complex custom synths. 🤩