On 17 7 2003 at 11:31 am -0400, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
In a sense, the Doggiebox rationale suggests that to put together a percussion section like this, one would really want to put together a percussion section: to load _3_ seperate drum kits -- a rock kit, a congas etc kit, and a timbales etc. kit -- which would appear simultaneously in the Drum Kit List pallette (though labeled and grouped seperately). Then one would proceed to compose your Doggiebox song as normal, but conducting a section rather than a single drummer/kit.
This is a great idea Carl, and a logical extension of the arrangement I feebly described in an earlier message (April 7th):
Here's a preview of one of my plans which I am going to try working up shortly:
a) remove the "5 position" grid limitation and make it so that there are a user-definable number of grid positions (editable in the drum kit). b) make it possible to adjust the relationship and ordering of all elements of the drum kit, insofar as what drums might share which grid positions and layout. c) create a toggle-able setting in the song editor for how the drum kit is presented, switching between three modes:
i) "show all", which lists the entire kit in the margin with each drum in its own grid position, a la Virtual Drummer ii) "show current", which is similar but hides all positions where there are no drums currently in use in the song. iii) "show condensed", equivalent to the way things currently work, where various drums may share the same grid position if they do not conflict.
In all three cases, there would be a direct visual alignment between the drum name/info and the gridline in the song editor which corresponds to it. (That's not currently the case, as the kit is presently shown in a scrolling list independent of the song editor.)
My thinking is that these view modes would provide flexibility between having an easy-to-navigate condensed score for people who like the current notation style, as well as a larger complete, grid-like layout for fuller control (and those who find the current "grouped" concept irritating).
Extending on this, we could then support an arbitrary number of kits in the song whose instruments you could hide/reveal with disclosure triangles or whatever. -ben -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca