I'm completely stumped by version 1.1B (build 3)'s section editor and layout editor. I get the fact that I can choose sections for playback and that is helpful, but it is offset by the fact that I can no longer add sections or insert bars.
Previously, I could highlight some bars, choose "new section" in the section area down on the left, and my selected bars became a new section. Now, when I do this I get a blank new section with no bars. I can't add bars to the new section. I can't add a new "layout" either, whatever that is. Is a layout a section? I don't get it. When I add a new "layout", I end up with a duplicate of the one before it.
As I understand it, this version produces a song file format that is not compatible with earlier versions. Do I need to grab the current release and start over?
I find this confounding User Interface very frustrating.
It's killed my inspiration for today.
Mike
Here's the work around for the Insert Bars problem of this build that was discussed a while ago.
- I cannot add any bars to a new section. I can add to existing
sections though.
Oops, you're right; fixed for the next build. There is a problem adding bars to an empty section. As a temporary workaround, create a marker in the layout list with the section, and then add the bar. Thanks for pointing this out.
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My 2c worth - The new version of DB is a bit confusing when you first start using it, but I find it quite an improvement now.
The best part is that you don't need to program the song in order. If I program a chorus first, then a verse, you just create new parts in the Layout area and order them as you go. Also, by highlighting a section, you can always just play this part, no need to find it in the list and then option-space to play just a verse.
As to the problem with global changes, it just means that you create verse 1, 2, 3 in the section area and make the minor changes here. No real difference to the previous versions.
Stick with it.... It is worth the effort
Charlie
(PS I use Jaguar, i believe it's better under Panther)
On Monday, March 1, 2004, at 01:01 AM, Mike Carlyle wrote:
I'm completely stumped by version 1.1B (build 3)'s section editor and layout editor. I get the fact that I can choose sections for playback and that is helpful, but it is offset by the fact that I can no longer add sections or insert bars.
Previously, I could highlight some bars, choose "new section" in the section area down on the left, and my selected bars became a new section. Now, when I do this I get a blank new section with no bars. I can't add bars to the new section. I can't add a new "layout" either, whatever that is. Is a layout a section? I don't get it. When I add a new "layout", I end up with a duplicate of the one before it.
As I understand it, this version produces a song file format that is not compatible with earlier versions. Do I need to grab the current release and start over?
I find this confounding User Interface very frustrating.
It's killed my inspiration for today.
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My 2c worth - The new version of DB is a bit confusing when you first start using it, but I find it quite an improvement now.
Beyond what Charlie has pointed out, I've found it a lot easier to do fills for verses or choruses. Assume the verse is 8 bars. For the most part, each bar is the same except for the last two which are fills. I create a 1 bar section, and set it to repeat 6 times in the layout. Then I create a two bar fill section and put it at the end verse bars in the layout. Voila! 8 bars with a fill at the end.
Cheers,
Christoph
Christoph wrote:
Beyond what Charlie has pointed out, I've found it a lot easier to do fills for verses or choruses. Assume the verse is 8 bars. For the most part, each bar is the same except for the last two which are fills. I create a 1 bar section, and set it to repeat 6 times in the layout. Then I create a two bar fill section and put it at the end verse bars in the layout. Voila! 8 bars with a fill at the end.
This makes eminent sense to me, with the sections giving you essentially reuseable elements. There's no reason you couldn't create a bunch of 6-bar sections and another bunch of 2-bar fills with which to assemble into a variety of 8-bar patterns -- and I start to wonder whether you can drag pre-definied sections from one open song file to another? That would let you collect a local library of sections that you could then chuck around in different compositions.
Anyway, I look forward to wresting the computer back from my wife's masters thesis and doing something important with it, like playing with the new DB versions and making music :)
Cheers, Carl
On 02 3 2004 at 5:11 am -0500, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
and I start to wonder whether you can drag pre-definied sections from one open song file to another?
You sure can! I forget whether I mentioned that specifically in the release notes or not, but it's there. (You can also copy and paste.)
-ben
Ben Kennedy wrote:
On 02 3 2004 at 5:11 am -0500, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
and I start to wonder whether you can drag pre-definied sections from one open song file to another?
You sure can! I forget whether I mentioned that specifically in the release notes or not, but it's there. (You can also copy and paste.)
So I suppose that means I could create a song file that simply held all the patterns that I wanted to reuse, or it opens the way to a dedicated "pattern library" as part of the interface ....?
Ben Kennedy wrote:
And finally, a new (old?!) feature: using keyboard shortcuts for selecting drums finally works. To take advantage, open a drum kit file and assign some key shortcuts to the drums in the drum kit editor. Then, while editing a song, pressing the corresponding key will select the appropriate drum (or cycle through, if the same key is assigned to several drums).
Ooooh, that's cool. I remember having a devil of a time trying to figure out the correct timing for something that I could tap on my knee without trouble but couldn't get entered into DB's editor without major brain strain (for my brain, anyway :) This should make such things easier :)
Cheers, Carl
Hi Mike, et al.,
I am both sorry and pleased to hear about your experiences with the new 1.1 lineage.
First of all, it is a bummer that the new paradigm has been such a pain in the ass for you, and especially that it's resulted in lost or wasted time. It makes me grimace because I can appreciate what it's like trying to achieve something with a tool that is ostensibly broken or malfunctional.
Having said that, I am grateful to hear your opinion, even at this later stage. It is just this type of feedback that I seek by putting early builds into the hands of users, and it's these comments and suggestions that result from such discussion which shape the design direction that I take.
Many users have asked for a sequence-based composition mode like this for quite some time now. I have tried to design it in such a way that it builds upon the capabilities of 1.0.x while providing more flexibility to those who want it. As nobody had raised complaints like you have until now, I figured we were on the right track with it.
It is instructive to learn that these features are not only useless to you, but hindering to your current workflow. That said, I would like to learn as much as possible so that we can improve the UI to a point where it again meets your needs.
To that end, I have a few questions and remarks in response to some of the comments.
I get the fact that I can choose sections for playback and that is helpful, but it is offset by the fact that I can no longer add sections or insert bars.
As Charlie forwarded, there is a UI bug in 1B3 which makes it impossible to insert bars under particular circumstances. There is a workaround as described, and the bug is fixed in the next build (which hopefully I will be able to post later tonight).
You can add new sections. I presume that you are alluding to the 1.0- style behaviour where "sections" were simply markers around existing parts of the song, instead of self-contained units of bars. This is a conceptual change in the new version.
Previously, I could highlight some bars, choose "new section" in the section area down on the left, and my selected bars became a new section. Now, when I do this I get a blank new section with no bars.
Again, this is due to the conceptual shift in what a "section" is. In the 1.1 world, a section is a discrete grouping of bars, a mini-song if you like. Instead of building one giant sequence of bars and then "bookmarking" regions within it (1.0-style sections), each section itself is a building block which you are now able to easily re-use many times within the song.
I can't add a new "layout" either, whatever that is. Is a layout a section? I don't get it. When I add a new "layout", I end up with a duplicate of the one before it.
The layout list (on the right) is essentially a sequence of "aliases" to sections (from the left). It's a playlist, really, in which you can order and organize the various sections (building blocks) of your song. This is a new feature designed to let you re-use parts of a song, such as verses or choruses, which appear in multiplicity throughout a piece.
When you add a new layout
On this note, I am completely open to suggestions for new terminology to replace "section", "section marker", "layout", etc. These were the best words I have come up with so far, but perhaps someone can suggest some terms which better convey the meanings.
As I understand it, this version produces a song file format that is not compatible with earlier versions.
That is correct. There are a couple of reasons for this, mainly predicated on a shift to the 10.2+ supported keyed archiving (as opposed to the old style serial archiving). This provides more flexibility for future file revisions, making it a lot more likely that e.g. older (1.1 and forward) versions of Doggiebox will support files created by newer versions.
On a trivia note, we're also gzip-compressing the stream, so you will note about a 50% or more reduction in file size of .dbsongs created by 1.1.
I find this confounding User Interface very frustrating. It's killed my inspiration for today.
I suspect that you have found this in particular because you have become very accustomed to the 1.0 style of doing things, and have jumped right in to 1.1 without a full awareness of the design changes. This is not a criticism of you at all. It is more a testament to the lack of present documentation, and the fact that I have thrown out the 1.1 beta series to you folks to play with as it develops.
Getting back to the point of How To Make Doggiebox As Usable As It Was, I would love to hear suggestions from you and others. Based on the new model, now that I have tried to explain it some, and coupled with the remarks that Charlie and Christoph have added today, do you have any better feelings about it? Do you still prefer the 1.0 style of editing and section marking? Does anyone have ideas on how we could integrate these two designs in an inter-operable way?
For example, one idea I had today is that we could provide two editing modes: "sequence" and "linear". Sequence mode would operate as 1.1 does now, with the section and layout lists. Linear mode would be a simplified version which works more closely to 1.0.6; in essence, the layout list would automatically mirror the section list, etc.
Would a facility for "bookmarks" within sections (akin to the 1.0-style section markers) be a useful addition?
-ben
On 01 3 2004 at 5:36 pm -0500, Ben Kennedy wrote:
When you add a new layout
Oops, I started typing a sentence here and got distracted.
When you add a new layout marker, it defaults to being a copy of the previous one. A section in the Layout list is really just an alias to an actual section in the Sections list. Add a new one, then click on the pop-up list to choose which section you want it to represent.
Alternatively, and much more intuitively I think, you can just drag a section from the Sections list over to the Layout list.
-ben
Hello Ben.
What you got with my messages to the list was my unadulterated, from-the-hip, unedited, first reaction. I had not used the new beta yet, even though I downloaded it the day you posted the link. Having read some of the responses to my frustrating experiences, some of the dots are starting to become connected. I still plan to use 1.0 for the immediate projects at hand, but I promise to explore (as one should probably not commit farther than this with beta software) the ins and outs of the new version.
On Monday, March 1, 2004, at 05:36 PM, Ben Kennedy wrote:
I get the fact that I can choose sections for playback and that is helpful, but it is offset by the fact that I can no longer add sections or insert bars.
As Charlie forwarded, there is a UI bug in 1B3 which makes it impossible to insert bars under particular circumstances. There is a workaround as described, and the bug is fixed in the next build (which hopefully I will be able to post later tonight).
You can add new sections. I presume that you are alluding to the 1.0- style behaviour where "sections" were simply markers around existing parts of the song, instead of self-contained units of bars. This is a conceptual change in the new version.
So, when I add a section, what exactly am I doing? This is where the insert bar bug is right? Now that I know what is meant by section, I think I'll be able to poke around some more to see if I find it useful (after the bug fix).
Previously, I could highlight some bars, choose "new section" in the section area down on the left, and my selected bars became a new section. Now, when I do this I get a blank new section with no bars.
Again, this is due to the conceptual shift in what a "section" is. In the 1.1 world, a section is a discrete grouping of bars, a mini-song if you like. Instead of building one giant sequence of bars and then "bookmarking" regions within it (1.0-style sections), each section itself is a building block which you are now able to easily re-use many times within the song.
What about keeping this behavior and just calling it "bookmark" or "bookmarking"? That way, a user could choose to build a song with one big "section" (in 1.1 parlance) and bookmark the bits within it. I'm not attempting to draw conclusions about the merits of either approach to song programming, just wondering aloud if the old style section numbering will be gone for good.
I can't add a new "layout" either, whatever that is. Is a layout a section? I don't get it. When I add a new "layout", I end up with a duplicate of the one before it.
The layout list (on the right) is essentially a sequence of "aliases" to sections (from the left). It's a playlist, really, in which you can order and organize the various sections (building blocks) of your song. This is a new feature designed to let you re-use parts of a song, such as verses or choruses, which appear in multiplicity throughout a piece.
This makes sense to me now. It also explains why I was adding and deleting fills inadvertently while editing the bars within a layout. I should have been editing my section. I didn't know.
On this note, I am completely open to suggestions for new terminology to replace "section", "section marker", "layout", etc. These were the best words I have come up with so far, but perhaps someone can suggest some terms which better convey the meanings.
Section might be a good term, now that I understand it. The only reason to change that might be to avoid confusion among users transitioning from the old section definition. For layout, I like the term "run list". There might be better choices, but that one hit me for some reason.
Thinking outside the box, it might be fun and on-target at the same time to borrow terms from outside the musical world. "Ingredients" and "Recipe"? "Paint" and "Canvas"?.... you could go on and on like this until one struck you that really spelled it out. Maybe a dumb idea. <tangent> Ever see the site for Girlbrand guitars?, he uses terms like "bite" and "sting", or "fantasy" and "reality" instead of "rhythm" and "lead" for his guitar pickup selectors. </tangent>
Anyway...
The bottom line is documentation, I think, which you mention is to follow one day. Once the hierarchy is established from bottom to top (beat, pattern, bar, section, layout, song... or whatever) It might be much easier to follow.
I find this confounding User Interface very frustrating. It's killed my inspiration for today.
I suspect that you have found this in particular because you have become very accustomed to the 1.0 style of doing things, and have jumped right in to 1.1 without a full awareness of the design changes. This is not a criticism of you at all. It is more a testament to the lack of present documentation, and the fact that I have thrown out the 1.1 beta series to you folks to play with as it develops.
You are likely very correct. In reality, I only lost an hour or so. Building the song in 1.0 again was actually a breeze, since I had already worked out a lot of the puzzles within the patterns. I've thrown a few ideas out up above. I'll mention others as they occur to me.
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Ben Kennedy -
Carl Edlund Anderson -
Charlie Needle -
Christoph -
Mike Carlyle