Greetings all,
In the interests of centralizing all of the feature requests, plans and so on, as well as to help establish a bit of a timeline and to prioritize things according to the needs and desires of the masses, I've posted a 'to do' list here:
http://www.doggiebox.com/beta/
This is an "un-official" page for the time being, and will probably be amended and updated at random intervals.
Feedback and suggestions welcome.
-ben
My personal favorite item is listed, so I'm cool (the individual export). You've listed some other things that I hadn't even thought about, but seem very useful and could increase productivity. I hate drum programming, even though I do pretty well at it; no matter how good an application Doggiebox is, I just can't wait to be done with any particular song project so I can get on with the recording process. UI enhancements that make me more productive/faster are very much welcome.
As a side note, I'd encourage any user that likes the program and wants to see it continue along at this rapid development pace to do a little namedropping any time the opportunity arises. Recommend it to your Mac using friends and associates. I bring it up myself quite frequently on the Fender Discussion Page.
Let's help Ben and Zygoat keep a good thing going!
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 12:16:31 -0400 "Ben Kennedy" ben@zygoat.ca wrote:
Greetings all,
In the interests of centralizing all of the feature requests, plans and so on, as well as to help establish a bit of a timeline and to prioritize things according to the needs and desires of the masses, I've posted a 'to do' list here:
http://www.doggiebox.com/beta/
This is an "un-official" page for the time being, and will probably be amended and updated at random intervals.
Feedback and suggestions welcome.
-ben
-- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca
Zygoat Doggiebox discussion list -http://www.doggiebox.com To unsubscribe, view archives or change your options: http://lists.zygoat.ca/mailman/listinfo/doggiebox
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On http://www.doggiebox.com/beta/ Ben wrote:
improved drum grid (expandable in 3 modes as discussed on mailing list)
Does this include the idea about using multiple kits in a single dbsong? That would be _sooooooo_ cool :) I like the idea of dueling drummers :) I've been trying to thinking about my programming in terms of "where can one drummer's hands go", but even then wanted to compose a part that should really be handled by multiple percussionists, since it involves hitting 5 or 6 things at once (which will have even a very nimble drummer running out of limbs :)
Hmmm, I wonder if it would be possible to implement a "master stereo" feature that would let you set how the existing stereo placement of kits is interpolated when using multiple kits. That is, if Kit 1 usually has the crash 50% off to the right in the stereo, and then you added Kit 2, you could adjust the "placement" of the two kits to imitate Kit 1 being no longer "in the center" but "on the left" some overall percentage with Kit 2 being "on the right" some overall percentage (meaning Kit 1 overall stereo center was now shifted to the left, thus making the crash was no longer actually 50% off to the right as it would be if Kit 1 were by itself ...). I don't think I've described that very well, but perhaps the idea come across :)
(On a tangent, is there a way to change the size of the tab/window for the kit list? As the kit I use grows in size an complexity, I'm finding it a drag to keep scrolling up and down the list of toys ....)
context menu for changing drum variants and velocity? (maybe in 1.0.x series)
Now that I'm using more variants, I find that this would be very very handy. It gets very slow moving back and forth to grab different hi hat variants or whatever.
search and replace on a per-drum basis (replace occurences of this drum with that one) search and replace on an arbitrary basis (replace occurrences of this pattern[s] with these ones) dynamics tool, e.g. apply fades or crescendos to certain drums across a range of bars controllable output groupings and folddown, with support for splitting up for exporting (e.g. a snare track independent of everything else) selection and cut/copy/paste support for parts of measures (e.g. select only a couple beats of a given pattern)
Those would all be pretty cool too :) particularly the more detailed copy'n'paste. I often find myself getting a quick little 1-beat roll or something the way I like it and wanting to be able to paste it around to other places :)
I thought of something else yesterday, really an outgrowth of the way I've seen people notate on-line drum tab. Would it be possible to implement a feature by which you could loop a given measure or group of measures (a section, basically) within a dbsong? That is, imagine a simple song structure which had an 2-measure intro, a 2-measure pattern than repeated 20 times, and a 2 measure outro. You could do the whole song in 6 measures by setting the central 2-measure group to repeat 20 times after the intro played and before continuing to the outro. And then, if you decided to alter that repeating pattern, you could make your change once in the 2-measure "template" without making it 19 other times as well (though the planned arbitrary search and replace would help there too).
Another possibly useful little twiddle -- perhaps a preference that would set the default "expansion"? So far, I've mostly been working in a "16th-note view", which means I need to manually expand the file view several times when I open a file, or when I start a new song. It would be nice to be able to ask Doggiebox to pop things open directly expanded to 16th notes or 32nd notes or whatever the user was mostly working in.
And looking to that long view, I'll keep voicing my support for being able to use Doggiebox as a MIDI slave or master thingygummy. (No, I've never worked with MIDI much, but it looks very very handy for syncing things up).
Cheers, Carl
-- Carl Edlund Anderson mailto:cea@carlaz.com http://www.carlaz.com/
Hi All,
I'm somewhat unnerved by the fact that enhanced sequencing functionality hasn't made it's way to the top of the todo list by now...
Here's a post I made back in February for some abilities I'd like to see in Doggiebox. Several list members chimed in with their support, and I assume that's still the case:
(begin old post) I think there is a great opportunity for enhancing the sequencing abilities of Doggiebox. The interface focus could change, making the process of creating drum parts much easier.
Basically, you'd base the entire editing interface on a song section (to use the terminology from the Doggiebox section marker list). Edits are made one section at a time, and all sections still appear in the section list.
The interface twist is that, instead of piecing together a song in the editor window, you do it in a "song-map" window that's basically a table of the drum sections in the order you want them to be played back and, for each section, how many bars should be played, what the starting bar is, etc.
A song could then be put together by dragging sections from the section list into the song-map. A song could quickly change by reordering the song-map list, changing any song-map section's playback parameters, or adding/deleting sections from the song-map.
An example song might be comprised of the following sections, all 4 bars each: Intro, Verse, Chorus, Chorus2, and Interlude. Quickly arranging those sections into a song could result in something that looks like: Intro, Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Chorus2, Interlude, Chorus, Chorus2.
Maybe you want the last Chorus2 to repeat - just double the number of bars it plays for.
Maybe something's missing in the change from Chorus to Chorus2 - create a new section called ChorusTransition that's 1 bar long, put it in between the Chorus/Chorus2 sections, and have the related Chorus play only 3 instead of 4 bars.
Maybe the first bar of the Chorus after the Interlude needs more symbols - create a new section called InterludeTransition, 1 bar long, place it after the Interlude, have that post-Interlude Chorus start on bar 2 and now play only 2 bars (since we also use ChorusTransition).
At least for me, putting together and editing a song in this fashion would be a lot simpler than having a long editing window full of similar looking bars encompassing the entire song. Of course, there's no reason why the two forms of editing can't coexist simultaneously, having a switch for the editor to go between section and full song mode.
Lets go back to that InterludeTransition. Say we just directly edit that first bar of Chorus after the Interlude. The software could automatically set up a new section called Fill1, insert Fill1 between the Interlude and Chorus in the song-map, and change that Chorus' starting bar to 2. Later, you could rename Fill1 to InterludeTransition.
Thanks, Eric
Eric et al.,
This is also a high priority in the near term -- I recognize it will make a huge improvement to usability. I forgot about it when I was throwing together that beta list -- now added. Thanks for reminding me. :)
Some of the more refined behaviour you discussed later on in your message are great ideas too. To begin with I'm going to focus on the basic song- map design, and then once that's in place, feel free to begin hassling me for refinements.
-ben
On 29 9 2003 at 5:41 pm -0400, Eric Bailey wrote:
Basically, you'd base the entire editing interface on a song section (to use the terminology from the Doggiebox section marker list). Edits are made one section at a time, and all sections still appear in the section list.
The interface twist is that, instead of piecing together a song in the editor window, you do it in a "song-map" window that's basically a table of the drum sections in the order you want them to be played back and, for each section, how many bars should be played, what the starting bar is, etc.
On 29 9 2003 at 6:36 am -0400, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
Does this include the idea about using multiple kits in a single dbsong? That would be _sooooooo_ cool :) I like the idea of dueling drummers :)
Yeah, eventually. :) The multi-kits idea is a good one, and should be fairly easy to work in. I'm going to focus on improving the single-kit interface first though, then once it's better, look at the extending it for an arbitrary number of kits.
Hmmm, I wonder if it would be possible to implement a "master stereo" feature that would let you set how the existing stereo placement of kits is interpolated when using multiple kits.
That's a cool idea.
(On a tangent, is there a way to change the size of the tab/window for the kit list? As the kit I use grows in size an complexity, I'm finding it a drag to keep scrolling up and down the list of toys ....)
No there isn't; the current design sucks, I agree. That drum kit drawer is probably going to get scrapped very soon in favour of an in-window collapsable list, in conjunction with the "improved drum grid" stuff.
Now that I'm using more variants, I find that this would be very very handy. It gets very slow moving back and forth to grab different hi hat variants or whatever.
Yeah I know. Since I've got my new multi-tracking gear, I've been doing a bunch more doggieboxing myself in the last week or two (it's about time eh?!) so I am beginning to appreciate these simple yet significant UI hassles. :)
I thought of something else yesterday, really an outgrowth of the way I've seen people notate on-line drum tab. Would it be possible to implement a feature by which you could loop a given measure or group of measures (a section, basically) within a dbsong?
Great idea; that would be a simple logical extension of the "song map" thing. In other words, instead of having to specify 3 consecutive entries of a given section within the song map, you could instead choose to just "repeat 3x" on a given section. (the result would be exactly the same, but would clutter the song map less)
Another possibly useful little twiddle -- perhaps a preference that would set the default "expansion"? So far, I've mostly been working in a "16th-note view", which means I need to manually expand the file view several times when I open a file, or when I start a new song. It would be nice to be able to ask Doggiebox to pop things open directly expanded to 16th notes or 32nd notes or whatever the user was mostly working in.
Good point, that's an obvious preference setting asking to be born. I suppose I should attend to the as-yet-unimplemented setting for "create new songs with X bars initially" thing too.
-ben
At 18:49 30/09/2003, Ben Kennedy wrote:
On 29 9 2003 at 6:36 am -0400, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
Does this include the idea about using multiple kits in a single dbsong? That would be _sooooooo_ cool :) I like the idea of dueling drummers :)
Yeah, eventually. :) The multi-kits idea is a good one, and should be fairly easy to work in. I'm going to focus on improving the single-kit interface first though, then once it's better, look at the extending it for an arbitrary number of kits.
That makes sense. :) Anyway, I'm too broke at the minute to buy even a cheap sample library to make a good secondary percussion kit :)
Good point, that's an obvious preference setting asking to be born. I suppose I should attend to the as-yet-unimplemented setting for "create new songs with X bars initially" thing too.
Sounds good. Thinking of things that happen when opening files, I've noticed that whenever I first open DB and then open a dbsong, it pops onto the screen with the edit window visible, but then seems to extend the kit list out to the left _off_ the edge of my screen, meaning I then have to drag the whole file window to the left so I can see the kit list. I've only noticed this recently, but I don't know whether this is something Doggiebox is doing or whether its some weird window-location pref on my machine that's gone awry (I'm assuming its opening the file window close to the left-hand edge, then later and separately popping out the kit list without thinking about where the screen edge is). Of course, revamping the way the kit is displayed might well make that problem go away whatever its source.
Cheers, Carl
-- Carl Edlund Anderson mailto:cea@carlaz.com http://www.carlaz.com/
Sounds good. Thinking of things that happen when opening files, I've noticed that whenever I first open DB and then open a dbsong, it pops onto the screen with the edit window visible, but then seems to extend the kit list out to the left _off_ the edge of my screen, meaning I then have to drag the whole file window to the left so I can see the kit list. I've only noticed this recently, but I don't know whether this is something Doggiebox is doing or whether its some weird window-location pref on my machine that's gone awry (I'm assuming its opening the file window close to the left-hand edge, then later and separately popping out the kit list without thinking about where the screen edge is). Of course, revamping the way the kit is displayed might well make that problem go away whatever its source.
This is something I've always noticed since I've been using Doggiebox. I just assumed it a quirk and ignored it. But I am curious if that is the intended behaviour now that someone else has mentioned it :)
Cheers,
Christoph
Hi:
I've been paying only intermittent attention to Ben's growing To-Do list, so pardon me if someone already suggested this. One thing I've discovered that I would like to see is some way of changing drum kits for a given song. I have some patterns that I programmed using Ben's kit that I'd like to hear with one of the other kits that users have uploaded. Right now, the only way to do this is manually changing every beat in the song with the desired drum kit; it would be nice to have a convert option, like the sort of thing you get with FileMaker when you import a database file. I.e., in dbsong file "We're all Rock'n'Roll Animals (so Let Me Out of this Zoo)," let "highhat closed" in Ben's Premier kit be equal to "highhat closed" in Ringo's Ludwig kit (can't remember the names of the the other kits right now).
My two cents (must now go write a song with that title!).
Carl
On 04 10 2003 at 8:29 pm -0400, Carl Freire wrote:
I have some patterns that I programmed using Ben's kit that I'd like to hear with one of the other kits that users have uploaded. Right now, the only way to do this is manually changing every beat in the song with the desired drum kit; it would be nice to have a convert option, like the sort of thing you get with FileMaker when you import a database file.
Hey Carl,
I'm probably misunderstanding you... but is simply changing the kit (via Song Options) not cutting it for you? Are you saying that you want to e.g. change up the hi-hat only, while leaving the other instruments intact (such that the hi-hat plays from one kit, but the rest remain associated with the first kit)?
FWIW I've never used Filemaker so the comparison is lost on me. :)
-ben
Carl,
All you really need to do is to open up the song options, change the kit, and use the ensuing dialog box to swap your instruments with those in the new kit. It's really not all that difficult, but it can be strange if you choose not to swap sound for sound (old kit to new). The result can be that you have a song with TWO kit sounds. This is also pretty cool if it's what you intended to do (and puzzling if it's done by accident).
On Saturday, October 4, 2003, at 08:29 PM, Carl Freire wrote:
Hi:
I've been paying only intermittent attention to Ben's growing To-Do list, so pardon me if someone already suggested this. One thing I've discovered that I would like to see is some way of changing drum kits for a given song. I have some patterns that I programmed using Ben's kit that I'd like to hear with one of the other kits that users have uploaded. Right now, the only way to do this is manually changing every beat in the song with the desired drum kit; it would be nice to have a convert option, like the sort of thing you get with FileMaker when you import a database file. I.e., in dbsong file "We're all Rock'n'Roll Animals (so Let Me Out of this Zoo)," let "highhat closed" in Ben's Premier kit be equal to "highhat closed" in Ringo's Ludwig kit (can't remember the names of the the other kits right now).
My two cents (must now go write a song with that title!).
Carl
Carl Freire Oakland, California cfreire@ix.netcom.com cfreire@uclink4.berkeley.edu
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On 04 10 2003 at 8:37 pm -0400, Mike Carlyle wrote:
It's really not all that difficult, but it can be strange if you choose not to swap sound for sound (old kit to new). The result can be that you have a song with TWO kit sounds. This is also pretty cool if it's what you intended to do (and puzzling if it's done by accident).
You can get a song with sounds from two different kits at the same time? Um... that's probably a bug. ;)
I have to admit, I recall finding this at one point myself, but I couldn't reproduce it (i.e. I couldn't remember what steps I had taken to cause that to happen). Can you enlighten me?
-ben
On 04 10 2003 at 8:47 pm -0400, Ben Kennedy wrote:
You can get a song with sounds from two different kits at the same time? Um... that's probably a bug. ;)
I have to admit, I recall finding this at one point myself, but I couldn't reproduce it (i.e. I couldn't remember what steps I had taken to cause that to happen). Can you enlighten me?
Hey all,
I figured this one out tonight. There has indeed been a bug in there for some time now... and it manifests when you have added drums to a song file, then change the drum kit via song options, without first saving and reloading the song. In other words, any drums in the song that have been there since the last time the song was loaded from disk are properly changed... but any new edits that have subsequently been made would stick with the old kit!
This is now fixed for the next build.
-ben
Hey all:
At 8:37 PM -0400 10/4/03, Mike Carlyle wrote:
All you really need to do is to open up the song options, change the kit, and use the ensuing dialog box to swap your instruments with those in the new kit.
<snip>
Had a feeling it might turn out to be something I just hadn't tried yet when fiddling around with the program. Ben, FileMaker works the same way, so now you know!
Cheers, Carl
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Ben Kennedy -
Carl Edlund Anderson -
Carl Freire -
Eric Bailey -
Hermiteer -
Michael Carlyle -
Mike Carlyle