I second that. Right now thats basically what i do on paper, then program out the beats one by one and copy and paste and tweak till it's all set. Using your approach would really streamline the "song" creation part after the beats were set. Not only that, but you would save yourself the headache of having to copy and past all those bars trying to get that last chorus just right. and its really hard to visualize... even with the section marker list thing that's there now. I have to say it never occured to me to have the software keep track of things, i just grabbed a pen and paper. Great idea Eric.

dan ============================================================ From: Eric Bailey ebailey@cs.stanford.edu Date: 2003/09/29 Mon PM 05:41:11 EDT To: "Doggiebox List(s)" doggiebox@lists.zygoat.ca Subject: Re: [Doggiebox] Todo list, etc.

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

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