Thanks for your thoughts Carl (and Sterling)

Carl, I think your idea, would work if Ben turned the process on its head - so that the playlist box was the starting and main work area and my poposed boxes in the playlist would create entries in the sections window. The sections window would then be a kind of automatic library of bars for the song, but the main composing would happen in playlist. Library bars could be dragged over as currently, or whole bar sections copied and pasted in the playlist window.I feel that this would feel more natural and encourage variation and editing.

You might create a component (say verse) in the playlist box, and then control click the first gray box to make a bar - this would then automatically appear in the sections box (you could name it at this point or maybe there could be some other logical naming convention employed). If you wanted this bar to repeat as is currently done with numbers to the right , you could again control click to set the number of repetitions. The key graphical thing here though would be that you could then see the repetitions as slightly lighter versions of the original box - this would allow you to see visually exactly how the song looks. You could then cut and paste away at sections or components . This would allow such things as different fill rolls at the end of each verse to be easily done and provide the framework for endless tinkering - which is what we all love to do right?

What does anyone else think about this? Would it cause you a major programmer's headache Ben?

Sion Morris Liverpool

www.cinnamondesign.co.uk/music/music.html -------------------------------------------

On 13 Mar 2006, at 12:24 pm, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:

I had myself been thinking of a similar sort of feature, though with the new "mid-level" blocks (verse1, chorus1, etcs) displayed more as expandable menu items so that the various sections wouldn't scroll off to the right as they do in that example -- though I suppose they could easily end up scrolling off to the bottom still!

What I would find useful, when composing and blocking out basic arrangements, would be the ability to define one of these mid-level blocks of Sections (say, a group of Sections making up a "verse") and the copying it and pasting it within the Playlist. I don't _think_ one can currently copy and paste items around within the Playlist, at least not consistently. Then I could easily make a bunch of identical verses and choruses (for example) to see how I liked the basic arrangement, going back later to look inside these blocks to change up individual sections for variety.

Cheers, Carl