For what it's worth, here are my top suggestions for upcoming versions. Some are easy, some are way to complicated to actually do, but hey- it's food for thought...
1) Export of each drum into separate tracks. 2) Individual volume sliders for each drum that would allow you to mix the kit for playback or export. 3) MIDI support. I'd love to be able to use a MIDI controller to program, or even better, to start/stop and switch between sections in a live environment. 4) A duplicate command in the kit editor. 5) More than 5 available drum lines- I'd love to see the number of available rows as a preference or as part of the kit editor. 6) A "publish" button in the kit editor that would upload the kit to the library. 7) An icon editor in the kit editor.
********************************************** ^_^ -- The Reverend Rat -- (oo) Rock and roll like it still matters. \ / >V< http://www.revrat.com **********************************************
On 17 4 2004 at 3:18 pm -0400, The Reverend wrote:
For what it's worth, here are my top suggestions for upcoming versions. Some are easy, some are way to complicated to actually do, but hey- it's food for thought...
Always interested to see what people are clamouring for; thanks for the input!
- Export of each drum into separate tracks.
This will be coming in the near/mid-term, as many people have requested it. While we're on the topic, here's a design question for those of you interested: would you want to be configuring this on a per-kit or per- song basis? Having the grouping configured within the drum kit would make the most sense and be the most fluid. But I'm wondering if there are reasons why you might want to make such grouping assignments at the song level.
- Individual volume sliders for each drum that would allow you to mix
the kit for playback or export.
You can already adjust the levels within the drum kit editor. Are you saying you want to be able to change overall drum levels on a per-song basis?
- MIDI support. I'd love to be able to use a MIDI controller to
program, or even better, to start/stop and switch between sections in a live environment.
I'm working on MIDI input/playback now, and should have a beta ready shortly.
As I am not a MIDI expert, I'm open to as much detailed discussion on how to impelement MIDI as you folks might require. Can you explain more how you would envision the start/stop and section changing to work?
- A duplicate command in the kit editor.
Copy then Paste does the job for now.
- More than 5 available drum lines- I'd love to see the number of
available rows as a preference or as part of the kit editor.
Yep, that's on the menu as well.
- A "publish" button in the kit editor that would upload the kit to
the library.
I was just musing over this the other day -- great idea.
- An icon editor in the kit editor.
With what kind of facilities? I don't see much point in trying to duplicate a paint program inside Doggiebox. What kind of things would be better achieved within the kit editor that could not be done as a copy-n- paste out of Photoshop or somesuch?
-ben
Ben Kennedy wrote:
On 17 4 2004 at 3:18 pm -0400, The Reverend wrote:
- Individual volume sliders for each drum that would allow you to mix
the kit for playback or export.
You can already adjust the levels within the drum kit editor. Are you saying you want to be able to change overall drum levels on a per-song basis?
If so, IMO, that seems like it would going some way to duplicating the effect of outputing seperate drum tracks for seperate mixing. I mean, a real drummer can only vary the volume of his kit by vary the velocity of his strikes -- everything else comes from mic placement or mixing different mic feeds at different levels.
So if you can output different tracks from DB, then their levels can be changed up or down in the mixer (as if you were recording different mics). If you don't want to output different tracks from DB, then its as if you're recording the whole kit with one or two mics.
- MIDI support. I'd love to be able to use a MIDI controller to
program, or even better, to start/stop and switch between sections in a live environment.
I'm working on MIDI input/playback now, and should have a beta ready shortly.
Ooooooo! :)
As I am not a MIDI expert, I'm open to as much detailed discussion on how to impelement MIDI as you folks might require. Can you explain more how you would envision the start/stop and section changing to work?
Well, I am definitely not a MIDI expert either. But I know vaguely that MIDI devices can be attached and made to work in concert with a master/slave relationship. I envision being able to slave a sequencer/recording device to Doggiebox (or slave DoggieBox to a sequencer/recording device) so that things like the stop and start of recording can be synchronised and automated (i.e. when I press record on my VS-1680, DB starts playing at MIDI time code point X, or something like that :)
I've found my new iBook (excuse me: my wife's new iBook ;) is fast enough to play DB "live" to my recording module (which my G3 is not). So if I could use a MIDI master/slave arrangement to get DB and the module talking, very very easily swap entire drum parts out from under an existing track (when I find that, for example, those crash cymbals weren't working well and I want to replace them with splashes or something.
This would be way cool :) This, even more than the implementation of multiple kits, would be my number one killer feature :) Of course, I realize other people who are more used to MIDI and software sequencers and the like would probably have other uses for it, but I don't know what they are ... yet :)
- An icon editor in the kit editor.
With what kind of facilities? I don't see much point in trying to duplicate a paint program inside Doggiebox. What kind of things would be better achieved within the kit editor that could not be done as a copy-n- paste out of Photoshop or somesuch?
Yeah, that seems like feature creep to me. DB is a good drum machine and doesn't need to be a half-assed painting or icon-making program (of which there are already many). I suppose maybe one could add a hook so that double-clicking the icon opened the image in the app of the users selection (like a helper app). That seems as far as one would possibly need to go there.
Cheers, Carl
On 20 4 2004 at 5:07 am -0400, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
Well, I am definitely not a MIDI expert either. But I know vaguely that MIDI devices can be attached and made to work in concert with a master/slave relationship. I envision being able to slave a sequencer/recording device to Doggiebox (or slave DoggieBox to a sequencer/recording device) so that things like the stop and start of recording can be synchronised and automated (i.e. when I press record on my VS-1680, DB starts playing at MIDI time code point X, or something like that :)
Yeah, this is well within the realm of possibility. Delving into this further though will require a discussion of midi on a more technical level though, which is why I'm interested to hear input from anybody who has worked with midi on a quasi-low level before.
As you probably know, there are various midi "commands" that run over the wire (controller change, program change, note on/off, etc). Right now I have Doggiebox sending Note On messages in real time as playback occurs, which does as the name implies -- triggers specified sounds to play. As we move into more esoteric realms though, like changing sections or triggering events on external hardware, I need to figure out what kind of MIDI events we should be sending/listening for. (e.g. does your deck listen for a particular Controller Change event to signify "start recording", etc.)
I suppose maybe one could add a hook so that double-clicking the icon opened the image in the app of the users selection (like a helper app). That seems as far as one would possibly need to go there.
That's a cool idea actually, will look into it.
-b
Ben Kennedy wrote:
On 20 4 2004 at 5:07 am -0400, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
Well, I am definitely not a MIDI expert either. But I know vaguely that MIDI devices can be attached and made to work in concert with a master/slave relationship. I envision being able to slave a sequencer/recording device to Doggiebox (or slave DoggieBox to a sequencer/recording device) so that things like the stop and start of recording can be synchronised and automated (i.e. when I press record on my VS-1680, DB starts playing at MIDI time code point X, or something like that :)
Yeah, this is well within the realm of possibility.
Woo hoo! :)
Delving into this further though will require a discussion of midi on a more technical level though, which is why I'm interested to hear input from anybody who has worked with midi on a quasi-low level before.
As you probably know, there are various midi "commands" that run over the wire (controller change, program change, note on/off, etc). Right now I have Doggiebox sending Note On messages in real time as playback occurs, which does as the name implies -- triggers specified sounds to play. As we move into more esoteric realms though, like changing sections or triggering events on external hardware, I need to figure out what kind of MIDI events we should be sending/listening for. (e.g. does your deck listen for a particular Controller Change event to signify "start recording", etc.)
I'm going to have to look at this more deeply myself. At present all I know is that my deck (like many decks, I imagine) can function as both a MIDI Time Code (MTC) and MIDI Machine Control (MMC) master or slave. My deck, at least, can't sync to a MIDI Clock source though it will happily send MIDI Clock. I know I can control just about anything my deck does via Continuous Controller and/or System Exclusive Messages.
There is a whole chapter in my user manual on using external MIDI devices, including sections on MIDI Controller Messages and MIDI Machine Control, and another chapter on using software sequencers. From the user perspective, it looks like establishing MTC/MMC communication between devices is fairly simple. The Slave device needs to know to listen to the MIDI interface coming from the Master and know it was listening to MTC at the appropriate frame rate, and the Slave needs to know what to do with a MMC command like "play" or "stop". I haven't read a good explanation of what's up with MMC, but it seems like all the commands must be standardized .....?
I also have the complete MIDI spec for my deck -- though it's all highly technical Greek to me!
Alas, I haven't actually got any MIDI stuff to use to see how it works in practice :P
Cheers, Carl