Feedback after working with Qtractor over weekend

ps: I am now downloading svn version since maybe piano roll has gone much better %)

Hey Rui!
Let me comment on your comments ;) If I do not comment on something, means I understood and have nothing to say.

3. Backward has a shortcut - Backspc. How come Forward does not?
That's easy indeed: have a go with Help/Shortcuts... dialog. You can set any key combination to whichever menu action there is and stay with it (it's global application configuration, not session/project scope).

Saw that but imho it is logical to have a shorcut by default. This is not critical of course I am just wondering why Backwards does have a default shortcut and Forward does not? They are both important.

a). When you change the grid settings, change the visual grid itself
I guess you missed that option or are using a very old Qtractor version. Have a look at View/Snap/Grid option on the piano-roll's window menu.

Missed it, sorry! Why not have it ON by default?

b). Allow dragging notes during placement vertically, between notes.
I'm afraid I don't quite understand this one. Can you try explaining it with greater detail?

Okay, this will be a long comment due to the fact that now new piano roll (latest svn) has this paint mode.
Let me first explain the situation BEFORE paint mode was introduced.

1. You place a note and yet do not let go off the mouse button - it is still pressed but you can already see the note painted on the piano roll, in a semi-transparent mode. If previewing notes is on, you hear it is not the note you want, so you want to drag it to a note lower or higher and you try to drag mouse vertically, say, lower, but nothing happens. Note is stuck to it's position - you can drag it forward or backward but not up and down. So my request was to let it go up and down WHILE you are still holding the mouse button.
2. Now this paint mode. I tried it and my thoughts would be these:
There are two things to this mode - horizontal drag and vertical drag.
Before paint, horizontal drag just dragged the note, now it draws it - imho, a very nice touch. This part I very much liked.
Before paint, vertical drag, as I pointed out above, did nothing. Now it creates new notes. This part I did not like, at least not as default mode and here is why: mouse is always difficult to handle with precision. Your cursor never travels a truly horizontal path. Thus, you will often sidetrack into other notes and create chaos. After current paint mode I spend more time cleaning up after myself than I used to input same sequence with older method.
My suggestion would be to make vertical drag not draw notes, but instead move the existing note under the cursor to another note. It will not create a mess since the user will drop the note only when he is sure it is the right one, whereas with the existing method the note is just created.

It is asking to save MIDI clips because those are actions that are actually destructive -- you're committing your changes to disk but there are some situations that you want to get them saved in a brand new file than the original, otherwise undo might just not help you there, so beware:). Anyway, in what situations exactly do you want to let it save changes automagically without asking any questions? maybe that can be arranged ;)

What you say is true, but every other DAW out there allows this and nobody complains. In my view, midi changes are too easy to copy and backup in another clip and at the same time rarely you would do a change and not be able to revert it if you want it. I guess what I am trying to say is that often midi changes are small, you write a theme and then you go back to it and move notes around and you don't want to save it everytime but you don't want the window to be kept open too. Maybe if the midi editing would be merged into the general undo scheme this would be possible. I am sorry to refer to LMMS again, but in there you have the same situation but it does not ask you about saving each time - and it seems perfectly fine.

To answer your question, I would say that at least once the clip IS created already, any changes I do to it I'd like to be silent. Or at least have an option in Qtractor for silent midi changes. Smth like that.

Do you have any suggestion in particular, specially regarding the floating copy/paste selection placemente and on how you could see this being any softer to work with?

Tried arrows. Not bad actually, though not an optimal solution, in my humble view at least.
I would have two other/additional ways one could do it.
1. Ctrl-C Ctrl-V creates a copy of notes on top of the existing ones. So now all you have to do is drag the selected copy.
2. Select the desired note group, hold Ctrl and drag. This copies the selection. This, actually, would be very cool and this works across many DAWs out there.

I beg to disagree on this one. Quantization (ie. snap) is always relative to the whole metronomic grid, never relative to any previous note position. Or so I think ;)

Let me show you the downside of this. Go to piano roll, choose snap Beat/4 and place a note not in the beginning, but say, 2/4 of a note. Then change the grid to Beat and now drag the note you placed. What happens is that it gets snapped to the current snap. If you have a complex melody, this simply ruins it. So atm, to start working with a complex melody, you have to look through it, find the smallest note and then adjust the grid accordingly and only then copy or move it.
This and also that I see no benefits to having notes relative to the whole metronomic grid. Really, not even one. To me a snap setting in piano roll is like periods in which notes can move. If a note is already "offset", it should not snap to the new grid setting but instead move as if it has an invisible beginning at the grid setting. At least, Qtractor piano roll is the first piano roll I am using that does not do this.

OT: are you ever online, like in a messenger or irc? would be nice to chat with you in real time ;)

Hey Rui! I will try the EXPERIMENTAL midi clip editor thing, sounds interesting.

As for the behaviour of various piano rolls, I rechecked now - both Rosegarden and LMMS piano rolls behave in a way I described. You can fire them up and see for yourself.

Also, both Rosegarden and LMMS have the drawing method I was refering to - vertical movement drag notes along the keyboard, horizontal resizes them. I think it is a reasonable method.
Having had more experience with the new painting method, I can only speak for myself, but I end up creating notes by accident all the time.

Rui, hey!

Checked the new version and in my opinion it is very good.

Piano roll.
Great stuff. I think now editing melodies is much more fluent. I really am grateful to you that you decided to try this out and I honestly think that now midi clip editor is top grade.
Just one lil thing there to consider - when you drag the note backwards, perhaps it is not a bad idea to let the note move backwards when it has reached the grid limit. So if the note cannot shrink anymore, since it reached it's smallest setting, instead of shrinking it further to an almost invisible line, like now, the note can move backwards one step. That would allow to fix note position if you placed it in a wrong step.

Also, I see that you've changed cursor behaviour on copy paste. Now the group pastes in such a way that the beginning of the pasted group matches the cursor. That, in my opinion, totally solves copying problem and I have nothing else I would need here - the Ctrl-Shift shortcuts I suggested before are not necessary. In fact, I like this paste method more than what they have in LMMS, so thank you a lot! This is great functionality.

The grid thing - I see that when you copy a group of notes, their positions are preserved relative to each other. I think this is a new thing? Before I remember copying a group of notes would screw things up if some notes were off the grid. So this is good!
But when you move or copy just one note, it still snaps to the main grid. Do you think this can also be corrected?

Also noticed the silent midi clips exiting. When you move it it asks if you want to save it and, as far as I understand, it would save all changed clips if you just save the whole song. Imho, this is a nice solution.
I was thinking - maybe somehow it is possible to mark "dirty" midi clips visually? I do not know how and if it is necessary, but it might be interesting to try out.
But anyway, the way it is now - I think it is pretty much ok.

Okie, I'll keep testing...

As for the anchor thing, I got that. Would be nice to have the anchor always at the first note of the group, no matter from which side you select it. M?

danny, hey!
i've had the same quirk when piano roll would go to the end when you delete notes. Do try the latest snapshot, see if it is still there. I haven't seen this bug in a long time, maybe it was corrected?

http://www.rncbc.org/snapshots/#qtractor