Requesting a few preset enhancements.

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markfrancombe
markfrancombe's picture
Joined: December 15, 2010

Hi,
I have a few preset enhancements.

1. I would like the preset name (If you enter one) to be shown on the contraption. I use a synth plug in, and would be nice to see whats currently loaded before I hit a key

2. I would like the little pop-up preset menu to be able to remain on the screen. It always disappears after making a selection.

Plus one request regarding control surfaces.. not sure how to explain this one.
Well there is one way.. I want simerlar functionality to that in Abelton Live. oops..

I just have 8 CC knobs on my little keyboard, and only 5 patches. But I have plenty of plugins.. ha ha
SO what I want is to be able to decide which 8 parameters, per plug-in/contraption are going to be under control of the knobs. THEN merely by selecting/highlighting/giving focus to the plugin thise knobs become active. This way I save on having to select up and down on my keyboard presets, and having to midi learn every knob on every place.
My way, one could just decide (rt click and select KNOB1 - 8) on each plugin, and then click on the screen to give focus...
YOu could even use the UP/DOWN cursor arrows to JUMP around the screen, giving focus to things you need to control... if you jump to a new item while turning a knob, that level is left on that item..

I dont know, maybe theres a better way..

cheers

Mark

strunkdts
strunkdts's picture
Joined: July 21, 2009

this is great!

"I just have 8 CC knobs on my little keyboard, and only 5 patches. But I have plenty of plugins.. ha ha
SO what I want is to be able to decide which 8 parameters, per plug-in/contraption are going to be under control of the knobs. THEN merely by selecting/highlighting/giving focus to the plugin thise knobs become active. This way I save on having to select up and down on my keyboard presets, and having to midi learn every knob on every place."

Lume
Lume's picture
Joined: September 10, 2011

+1
I think jumping between contraptions would be nice with the arrow keys as suggested, or with an endless knob.
In regard to parameter control, I dreamt up the idea to be able to "walk" across parameters, which would be more useful.. But doing it per contraption has it's merits as well, because you could potentially have the parameters reordered on your controller.
Ideally, I'd have contraption selection assigned to a knob, then have another knob be able to move focus along parameters, based on how many controllers i have left ie. with 6 knobs moving focus will allow you to control the next 6 parameters.

What do you make of this Ross?

Ross B.
Ross B.'s picture
Joined: April 11, 2009

>What do you make of this Ross?

On Mark's original suggestions: there seem to be two general areas, one is related to presets and the other is related to mappings.

Regarding presets: I think the suggestions make a lot of sense and are in line with improvements I'd like to make in this area. There have been a number of requests around improving presets. Adding a display of the current preset name would be part of that. I have been thinking this could be by adding a preset management toolbar to the top of contraption editors (you could show or optionally hide this preset bar). This bar would include other functions such as saving the current preset, stepping forwards and backwards between presets, saving a new preset, etc.

Regarding parameter control: there seem to be a few different ideas floating around here. Mark describes the common DAW model where each plugin/contraption has its own MIDI mapping and then you access a mapping by selecting the contraption. I'd be interested to hear what others think, but personally I don't think this would be so useful in AM. For example, when I use AM I map parameters from *different* contraptions onto a set of MIDI faders -- the main benefit of a control surface is to have control of the things I need access to on a single set of faders -- even when these parameters are on different contraptions. So I think there is limited utility in a "active contraption only" mapping mode.

On the other hand I fully appreciate that having a limited number of knobs/faders makes things difficult. Another way to do it would be to have "mapping groups" with each mapping either "always active" or only active when a particular mapping group is active. In this approach there would be a way to select the active mapping group, and you could switch between different sets of mappings. The mappings in a group wouldn't have to be associated with a single contraption.

As far as Lume's ideas, which seem to be about automatically mapping all parameters onto a control surface. I think this is how Kyma works. This seems most practical to me when your control surface has visual readouts about which parameters are mapped to which faders. If you don't have displays like this I'm not sure how easy it would be to know which parameters are mapped to which faders. Perhaps I'm missing something here.

I have a feeling that there are two distinct ways of approaching using a MIDI control surface with AM: one is a kind of extension of the mouse where you want a quick way to use your control surface to access any and all parameters (this is the kind of DAW model Mark described). The other way of using a MIDI control surface is to set up a set of mappings designed specifically to control the parameters that are important to a particular a performance -- the control surface is not a generic interface to AM but a specific interface to controlling a single patch/musical performance/instrument. Perhaps both approaches need to be supported -- but the second one seems more important to AM, at least from my point of view.

What do you think?

Ross.

Lume
Lume's picture
Joined: September 10, 2011

"This seems most practical to me when your control surface has visual readouts.."
Very true, I did think about this, but I suppose AM is such a different paradigm to what I'm used to. In regards to the 2 ways to approach control, I highly agree with the second idea. If we could set up a bunch of custom mappings, then be able to recall them, either through midi or even keyboard, that'd be fantastic.

Thanks for the reply, Ross!