Custom values for velocity-based MIDI note colours

Community Ideas for Ardour
#1

With the recent release of Ardour 9.5, there is now an option to colour MIDI notes based on different factors: velocity, channel, track, and pitch.

Currently, it looks like only the values for pitch are configurable. That being said, I think it would be really great if we could also customize the values used for velocity-driven colours, particularly in the context of using MIDI to control multi-coloured LEDs on external hardware, or visually defining specific velocity ranges with soundfonts/instruments that change sample depending on note velocity.

For example: This is a palette of 128 colours, with each one corresponding to velocity 0-127 where MIDI information is being sent to a Novation Launchpad’s grid of LED pads. Visualizing these colours in Ardour would be a great improvement for those of us who create Launchpad lightshows.

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While I recognise this is a rather niche request, I think it would be a great addition to Ardour, and give it a nice advantage that (AFAIK) cannot be found in other DAWs.

#2

I would have done this for velocity, and did make a start on it, but there turned out to be a lot of complications. The colors that actually show up on the screen are very different from the ones “chosen” to represent a given velocity.

The same applies when using MIDI channel colors and track colors. Until I can rationalize the relationship between the color “definitions” and what is actually drawn, there’s not much point providing a way to edit the definitions.

#3

That makes sense, thanks for the info. I’ll keep my eyes peeled on future releases.