Some MIDI track suggestions

[sound8]

I have been making some request posts one at a time but probably not worth it.
I figured I would just mention a couple things in a single post if this is okay.

1.) Allow Ctrl+Mouse scroll up & down on both the vertical scrollbar and the vertical keyboard to be able to zoom in / out enlarging the keys with vertical zoom (like how you can adjust the end grips of the vertical scroll bar currently)

2.) This might not be valuable to most users and also could be confusing which is probably why this is the way it is, but I noticed that there really isn’t a visual indication for MIDI notes on different channels within the same MIDI tracks. I have seen other DAWs allow for different color notes one for each of the 16 channels, which in Ardour might look confusing, not really sure how else this could be displayed / achieved. I see that the channel used shows up in the mouse cursor hovering label which is nice and maybe all that is needed, but was just thinking if there could be some kind of more visual indication. Again most users probably don’t use this so probably not really worth it, just thought I would mention.

3.) Currently there is a max note length = 1/4 note unless user draws a longer note.
In another post I mentioned this bug, but I thought that if you selected “Bar” & “Auto” from the two draw tool dropdowns that it would allow user to create notes the whole bar, like for chords but this creates buggy behavior currently.
Another solution, have seen others DAWs allow to use the last note length drawn, maybe could add a length option in the dropdown called “Last” which uses the last note length drawn. So if user draws a note length for example the entire bar, then each note drawn after would be 1 bar length to match it.

4.) When you go into context menu and choose “Edit” for example, feels like should be able to type in number values in the field and then hit the enter key to apply and close the dialog automatically.

Anyways, I think that is all I have for now, if anyone agrees with any of these, please mention it.
Hopefully some of this will be helpful
Thank you to anyone who reads this

[songo (Krzysztof Gajdemski)]

@sound8

2.) This might not be valuable to most users and also could be confusing which is probably why this is the way it is, but I noticed that there really isn’t a visual indication for MIDI notes on different channels within the same MIDI tracks. I have seen other DAWs allow for different color notes one for each of the 16 channels

But this is already possible. In the track context menu just change the “Color Mode” settings to “Channel Colors”:

3.) Currently there is a max note length = 1/4 note unless user draws a longer note.
In another post I mentioned this bug, but I thought that if you selected “Bar” & “Auto”
from the two draw tool dropdowns that it would allow user to create notes the whole bar, like for chords but this creates buggy behavior currently.

Unless I’m missing something obvious (not doing much MIDI work in Ardour yet) this looks like a bug indeed. Have you tried to report this in Mantis?

Another solution, have seen others DAWs allow to use the last note length drawn, maybe could add a length option in the dropdown called “Last”

Yes, would be nice.

4.) When you go into context menu and choose “Edit” for example, feels like should be able to type in number values in the field and then hit the enter key to apply and close the dialog automatically.

Second that too.

[sound8]

@songo
Thank you very much for your response, I really appreciate it.
2.) I saw that “Color Mode” in the context menu the other day, but didn’t know how to actually change the colors of the channels. In the image you provided, you have a number “3” inside a purple box to the left of the tracks name, is that how to change the colors? I do not see that color box with number do you know how you activated it?

3.) No I mentioned it here and it didn’t really go anywhere

Piano roll draw mode Bar with Auto (possible bug)

When in Piano Roll draw mode, if you select “Bar” and then select “Auto” Does this perform as expected? Also when you have “Snap” mode on and you click on a veritcal line, the notes get added to the left side instead of the right of the line. Just wondering if someone could confirm if this is correct. Hope this helps Thank You

Thank you for agreeing with 3 & 4.
Also thank you again for your response in general.

[songo (Krzysztof Gajdemski)]

@sound8

@songo
Thank you very much for your response, I really appreciate it.
2.) I saw that “Color Mode” in the context menu the other day, but didn’t know how to actually change the colors of the channels.

I believe you can’t configure actual channel colors yourself (maybe some tweaks are possible in Preferences->Appearance but I dunno). The notes are colored automatically just in the same way like different velocities are colored in default mode. In this screenshot each note is on different channel:

In the image you provided, you have a number “3” inside a purple box to the left of the tracks name, is that how to change the colors? I do not see that color box with number do you know how you activated it?

No, this is just a track number/color. Can be enabled in “Session Properties->Filenames->Prefix Track number”.

Thank you for agreeing with 3 & 4.
Also thank you again for your response in general.

Thanks for some good ideas and observations. These are little things which could make life of some users a lot easier. Unfortunately, Ardour is damn complicated piece of software. And there are probably hundreds of such little improvements worth implementing. For obvious reasons not all will be.

[sound8]

@songo
Hey, thank you again for your responses
2.) Ah okay as mentioned the other day I came across these color modes in the track context menu, I put this on my list of things to look into, I was going to try to look into all the different color options all at once. Okay so this one can be done, but might not be able to decide what colors are used, I will look into preferences as you mentioned to see what is possible with channel colors.

Thank you for pointing this out, I did not know track numbering was available in Ardour. I understand why the numbers are where they are, but unfortunate because gives even less room for track names which is already a little tight as it is.

Thank you again for your help and also for backing some of the ideas mentioned, I appreciate it.