Not from the perspective of someone who works mostly with MIDI data and plugin instruments. For users like me, editing MIDI notes and data is creating the music. Which is a complex task that deserves a proper toolset. Currently, MIDI in Ardour is a second class citizen, a byproduct and only edited in the context of the whole session and tracks. The tools and view modes that are used to display and edit audio regions and tracks may not be the best choice to edit MIDI content efficiently.
Sad to read this. I absolutely don’t understand why you’re so opposed to the idea. It is really weird, as if MIDI is nonsense to you.
Maybe the guys from Harrison can introduce some improvements at least to Mixbus then.
MIDI is absolute intended to be first class. We spent a very long time when MIDI was added to Ardour 3.0 debating this. We decided that there are many reasons why the separate piano-roll model for editing MIDI is suboptimal. We were gratified when ProTools actually switched their entire MIDI editing model to be based on the same conclusion. While not commenting on the rest of PT MIDI, I am mentioning this simply to show that we’re not the only DAW development team to reach this sort of conclusion.
We understand that some people don’t agree with this. We’ve listened and discussed this a lot. We haven’t persuaded them, they haven’t persuaded us. We know that no single DAW is the right one for everyone. If you feel that separate piano roll editing is vital for your work, then Ardour isn’t going to be the right DAW for that.
Harrison is extremely unlikely to do anything substantively different with MIDI. We work in constant collaboration with them. Most Mixbus customers are more audio-focused anyway.
Well, if MIDI is intended to be first class in Ardour, my feedback at this point in time would be it has a long way to go in terms of ergonomics. I hope to see further improvements on that front and wish the best of luck to the project.
Also, I should be clear. I don’t disagree that while editing MIDI, a different/extended toolset being easily accessible is probably an excellent idea. That’s different than a dedicated window or pane, however.
I see MIDI editing in the same way I see opening Audacity, Soundforge, RX, SpectraLayers etc to edit some audio while in the DAW. To edit MIDI beyond splitting regions and resizing I gravitate toward a dedicated MIDI editor window where the zoom is exactly where I want it without messing with track size.
As you say, minds seem to be made up about this so it is rather a moot point. That’s why I use REAPER for MIDI work and Ardour for everything else these days. I can’t live without a dedicated window having given both ways a decent run out. I started out in Samplitude so old habits perhaps. C’est la vie!
From the most beginning I make the minimal view of the whole session:
Shift+"-" - for horizontal minimizing;
Ctrl+T & Ctrl+Alt+S(my custom shortcut of “Small” command) - for vertical minimizing
Now I select any MIDI region (in the “G”-mode activated) and press “z” - this gives me the whole MIDI region maximized to the editor area. Even then I can zoom In/Out focusing to the little areas of this region and do my changes switching to the “E”-mode.
After my editions I return the “Whole View” pressing Shift+z combination (few times - if I had changed focus few times while editing)
@paul
May be a feature request could be a “rude”-command/shortcut to minimize the session horizontally&vertically simultaneously? The workflow could be so simple like:
Select desired region and press “z”
Do changes during multiple in/out-zooms.
Press “rude minimize”-command/shortcut to see the whole session again.
Also this solves the problem, when the session has so many tracks as they can not fit to the vertical space. Now I go to the upper side of my session - press Ctrl+F1, then scroll down vertically as I need - &press Ctrl+F2 etc… F3, F4…
In combination with “z” - super fast workflow!
a DrumGizmo session example of using z-F1 combination:
One of the most important mantras for a sound engineer is: Know your gear! No matter what hardware or software one has, having shortcuts, knobs, and workflow in the muscle memory makes one very effective and it’s wise to spend a considerable amount of time to learn the gear. Not every single shortcut, item, or anything else related to a program is an intuitive thing for everyone and what’s intuitive is also different from person to person. I guess that one can’t make something that’s totally perfect for everyone that’s using a program, especially when it’s so complex and big as Ardour.
One of Ardour’s selling points (or maybe I should use the word philosophy here) is to have as much of the workflow inside the same window as possible and to me, this is a great idea. While waiting for the fixes that will arrive in version 7, I’m using another program for the initial MIDI stuff, and to me, many windows cluttered everywhere are only something that takes energy and time to handle. I’m looking forward to version 7 and that this also will benefit Harrison Mixbus*. I really like the decisions the developers did when they implemented the MIDI workflow.
Is this a bug? Do you have the same issue: when I save my session - the “F1, F2…” setup is not stored. Next time I reload my session - I need to make Ctrl+F1,F2… again//
I am OK with the current way Ardour in-window MIDI editing approach. But one thing I miss is the bar graphs to edit velocities that separate MIDI windows often have, like in Muse. It makes editing velocities much quicker by simply drawing with the mouse (and fine tuning later)! I wonder if something similar is possible with the current in-window editing approach.
Another useful feature, which I assume is impossible in the current setting, is to edit, for percussion tracks, the position of the MIDI notes/instruments on the “piano” on the the left. In Muse, when I edit a percussion track, I can enter the name of the particular instrument in the corresponding MIDI note, which helps visualize what each notes plays (kick, snare, hihat, etc.). But, even better, I can reorder these instruments, so I can have, say, all toms together, all cymbals, etc. That’s quite useful! But, it is not nearly as important to me as the MIDI velocity editing I mention above.
For now, I often do MIDI programing in Muse, then import the MIDI file to Ardour. I often do a lot of editing in Ardour too, though.
This is well known to the developers it has been discussed in Mantis (by myself and many others) and on IRC many times. ‘EnergyXT’ an ancient DAW with a half-assed Linux port did in-window MIDI editing wonderfully (and still does) and pretty much every established DAW has vertical velocity bars and there are a wealth of examples to study. I honestly have never understood the reticence to implement this, it seems to be one of the first things you would implement in a MIDI sequencer not one of the very last…?
