Lokan wrote: ↑Thu Nov 11, 2021 5:25 am
jlgrimes wrote: ↑Tue Nov 02, 2021 10:18 am
In FL, I found it very tedious having to change tools every time to select a note, new tool to draw a note, new tool to delete a note. Ableton pretty much can do all of this with standard select tool. A chop function would be cool in Ableton, but I get by with draw tool and ability to quickly change grid size with Ctrl 1 and 2 commands. I'm surprised at the number of other DAWS that do not easily implement this time saving feature. I believe FL grid size is zoom based.
In FL, Grid adjustment is missing but, why would you delete with delete tool while you can right click on notes to delete it with pencil tool. It's much easiser than double clicking. Pretty much everything can be done with pencil tool.
I guess I haven't been really trained on it properly. I have a partner producer who uses FL Studio and sometimes I sense certain times there are more efficient ways of doing things in the piano roll but I guess I haven't put the time into its piano roll like I did with Ableton's.
That said Ableton's minimalistic piano roll is so simple that it required very little training. And coming from Reason and Sonar, I apprieciated Ableton's piano Roll over both of those.
Reason's was simple and not powerful (although version 11 finally added in a split tool after like almost 20 years of begging), where Sonar's was powerful but not always to most easiest to use. Ableton's had a mix of simple and power that I enjoyed.
1. Note muting (first piano roll I had that could do this)
2. Fold tool (took awhile to appreciate this but great when needing to see every note you played in.)
3. Quick grid changing functions (Haven't found a DAW quicker than this without having to setup custom actions in like Reaper).
4. Very smooth and easy to understand zooming function (I'll admit Ableton is probably not the most powerful here but IMO generally fast and easy to learn).
5. Clip duplicate/reverse/invert (simple but effective tools for remixing stuff and buidling parts)
6. Curved envelopes and envelope editing in general (Ableton used to suck here big time but has made tremendous improvements here).
That said though, Ableton is one of the few DAWs now without even a basic note split function while many other DAWs such as FL Studio have more complex divide functions now, I'm not sure why this is being overlooked, Ctrl+E could just be implemented to acheive this but maybe there is more to it. Or even a new button that says "Divide" and pressing that but would divide your selected notes based off of Grid settings. M4L actually has a divide tool that supposed to work like FL Studio's chop tool but it would be nice to get this without needing M4L.
That said over the years, Ableton has been doing a good job at handling alot of their "Elephant in the Room" omissions. Comping, Session View Automation, MPE, VST3, Curved Automation, Automation Shapes, I'm guessing someone at Ableton headquarters realize their piano roll is one of the only piano rolls without even a basic split function. I'm guessing while they could easily add a basic function, they might be looking at really doing an overhaul of the Piano Roll itself and giving it some more powerful features. It makes sense now that they added Scales, MPE editing that users will want more sophisticated editing functions. That said an overhaul would be a controverisial update as many Ableton users have been using the basic one for over 10 years and would possibly need to "unlearn" some things and "learn" alot of other things which would be hectic, so they are probably really looking into how to do a good overhaul but making the transition as "painless" as possible. One thing they could do though is just "expand it" by keeping much of it the same but enhancing the GUI a bit and enhancing M4L to allow for user created tools (one gripe about M4L is that everything needs to be a "device", it would be cool if M4L could create more of a "tool" which takes up less space and such)., so many of these things would end up created by users anyways, giving a sort of Reaperish/Studio One workflow of being able to add custom tools/macros to piano roll to add more esoteric tools that allow users to customize whats important. Ableton already have a pretty good foundation here, they would need to still be careful of not Reaperfying the DAW but I'd think a better keybinding system and more customizations would be generally appreciated overall, especially if done right.