[Piano Roll] Improvements to make the workflow faster

[larsen78]

Hi all,

So I’m a long time FL Studio User (I’ve been using it since v6). I’ve also Live Lite that I use for audio editing stuff. I switched to Mac recently and I’ve been demoing Live 10. I really like it so far. I’m really thinking about buying it since I found my workflow to be much more efficient with it. However, for ONE thing I find Live a lot slower than FL Studio : it's its piano roll…

First, I don’t like the Draw Mode as it is, I never use it. Mainly because :

1) You can only use LEFT CLICK.
2) When I click on a MIDI note : it shortens it, or it deletes the note. I don't like that you can ADD and REMOVE notes just with left click. One should be Left click, the other Right click.
3) When I click to add a MIDI note, it’s never at the length i want it to be. I don’t like the fact that EACH note length is based on the grid size.
4) You can’t MOVE MIDI notes.
5) If I want to select some MIDI notes, I have to quit Draw Mode.


The way I can see those improved (I’m on Mac, sorry if I get shortcut keys mixed up!) :

First, I would « remove » the Draw Mode INSIDE the MIDI note editor (= whether Draw Mode is ON or OFF would make no difference when working inside the piano roll). This mode would just be used for envelopes/automations.

1) - Left Click : to add a note
AND
- Right Click : to remove the notes
- What about the context menu then ? On Mac you can have access to it with CTRL-Click. On Windows… hm, yes, I need you guys to figure out this one with me.
- Add a « Paint Mode On/Off Switch » button : add multiple notes as you drag in lines

2) - When you click on a MIDI note, it just selects it. That’s it. You’d still be able to increase/decrease its length when the cursor is on the edges of the note.
While you are still dragging the note, hit Cmd(Alt on win?) to bypass snapping

3) - When you simply Left Click to add a note : it would add a note to the length of the previous one you added. Like in FL Studio, This one would make things so much faster!
AND
- Shift+Left Click to add a MIDI note with its length based on the grid size

4) - Left click+Drag : to move the MIDI note wherever you want.

5) - Alt+Drag (Ctrl+Drag on win?) : to select Notes.
- Shift+Alt+Click or Drag : to append to your selection.

some other features I'd like to see :

- Add a slice note Mode button : place your mouse where you want over a MIDI note and Left click to divide it.
- If you want to consolidate notes : select the two/+ notes and press Cmd+J
- Scale highlighting : just like in FL, you choose a scale root, and a scale type and the notes from that particular scale are highlighted.
The way it is on FL : http://i.imgur.com/8kJ9BHr.png // http://i.imgur.com/9gHDz6E.png

What do you think of these ideas ? How would you improve the piano roll experience ?

[Nokatus]

My guess is, you just aren't that comfortable/familiar with MIDI editing in Live yet. Most of what you are suggesting is mere preference, so there is no right or wrong answer for those. Breaking the context menu (removing the right click action that has worked universally in Live for well over a decade) just to get that preferred note remove action bound to right click IS a bad design decision, however.

[railpressureflip]

My guess is, you just aren't that comfortable/familiar with MIDI editing in Live yet. Most of what you are suggesting is mere preference, so there is no right or wrong answer for those. Breaking the context menu (removing the right click action that has worked universally in Live for well over a decade) just to get that preferred note remove action bound to right click IS a bad design decision, however.

Whilst removing the right click may have worked well ONLY for Live, it's a universally horrible choice, especially coming from a UX perspective.
This is where dropbox screwed up BIG TIME by removing the contextual right click in their web app, and where Google Drive still has it, which makes it a lot more accessible and user friendly. Ableton's piano roll is unquestionably one of the worst out there, lots of room to improve. Looking forward to the updates in the coming years; here's hoping.