Open pattern to specific bar from song editor

[Spekular]

This would apply to automation and instrument patterns.

It's currently convenient to use several short patterns in order to be able to quickly view the right part of a melody or automation. Doing this means the context of the surrounding bars is lost in the editor, and requires new patterns to be duplicated or created. In the automation editor, it's difficult to transition seamlessly from one pattern to the next, and duplicating automations often loses the value they were assigned to control.

Being able to quickly move to any bar of a pattern from the song editor would allow longer patterns to be used, which could improve workflow, especially in automation.

I see two potential ways to access this:

• Right click > "Go to bar" > Mouse over bar > Double click
• Mouse over bar > Modifier + Click

Highlighting which bar is selected would be useful here.

Mockup to clarify:

[softrabbit]

Third potential way: double click. Point at a bar, double click. The piano roll/automation editor opens, showing the selected bar, local playhead at the beginning of it.

And I'd go one step further in that highlighting, I'd highlight the entire area that's visible in the piano roll or automation editor, preferably with the playhead visible too.

[Spekular]

@softrabbit we'd have to know the window's size and zoom, and account for windowed or fullscreen mode. I could be wrong but I imagine this would get complicated

[musikBear]

i found a method for localization of a note from song-editor. Made a vid on it in 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlWdTLfc80k

I also think this has connection to bookmarks, clip-naming, indexing and comment-tracks, something that has been discussed earlier.

[Spekular]

@Umcaruje @BaraMGB @tresf I hope you don't mind if I tag you for some feedback/help?

I've gotten automation patterns to open to specific bars from the context menu, with some caveats:

• The pattern currently opens to the playhead instead of the mouse position. Perhaps this could be left as is (I've renamed the context menu item "open to playhead position" for now.)
• The pattern doesn't open to the right position if I haven't hit play in the song editor at least once.
• The automation editor view doesn't move to the right section by itself. Moving the scrollbar a tad makes the view jump to the right position though.

If anyone has an idea of what I should look into to fix any of these issues, let me know. I'd also like to know how you feel about opening to the playhead instead of the mouse (and if you'd prefer mouse position and know how to get it, let me know).

@RebeccaDeField Do you have an opinion on opening to the mouse position vs opening to the playhead position, UX wise?

[Spekular]

Seems like the automation editor doesn't need to have been opened, you just have to have hit play. Hitting space instead of clicking the play button doesn't seem to work for some reason.

[tresf]

As part of a pruning effort, this enhancement request is archived into a dedicated "Better Workflow" checklist here #4877.