Workflow and general improvements #5495
Comments
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Haven't bothered to read this whole thing yet but huge thumbs down for removing the play button from piano roll 😬 You can already preview the track + piano roll content with one of the play buttons, so it's not even the case that your preferred behavior is missing. |
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@Spekular I'm sorry if I didn't explain myself correctly and generated some kind of confusion but what I mean is that when you are working in the paino-roll and you press spacebar LMMS automatically plays the piano-roll patern while I'm trying not to play just the pattern but the whole project if that makes any sense. It really is a bother for me to click on the play button of the song-editor and then having to open again the piano-roll and if I want to change a note and see what it sounds like with the rest of the instruments playing I have to go through the same process again and again. It's just a waste of time. If you have ever used another DAW you would notice that it won't happen and that's because it kills the workflow. Thanks for the comment anyways. If you have any other thing you'd like to point out I'm open to hear it and I wanna know what you think about this issue so far. |
Keybindings could use some improvement. Although it will be a while, things will improve when we move away from MDI into a single window form. (See Windows reply below)
The button won't be deleted, I'm 99.99% positive of this (until we go single window, maybe even then it won't go away). If you want to hear the whole thing you can set the playhead in the song editor and loop that area, modify in real time then.
MDI is a pain, that's why we have #1911 as a future target.
Features are being added to it, for instance: #4998. There is a pitch knob you can adjust -100 to 100 cents; there's work being done to allow a larger number throughout LMMS here. There are startpoint and endpoint knobs to adjust when the sample starts/stops. There's a reverse button, too.
There's already a feature for this in
It honestly sounds like you want FL still.
LMMS' workflow is ctrl+drag, there's only the added step of creating an automation track. There was a PR I believe that was working on adding some a different curve option to automation, and possibly adding point to point curve options (I could be misremembering this though). These are enhancements already documented somewhere iirc.
I'm not sure this will happen. You can add all the instruments (doesn't even have to be drums) to the BB Editor and create all the patterns you want. Additionally, the BB Editor shows you what the pattern looks like. It's simplified in the Song Editor because you can open it up in the BB Editor.
I agree they need some work.
I don't know what you are describing here.
You can record from MIDI, and there's a PR to work on adding recording from microphones, but I assume this could be used for anything input. |
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@Veratil First of all thanks for your comment. It looks like I didn't explain myself correctly when I talked about the play button in the piano-roll. I already answered this to the person above. That button doesn't really bother me, what bothers me is that I cannot use spacebar to play the song-editor, it won't work, I have to use my mouse instead so at those times I wonder why do I hace a spacebar on my keyboard. With that being said, the goal of this issue is to improve this software and contribute with ideas that I find interesting, I don't mean to disrespect nobody or just say bad things about LMMS. I'm just trying to help develop a better tool for musicians so of course that I would use my experience with other similar software that are actually pretty famous and used (and that's for a reason) to give an opinion. The freezing-track thing is just converting a pattern into audio. It's like recording it so instead of having the plugin running you have that recording that is way lighter for the CPU you know what I mean? I forgot to say that the sample-track doesn't have any of the features you said, that's the audiofileprocessor I talked about. The sample-track, located at the song-editor bar only has an FX feature. |
Oops! I'm sorry! I always associate the AFP with Sample Track. 😩
I'm not sure the difference in CPU usage between this, it would be an interesting thing to look at though.
We have an issue for this #4877 😁
Gotcha! It's a shortcut issue then. 😉 |
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Freezing tracks can be really useful in large scale projects, when user had a lot of big plugins and synths running and lmms was struggling to keep this smooth and without cracks. Freeze track mitigate this performance issue. Also, lmms cannot be just copy of FL Studio with all its quirks inherited. In my opinion, for some future UX/UI elements lmms should go to Cakewalk territory, not FL. Cakewalk has much better UX regarding setting midi recording and overall midi, Prochannel tracks were very nice and fast to use, effects applied to track directly inside song editor too. But also lmms had one of best automation systems in terms of what user can do with this. Of course, not perfect and some tweaks will be very welcome. Also, also, MDI must be gone in regards of panels with fixed positions. |
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@qnebra I agree , LMMS should go to Cakewalk territory speaking of UI elements but I was just talking about the workflow and some errors I see in LMMS. I don't know if people usually overlook this (workflow) or not but it's really important, if you have a good workflow you produce easier, faster and in a more fun way. But yeah, you right! Thanks for your comment |
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Well, @Krvstal I agree with you in terms of LMMS needing some UX improvements, to being software much easier to learn for beginners. In my own opinion it should be something incredibly easy to use, allowing even first time users to make music. And current UX can be very tricky for them, especially without clear indication which window is active and what was exactly happen. |
This is why the goal is to eventually move to a single window workspace. We could improve the active window color though. I'm not sure if this is something that can change in the theme or not. |
In my mind this was more like icons for active editors having much clearer state "this is active editor", this mean in current lmms color scheme was green background for icon for example. Mainly because I decided to use in daily production lmms with some currently waiting PRs, especially #5261, just for testing. And user didn't have clear information about "this editor is active" which can be sometimes tricky to use. Also, for me as long time lmms user, much easier was using every main (automation, pianoroll, song editor) lmms window in full screen mode. |
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It would be great if we have the option to allow a sound sample from the file system to be played as we select it as we have on fl studio and other DAWs |
LMMS is a very complete free DAW and I really appreciate the commitment and work of teh developers. With that being said, during the time I've been using this software I noticed about some things that could be actually improved or added to LMMS and provide the users with a more pleasant experience and, since I'm a fan of shortcuts, I would appreciate if you could add some more, in general people overlook this matter but it really speeds up the workflow.
Spacebar
One of the problems I found right at the beginning was that the spacebar doesn't function as it is supposed to and that's because when you open a plugin or you are working on the mixer if you press spacebar nothing will happen so you have to move the arrow with your mouse and press the play button manually, and happens also when you go to your browser (I think itis called). The idea is that no matter what you are doing whenever you press spacebar the play should start.
Play button in the piano roll
The problem I find with this button is related to the spacebar. If I wanna play all the tracks instead of just playing the piano-roll pattern I can't just press spacebar because it will actually play just the notes in the piano-roll so I have to use my mouse to click on the play button of the song editor. I think that needs an improvement.
Windows
This is something that has been bothering me since I started making music with LMMS. I'm aware of the existence of a feature in every window (VST, mixer...) named "stay on top" but I find it pretty confusing since I feel like sometimes it works randomly. What I think is that the user should be able to open a VST window for example and then open the mixer without having to enable that option. If you wanna open a new window, the window you have already opened shouldn't close. It's really a pain in the ass because you have to open the window again and that's a time killer. Sometimes when I'm working in the mixer, even when I always select "stay on top" in a plugin after selecting the same option in the mixer when I hit the play button MANUALLY the mixer stays on top of the plugin window, which is kinda confusing and really annoying as I have to open the plugin again or move the mixer.
Sample-track
In general it just lacks a lot of features so I wouldn't use it. I'd only use it if I want to add some FXs like sweeps (since their length somtimes doesn't fit the song). The sample-track should have ADSR implemented so you can fix the sound if it's too long or if you want it to have a longer attack or whatever and a fade in fade out feature. It also should have a reverse option and a pitch knob (and pitch range) so you can transpose the sound if the pitch is to high or too low and I would also like to have a stretch option to fit loops to the tempo of the song (I know this is a little bit more complex but I wanted you to know it) I think these options are fundamental for a sample-track.
Grid in the song-editor
I think I'm not the only one who thinks that it would be cool to change the grid (1/4, 1/16, 1/32, etc) so instead of dragging the pattern and then pressing control to move it "freely" you could just change the grid to 1/32 and move it without any kind of trouble. It's in general very messy specially when you want to copy a sample and put it next to the previous one (in a 1/32 grid for example).
Tracks and Song-editor
I think the default template of LMMS should have empty tracks. When you want to add an instrument you just drag it and drop it on the track and you would wonder why since currently everybody can add plugins by just dragging. What's the difference of having empty tracks and not having them in this specific situation? Well the difference is that if you want to add an automation you can't just drag the parameter to the track, you have to add a specific automation track and there is no shortcut for this. The same happens with BB and Sample-tracks. I'll try to make things clear for everybody: 1. automation-editor: the fact that you have to click on the the upper bar of the song-editor is a waste of time and energy. Imagine, you have 50 tracks and you want to automate one of them, you have to click on the icon and then scroll down to find the automation track. Instead you could just ctrl+drag the parameter you want to automate and drop it on the empty track below or drop it below the instrument track (if there is not an empty one) to create a new one for the automation. 2. Sample-editor: What about if you want to add a sample-editor? I have an answer for that. When you search on your browser for samples or loops and you want to drag them into the song-editor aka playlist aka however you want to call it there should be two options: 1. drag it to the grid of the song-editor and open it and treat it with the sample-track feature of the DAW or 2. drag it to the left side of the song-editor aka the track list aka not the grid and treat it and open it with audiofileprocessor (I really find this plugin very useful if you want to treat your wav file more like an instrument rather than just a sample. You can create patterns easily so I think it is very wholesome).
Automation-editor
Related with the previous topic, the automation-editor is a big time killer for me. It would be way faster to just crtl+drag the knob... to a new track without the need of adding an specific track for it. And I also think it would be better to be able to modify the automation in the song-editor without the need of opening an extra/complemetary window, so you should be able to edit it in the song-editor. In addition there should be more freedom to modify the automation and with this I mean that it should be posible to modify the curves "however we want" and it should be possible to create straight vertical lines and combining them with curves instead of only being able to create straight lines with the discrete option and not being albe to add curves, etc. Basically what I'm asking for is being able to combine the three options and modify the curve of lines however we want to (if we want them to be curve).
Drum pad instead of beat+bassline
I think that rather than a beat+bassline there should exist a drum pad. It may look like there a small differences between them but these little differences make the drum pad way better than the beat+bassline thing. If you'd ever used a drum pad you could tell that you can open the piano-roll to create a pattern and be able to use any of the drums added to the pad in that same piano-roll (that doesn't happen with the beat+bassline). This would improve workflow for sure. And one last thing is that if you write a pattern you should be albe to see what the pattern look like in the song-editor.
SHORTCUTS
You should be able to use the same shortcuts of the piano-roll in the song-editor.
Ctrl+B to copy the note/pattern/sample... next to the previous one
Crtl+scroll to zoom in/out horizontally (already exists)
Alt+scroll to zoom in/out vertically (doesn't exist yet)
ENTER to pause the cursor and spacebar to stop meaning that the cursor will restore to the point where it began playing and I think it should be added a shortcut for moving the cursor automatically to the beginning of the song.
Thanks for your work and attention. Regards to all LMMS developers and users.
All contributions/comments are welcomed.
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