[Draft discussion] Better piano roll

[icaria36]

7 votes! I have added the template to put this feature request in shape. Right now it is not actionable. While FL Studio users seem to have an idea about what “Better piano roll means”, can someone describe the missing feature(s)? If there is more than one, it would be better to have separate requests.

[icaria36]

The general feedback is clear, but in order to have effective feature requests, they need to be precise, and not to mix multiple features at once.

It doesn’t matter how many votes this request has, a developer cannot do much with a request consisting on “better [something]”.

@Biggo @pier or anyone else reading this comment, would you like to focus here on the biggest piano roll related feature you miss (just one) and then, if you want, create other requests for other features?

[pier]

What you’re saying makes absolute sense. “Improving the piano roll” is very vague and both the community and the Bitwig team needs precise requests for this Bitwish initiative to be productive.

OTOH I could think of maybe a dozen improvements just on the piano roll view. I think creating tons of threads could become very tedious. Anyway @icaria36 you’re the mod so I’ll do what you’re saying!

[pier]

@icaria36 I’ve created 3 new drafts but now I’ve been blocked by Discourse from creating new threads since I’m a new user.

I will keep creating new drafts when the system allows me…

[icaria36]

Hi, sorry, it should be good now?

[pier]

Thanks @icaria36 !

[icaria36]

After @pier’s new requests posted yesterday, we have five related to piano roll aka #detail-editor-panel :

• Priorize note edge handle over time range handle
• Piano roll: setting for new note length
• Settings to adjust gridline thickness
• Editor Panel/Edit View - Invert X and Y Axis of the Editor Panel
• Make Barlines more prominent

Also, I wonder whether this one is related to the wishes behind “better piano roll”:

• A chord track in the arranger view

@Biggo are there other features related to piano roll that you have in mind? I think we should list them all and then close this one. We have 15 votes “captive” here that could be supporting more specific requests.

[abraxa]

Those 15 upvotes are likely a general feeling of “the piano roll sucks compared to other DAWs and needs some love and attention”, rather than concrete feature requests. It just doesn’t look polished, feel polished and the workflow isn’t great either. While requesting specific features is of course a good thing, making the bitwig team simply aware that they need to focus on this part of the DAW is also valid, in my opinion.

[pier]

@icaria36 thanks for the links.

You missed this one

Default settings for piano roll view

Different users set different configurations in the piano roll when creating a new track. Bitwig should be able to remember these options, either in the preferences or as a “save as default view” option. What problem(s) would this feature resolve? It would save time and tedious repetitive actions when setting up a new project or creating new tracks. Currently these options are not saved when saving a project as a template. For example, every time I open the piano roll on a new instrument trac…

[icaria36]

There is a new #brainstorm category. Here is a suggestion for next steps about this topic:

1. Close the topic here to liberate the votes.
2. Remove the template from the first post, keeping the links to related requests.
3. Move all the posts discussing Bitwish process (like this one) to #archive, keeping here the posts discussing piano roll improvements.
4. Move the first post and all the comments discussing better piano roll improvements to #brainstorm.

We will apply these changes in 24 hours unless someone has better ideas.

[ultratot]

Sounds good to me. My only comment would be to make sure all the branched topics are clearly listed toward the top so that folks know where they can spend their votes. And don’t forget about mine