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Hi, New user here. A couple of features I would like to see that would make this tool much more useful for me: 1. Expanded View - Can the view be "shrunk" in order to see the entire 30 note field? Having to continually scroll the view is a bit of a drag and compressing the view by about 50% would eliminate this in both directions. The note "boxes" would still be large enough (on all but the lowest resolution displays) to be accurately clicked. 2. Step Playback - It would be VERY helpful to be able to analyze melodies and harmonies by stepping through the sequence one step at a time, say each press of the spacebar advances to the next chord. 3. Designated Start Position - Being able to designate where the playback starts would also be helpful from an editing standpoint, particularly on longer sequences. Having to always start at the beginning is very time consuming when editing in the middle or toward the end of the sequence. <Edit> I found the option to start at a specific position, but it only continues from there to the end of the sequence. I have a sequence with a "pick-up" measure that repeats at the end of the last measure. I'd like to start there, then return to the first full measure and then loop continuously. Once I finish the sequence and publish it, you'll see what I mean. 4."Roll" the Chord - Very helpful in editing would be the ability to stop on a chord and roll (or arpeggiate) the individual notes bottom-to-top and vice-versa. 5. Continuous Voices - If a step-time mode is implemented, I'd like to be able to choose a continuous voice, like an organ tone, in order to further analyze the harmony structure. This is not possible with a "plucked" tone that decays quickly. 6. More Time Signatures - I do a lot of "swing-time" entry and composing. For this I usually am in the time signature 12/8. It would be helpful to see the "measure" divided (and numbered) into 12 segments instead of 8. <Edit> 7. Micro Positioning - Just thought of this one: Right now the "resolution" of placing a note in this composing tool is + or - an eighth note (at 4/4). However, it is possible with careful positioning of the punch (when punching an actual strip) to effectively enter "grace" notes. The ability to do this would greatly expand the capability and versatility of the tool. Perhaps you could code it so that a right click on a particular note would bring up a menu in which you could (typically) "advance" the sounding of the note by a given percentage (of BPM?) to achieve this effect. <And another> 8. Transposing - It would be EXTREMELY helpful to be able to transpose the pitch of the notes played back to agree with "real world" tuning standards. I.e., on my 30-note mechanism, "C" sounds as "F", and all other intervals are "offset" accordingly. This makes trying to use a standard keyboard to compose and transfer to this tool essentially impossible. <Yet another> 9. Text/Notes - This would be the icing on the cake: I'd like to be able to add text (lyrics) or other performance notes on the sheet to help me keep my place in the composition process. Thanks for considering these suggestions.
Hi there. First of all, we really appreciate your feedback. You've mentioned multiple really cool features, some of them have already been requested by other users, some of them are completely new. What you described in general sounds like a really advanced melody editor and we are generally trying to keep our editor as simple and basic as possible, so that it's easy to get started with it. We recommend our power users to use professional music software like Ableton or Reaper and import MIDI files into the online editor, because to be completely honest, developing an online app that would compete with desktop software will require a lot of time and resources, which I'm afraid we don't have. But I'll try to go over your list and address all the items one by one: 1. Expanded View. I've added this idea to our TODO list. Most likely we are gonna add an option somewhere in the editor settings to adjust the scale of the note field. 2. Step Playback. This is not something we've been requested before, so I'll put it on hold for now 3. Designated Start Position. You can set start position by right clicking on the note field and selecting the corresponding item in the context menu. Yes, it's a little tricky to find this feature. 4. "Roll" the Chord. One of the advanced features I was referencing to. I'll just be honest - it's not likely to be added. 5. Continuous Voices. Depends on step-by-step and also going slightly against the nature of music box sound (as it seems to me at least). Our online editor and melodies don't sound perfect, but it's hard to imagine a real music box with adjusted decay. 6. Have you tried choosing 3/4 rhythm in the editor settings? It's not quite swingy, more like a waltz, but if all you need is coloring the note grid in a another way, I think we can easily do that. 7. Micro Positioning. Hard to implement due to technical limitations. However, many users asked for it, so we plan to try a few options and see where we can get. 8. Transposing. Yeah, it's annoying that the real scale of the music box comb does not match the notes printed by their manufacturers on the strips. However, if we use a scale, that doesn't match the one that's provided with music boxes, it will most likely cause a lot of confusion. We might consider adding an extra 30 note melody type for that. 9. Text/Notes. As you may guess - it's another advanced feature, that will highly unlikely be done. I'd like to apologise for rejecting the most part of your suggestions right away. The thing is - we are a very small group of people driving this website as a hobby project, so we always have to find a compromise between what we want to do and what we can afford. I really hope for your understanding and thanks again :)
Yes, I rather thought I might be asking for a lot, but thanks for the response. Further comments (in numerical order): 1. Glad to know this might be implemented. While I'm not a programmer, I would think this to be a fairly simple change. 2. Again, would appear to be a fairly simple change. If you think about it from the creation angle rather than the performance angle, I think you will appreciate the utility of it. 3. If you implement a Step-Time mode, then this is almost a necessity from the creation standpoint, otherwise a tremendous amount of time would be wasted stepping through sections that are already finished. 4. I can see this would be more difficult to implement, but again, very useful to the composer, not so much for the listener. 5. Yes, a bit of a departure from the concept, but I guess there are better composition/notation programs to achieve this. Would just be nice to have it all in one package. 6. I will take a look at using 3/4, and yes, it's just a graphical layout aid. 7. I thought this would be the most difficult to implement, but glad you are considering it. 8. How many different tuning scales are being manufactured? But if you are able to (easily?) produce an entire melody type in a different "key", then you would seem to have done 90% of the programming needed to simply incorporate a Transpose +/- option in the existing code and let the user choose the one that matches his/her particular movement. What would REALLY complicate things is if there are movements that have different numbers of notes and intervals between the diatonic and chromatic sections. 9. Well, it didn't hurt to ask!
Hey @RedDawgEsq, as a small experiment we've just added an ability to change field resolution in the editor. You can find it in editor settings, there are 3 options to choose from. Please let us know what you think.
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Hi there. First of all, we really appreciate your feedback. You've mentioned multiple really cool features, some of them have already been requested by other users, some of them are completely new. What you described in general sounds like a really advanced melody editor and we are generally trying to keep our editor as simple and basic as possible, so that it's easy to get started with it. We recommend our power users to use professional music software like Ableton or Reaper and import MIDI files into the online editor, because to be completely honest, developing an online app that would compete with desktop software will require a lot of time and resources, which I'm afraid we don't have. But I'll try to go over your list and address all the items one by one:
1. Expanded View. I've added this idea to our TODO list. Most likely we are gonna add an option somewhere in the editor settings to adjust the scale of the note field.
2. Step Playback. This is not something we've been requested before, so I'll put it on hold for now
3. Designated Start Position. You can set start position by right clicking on the note field and selecting the corresponding item in the context menu. Yes, it's a little tricky to find this feature.
4. "Roll" the Chord. One of the advanced features I was referencing to. I'll just be honest - it's not likely to be added.
5. Continuous Voices. Depends on step-by-step and also going slightly against the nature of music box sound (as it seems to me at least). Our online editor and melodies don't sound perfect, but it's hard to imagine a real music box with adjusted decay.
6. Have you tried choosing 3/4 rhythm in the editor settings? It's not quite swingy, more like a waltz, but if all you need is coloring the note grid in a another way, I think we can easily do that.
7. Micro Positioning. Hard to implement due to technical limitations. However, many users asked for it, so we plan to try a few options and see where we can get.
8. Transposing. Yeah, it's annoying that the real scale of the music box comb does not match the notes printed by their manufacturers on the strips. However, if we use a scale, that doesn't match the one that's provided with music boxes, it will most likely cause a lot of confusion. We might consider adding an extra 30 note melody type for that.
9. Text/Notes. As you may guess - it's another advanced feature, that will highly unlikely be done.
I'd like to apologise for rejecting the most part of your suggestions right away. The thing is - we are a very small group of people driving this website as a hobby project, so we always have to find a compromise between what we want to do and what we can afford. I really hope for your understanding and thanks again :)
Yes, I rather thought I might be asking for a lot, but thanks for the response. Further comments (in numerical order): 1. Glad to know this might be implemented. While I'm not a programmer, I would think this to be a fairly simple change. 2. Again, would appear to be a fairly simple change. If you think about it from the creation angle rather than the performance angle, I think you will appreciate the utility of it. 3. If you implement a Step-Time mode, then this is almost a necessity from the creation standpoint, otherwise a tremendous amount of time would be wasted stepping through sections that are already finished. 4. I can see this would be more difficult to implement, but again, very useful to the composer, not so much for the listener. 5. Yes, a bit of a departure from the concept, but I guess there are better composition/notation programs to achieve this. Would just be nice to have it all in one package. 6. I will take a look at using 3/4, and yes, it's just a graphical layout aid. 7. I thought this would be the most difficult to implement, but glad you are considering it. 8. How many different tuning scales are being manufactured? But if you are able to (easily?) produce an entire melody type in a different "key", then you would seem to have done 90% of the programming needed to simply incorporate a Transpose +/- option in the existing code and let the user choose the one that matches his/her particular movement. What would REALLY complicate things is if there are movements that have different numbers of notes and intervals between the diatonic and chromatic sections. 9. Well, it didn't hurt to ask!
Hey @RedDawgEsq, as a small experiment we've just added an ability to change field resolution in the editor. You can find it in editor settings, there are 3 options to choose from. Please let us know what you think.
It'd also be great if there were a way to create a .PDF which is continuous (reather than broken up to fit a designated paper size).
I have access to roll plotters so I can print it on 11 inch wide continuous roll paper.