Determine how the Beat and Bassline Editor should work

[RebeccaDeField]

I'm opening this issue on the main tracker instead of here because from what people have been saying, it seems like the current BB editor is not ideal, and it's more from a technical standpoint than just aesthetic. Hopefully, the conversation can be opened up to the LMMS team instead of just the people who were on the Modern Noir fork.

What would the Beat and Bassline editor ideally look/work like? Maybe after we have that established, we can then come up with a solution based on those standards.

We're still trying to determine what it should work like... I think ideally, the patterns would all grow and shrink together. Then perhaps a way to prevent squishing the steps smaller than their natural size. ~ @tresf

[tresf]

Related: #2443

[tresf]

From a step-size perspective, I think all are in agreement that the steps need to be a predicable size, so that the pixmaps can be rendered correctly.

From a UI perspective there are some options...

• Make BB editor more like the song-editor in the fact that it can have variable length patterns and all patterns are positioned and looped based on their location in the BB timeline.
  • Currently the BB editor stretches patterns to the BB editor's width, this would have to change.
  • Preventing patterns from stretching may mean we need a left/right scroll area like the song/editor piano roll
  • Scroll area suggest we have a zoom factor as well
• Keep BB editor fixed
  • This is likely to be faster to implement from a code perspective
  • All patterns get adjusted to the BB editor's max pattern width
  • Steps never shrink under a certain size
  • A downside to this approach is BB editor can quickly become wider than the average screen if long BB patterns are used

I had tried option 2 above but was having a hard time keeping the track widths in sync with each-other. There seemed to be a missing way to quick expand/shrink any type of pattern.

[liftarn]

On feature that would be nice to have is syncopated beats. Instead of just 1234 you would have 1a2a3a4a. You can do it as it is by either double the bpm and use half of them or going into the piano roll view, but neither of them is very user friendly.

[musikBear]

@liftarn you mean sving right?
I hope #2255 will be in consideration. Building continuous sample in succession would open complete new powerful ways of using lmms.

[liftarn]

@musikBear Sving is not something I'm familiar with. Swing I know what it is, but that is changing the timing of the play. I'm talking about adding beats at the positions between the 4/4 beats. So instead of 1 2 3 4 you have 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.

[RebeccaDeField]

Can we make the Beat and Bassline editor have a minimum width? It automatically opens in a size that squishes the graphics, but if we could have a minimum size that it scales to just as some of the other windows in LMMS do, I think it would greatly improve the interface.

[Umcaruje]

I'll look into this.

[Umcaruje]

@RebeccaDeField made #2808 to fix that.

[doyousketch2]

This might help 3325

Did something similar with the time signature division in a little beatbox app I made,
to show my kid how audio programs, such as LMMS, run.
scratch.mit.edu/projects/34189066

[jasp00]

Make BB editor more like the song-editor

Yes, this is the idea. A BB track should be like a song: with its own tempo, time signature, master volume, etc. The BB editor is just the song editor with a starting zoom of 1600% (try it), plus the ability to add steps. BB tracks should have only the instruments they use; instruments can be shared among BB tracks, even the song.