u/Tynted

Hey all,

Just wanted to make a post mentioning an idea that I think would make writing music on the M8 a lot more intuitive. I think that adding a view where you can play your song watching all the notes go by on 4 (or more) tracks simultaneously would be very helpful. Basically I'm suggesting a view where you watch your song play like a traditional tracker program in which you can see all the notes playing together on all the tracks at once. I think this would make it more enjoyable & easier to see what each track is doing in relation to each other, because having to flip between the tracks can get cumbersome, even with all of the excellent shortcuts that help you do it quickly. I also think it would make writing music in weird time signatures more enjoyable, also.

Here are some details about what I'm suggesting:

• I specifically want a view where I can start playing the song, and it shows the notes & their instruments of 4 tracks playing in real time, like a traditional tracker does. You can play the whole song in this view, not just one chain or phrase that loops
  • You could make it to where if you select a section of the song and start playing it on loop, then go to this view to see that section on an individual note basis and get the best of both worlds as it still keeps looping.)
• There is enough space on the screen to where you can display at least 4 tracks of notes all at once with their assigned instruments. 6 or 8 tracks would be awesome but idk how doable that is.
  • I only care about the note and instrument being displayed for each track. I don't think that FX need to be shown in this view because of screen space limitations.
  • To get around the annoyance of only being able to see 4 tracks, you could make each track selectable at the top of this view, and you could change which of your 8 tracks are being shown at once. For example, you could set it to see tracks 1, 2, 6, and 8 in that order if you wanted to see how those tracks are working together.
• Tables are obviously a big thing on the M8, and I don't think that they need to be visible at all in this view, either. The scope of that would be too detailed for what this view would be capable of showing.
• You could still show phrase and chain information for each track on this view.
  • You could see what chain you're in via the normal indicator that shows along the left side of the screen like in the song view. You could see what phrase each track is playing displayed either above or below the track number at the top of this view.
• Not sure exactly of what the best way to get to this view would be.
  • EDIT: u/overand suggested an excellent place (in my opinion) to place this view. On the M8, you can press all 4 direction buttons at once together to go to the multi-scope view. You could place this note view right after that screen. Just press all 4 direction buttons together again on the multi-scope view screen to get to the note view.
    • Even though this would make the note view screen kinda hidden on the M8, it would mean that you could easily access it from anywhere in the UI. Let's say you're working on a phrase in context of your song, for example. You could quickly move between the phrase editing and note view screens to check out how your phrase is jiving with the song as you iterate on it.

Discussion about this idea is welcome and whether or not you'd want it 👍 I think it would make writing weird time signature/progressive music a lot more enjoyable on the M8 🤷‍♂️