[Ardour-Dev] let's talk about MIDI regions

[Thorsten Wilms]

On 03.03.2017 11:02, Paul Davis wrote:
> one idea that is in the air for Ardour 6.0 is to move away from the idea
> of MIDI regions entirely.

Having no linked MIDI regions would render Ardour virtually useless for 
producing Techno and similarly repetitive styles. I have plenty of 
experience working with keyboard-integrated sequencers without 
region-concept. I ended up using range-copy again and again and again 
... with notes on paper to stay oriented.

Now one could think that "edit it one place and have it updated 
everywhere else" could be offered without MIDI regions in their current 
form. You need something like a range and it would be nice to offer 
offsets for start and end of each instance ... which surely ends up 
looking just like the current regions.

Even if the only copies would be for an entire refrain in a traditional 
song structure, the user should be able to see whether there is an exact 
copy in place and not have to look over many dozen notes and be left 
wondering.

I think their should be more regions, not fewer. Any piece of automation 
should allow linked copies. To not even start about multi-target 
automation ... oops.


I guess MIDI overdubbing requires adding and replacing modes. If you 
want to create a new, overlapping region, and overlapping regions in one 
track are to be avoided (must/should they?), it should be made fast and 
easy enough to add a new track hooked up to the same strip.


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/