Suggestions/Feedback

[Aligorith]

I've been playing around with this for the past few days. First up, let me just say that there's a lot of good and interesting stuff going on here. In particular, I love the chord-pie menu, and the idea of built-in versioning. :)

Now for some feature requests/comments:

1. With the chord pie menu, I'm missing a way to hear/preview the chord "in context".
   Specifically, it'd be great to be able to hear the last 2-3 seconds (preferably some easily customisable range) to hear how well a new chord fits in with that sequence.

2. Related to the previous one, it would be cool to be able to select a region of time (e.g. by dragging out markers along the top timeline), and have it just sound out all notes from that range at once

3. Unless I'm missing something, it's currently quite cumbersome to use the expand/contract time tools (i.e. the two below the "View Panning" 4-way arrow icon).
   Usually, when using these things, I'm trying to make a particular note longer/shorter, and have everything else after it follow along in the same proportion. So, what I end up doing is selecting all the notes after it (using the box tool, something that'll probably be harder on longer timelines), then activating these tools to shunt all of those notes forward/back (to an approximate length), and then finally I go back in and adjust the length of the offending note.

   Instead, it would be nice to just select a note/notes, then, when I activate these tools and start dragging somewhere inside the notes, everything else gets pushed forward/back accordingly, while the length of the selected notes is adjusted.

   Also, a way to select all notes on either side of the playhead by just clicking while holding some modifier key would be nice. (e.g. Ctrl-RMB in Blender's Dopesheet/Graph/NLA editors)

4. What hotkeys are available? Along with tooltips, having a way to find out what these are and what tools these map to would be handy.

5. Have you considered any "computer keyboard" input schemes (preferably when used with "real time recording" functionality)?

6. It would be great to have some easily identifiable landmarks along the vertical axis of the piano roll to make it easier to quickly realise what the pitch ranges are. I notice that you already have some zebra-stripes going on (which I'm assuming are to mimick the white-black keys). But, coming from a traditional 5-line staff/string instrument background, it's a bit disorientating to not really have any easy landmarks to know where I am in the range.

7. Some things about the colour schemes could be a bit clearer:
   a) It's not always clear when a note is selected vs when it's not. Is the darker state "selected" or "deselected"? Usually, a darker state would indicate deselected (i.e. not highlighted)

   b) It'd be nice to have more contrast on the icons (i.e. make them brighter), even if it's only in one theme. During daylight hours, it's almost impossible to see the icons on my screen.

8. I notice that you're currently showing multiple projects at once in the sidebar. WIth just 2 projects, it's still manageable (if a tad confusing). But I wonder how well it will scale with more projects.

   Also, while on this note, is the "Instruments" stuff per-project, or is it global to all projects (i.e. per user/machine)? The UI stuggests the latter, though I'd have though the former would be more normal/expected?

[peterrudenko]

Thank you, Joshua.

All that feedback and discussions at Hacker News are certainly a great source of inspiration as they help me to figure out my common mistakes, to clarify the roadmap and so on.

a way to select all notes on either side of the playhead by just clicking while holding some modifier key would be nice

Sounds reasonable. Currently, there are two ways of selecting large regions:

• a ctrl-drag (or a cmd-drag) on the timeline will select everything within that range
• a right-click on a timeline text mark selects everything from that mark to the next one

it would be cool to be able to select a region of time (e.g. by dragging out markers along the top timeline), and have it just sound out all notes from that range at once

There's a little feature I call "sound probe tool": click on the top timeline while holding space button pressed to hear all the notes that will be playing exactly in that moment of time.
And if you drag mouse over the timeline while holding space button, you'll see the measurement of time to be passed in that range (and tempo changes on the global tempo curve are taken into account).

What hotkeys are available?

Well they are all hardcoded still, you can search the source code for "KeyPress::createFromDescription" if you're interested. I'm too lazy/busy at the moment to make tutorials, mostly because lots of stuff is a subject to change.

Have you considered any "computer keyboard" input schemes

This is not implemented for now as well as midi recording, but it's one of the essential features on the top of my backlog.

Also, while on this note, is the "Instruments" stuff per-project, or is it global to all projects (i.e. per user/machine)? The UI stuggests the latter, though I'd have though the former would be more normal/expected?

The orchestra pit is global for all projects, and projects only hold references to their instruments (this was done in order to have an ability to quickly load/unload projects, checkout revisions and apply stashes in a matter of milliseconds without having to load and reload those heavy-weight VST plugins all the time).
I'm still not sure if this was a right decision to keep instruments and scores separated, because nobody in the DAW world does that (as far as I know).
Though this scheme works pretty well in my particular case: I usually share the same instruments across all my projects, so I'm able to switch between them on the fly.

[follower]

What hotkeys are available?

... you can search the source code for "KeyPress::createFromDescription" ...

FWIW, I did this and here are some direct links for "documentation" purposes (click links to view): :)

• https://github.com/peterrudenko/helio-workstation/blob/43d4dc68a891da7be6d8dff106b70593ed03eea9/Source/UI/MidiEditor/PianoRoll.cpp#L918

• https://github.com/peterrudenko/helio-workstation/blob/43d4dc68a891da7be6d8dff106b70593ed03eea9/Source/UI/MidiEditor/MidiRoll.cpp#L844

• https://github.com/peterrudenko/helio-workstation/blob/e0ed6f753c7b327a36428febd369ce22874d1b93/Source/UI/MainLayout.cpp#L487

This might be of interest to readers of #1 and #5 also.

[peterrudenko]

Thanks @follower!
Anyway, current implementation with hardcoded hotkeys really really sucks, and hopefully version 2.0 is going to have somewhat more manageable hotkey schemes description (I've been playing with it recently: DefaultHotkeys.xml)

[erikjms]

Tagging along for number 7: greater contrast in the dark color themes.

I just downloaded the AppImage last night and poked around in it on Manjaro (Arch-derived Linux distro) and I think this is the sequencer I have been looking for on my Linux box! I don't have the most sophisticated programming skills (self-taught, mostly C, Python, Java), but I have done graphic design for years and would be more than happy to play around with the themes to see if some of the darker ones could be made more legible.

As an aging musician whose eyes are not what they used to be, I need to use the darker schemes, but I also need good contrast to see what I am doing. What I would suggest (and will tinker with myself as soon as I can) is greater contrast in the "Black" scheme at least, and the addition of a reddish scheme--that is, a warmer dark scheme than what is currently available.

I will take a look at the source and see how hard/easy it is to build Helio on an Arch-based distro and go from there. If there is something specific I need to know about implementing color schemes, let me know, but I will look into the frameworks you are using as well if I need to.

[peterrudenko]

If there is something specific I need to know about implementing color schemes, let me know, but I will look into the frameworks you are using as well if I need to.

My code responsible for tweaking color schemes is an ancient abomination written somewhere back in 2014, but you probably won't have to change it. In the end it relies upon a number of color constants, with a bit obscure naming, defined here: https://github.com/helio-fm/helio-workstation/blob/7e060c33b2f8eaa74b8ced14ca6c65f0651e01cf/Resources/colourSchemes.json#L2

One way to add your own custom scheme is creating a file ~/Documents/Helio/colourSchemes.json with a content like this:

{
  "colourSchemes": {
    "colourScheme": [
      {
        "name": "Whatever",
        "colourMap": {
          "text": "ffffffff",
          "primaryGradientA": "ff25252e",
          "primaryGradientB": "ff25252e",
          "secondaryGradientA": "ff27262f",
          "secondaryGradientB": "ff27262f",
          "lassoFill": "17000000",
          "lassoBorder": "ffad7fff",
          "whiteKey": "ff33323c",
          "blackKey": "ff1b1a1f",
          "beat": "bf1b1923",
          "bar": "271b1923",
          "row": "ff1b1923",
          "panelFill": "18ffffff",
          "panelBorder": "afffffff",
          "iconBase": "29ffffff",
          "iconShadow": "ff000000"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Once you run the app, this scheme will be appended to the schemes list in settings, so you can try changing some colors in text editor and re-starting the app and re-applying the scheme to see if it's good enough for you. Which is not very convenient, of course.

Another way, a bit more interactive, which I use to create schemes, would be to set #define JUCE_ENABLE_LIVE_CONSTANT_EDITOR 1 right here: https://github.com/helio-fm/helio-workstation/blob/7e060c33b2f8eaa74b8ced14ca6c65f0651e01cf/Projects/Projucer/JuceLibraryCode/AppConfig.h#L258

Then build in debug mode, and then, when running the app, you'll see the second window:

There you can set colors, switch back to the main window and press F1 which applies changes and copies scheme json to the system clipboard.
Hope it helps.

[erikjms]

Sweet! Thank you @peterrudenko. I saw the code for the in-app theme editor and got all excited. I can lose hours, days, weeks, to tweaking color schemes.

Is ok. I'm too old to tweak on some of the stuff I used to.

If I come up with something I think is useful, compelling, and nice-looking, I'll pass it along.