Jump to content

Add MIDI or Instrument Track from Piano Roll (and Staff) Track Pane


Starship Krupa

Recommended Posts

By suggestion of @Jim Fogle, I'm making this a separate feature request:

I would like to be able to right click in the Track Pane of the Piano Roll View to Insert MIDI (or Instrument) tracks. Since the Staff View also has a similar Track Pane, I'd like to see it there, too.

This would be accessed right-clicking anywhere in the Track Panes, including the space below the track list, the same way it works in Track View.

  • Great Idea 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/22/2020 at 8:57 AM, Jim Fogle said:

implementation would make track insertion consistent between views

I am all about consistency. It's important for the new user, learning curve and skill retention. The idea is that once someone learns "how Cakewalk does things" in one View, that skill and knowledge can be immediately put to use in the next one they tackle. "Oh, cool, there's a list of track headers here, so I should be able to work it like the list of track headers in the other views." One of my peeves is that the Track Manager is under different menus in Track View and Console View.

The root of the request came from realizing that in the View where I do the most work with MIDI/Instrument tracks, Piano Roll, I couldn't add a MIDI track without switching out of it and back to the Track or Console view. It cuts into efficiency. Especially for people on laptops who only have one screen and have the PRV maximized.

While I'm beating the efficiency drum, Drum Maps are my prime example of this kind of inefficiency: if you're working in the PRV and decide that you want to add a drum track (using a map), you must switch over to Track View both to add the track and to assign the map. You can show and hide the Drum Pane in the PRV, but from there, there's no way to proceed without going over to Track (to add the track and access the menu that assigns the Map), then going into the Drum Map dialog, then it's back to PRV. By which time, the mad beat (yo) that I wanted to lay down may or may not still be in my head.😆

This kind of thing is what makes a program's workflow feel "tight" or "loose" to me. How many context switches does it take to perform common tasks like adding a track? Even the beloved Track View, while it has a button for adding tracks, and you can do it from the right click, technically has no menu command for inserting tracks (it's up on the Global menu).

With  a PRV right-click menu command to add a track and a right-click menu in the  empty Drum Pane header that launches Drum Map manager, it would eliminate the trip to the Track View (with its mental context switch) entirely. I could even right-click, add a drum track  template and  be ready to go.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...