I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and I'm happy to be on a forum which
I can do the same.
In most commercial DAWs, changes within the daw (knobs, etc) have the
ability to be recorded directly in to the editor. This ability to record
tends to be the favored approach of automation for new composers, and the
record button is usually right there next to play and pause.
Since LMMS takes a more manual approach at automation events it makes
conversations like this interesting and lends to this concept (foreign to
me) of automation editors taking up a slots in the default project.
I have some ideas in regards to making new use of unused (or under-used)
interface real-estate (some which have already been proposed, some which I
plan to mention down the road) which I believe to greatly improve the
composition process for our users. Most of these make the song-editor
front-row-and-center for track content, and the beat/bassline is simply a
child of that interface.
Some areas are fantastically coded under the covers, but the interface code
simply lacks a few lines of code to get them working (dragging in SF2s,
DLLs).
Some great design decisions actually hurt music production in some ways
because of complexity in navigation (MDI windows).
But the biggest problem my songs suffer from is too many individual tracks.
This problem is mostly caused by 1. Using AudioFile processor for sample
tracks (for reasons already spelled out in bug reports). 2. Pads,
transitions and sound effects each taking their own track. 3. My own
inexperience with linking/layering multiple instruments into one midi
track. 4. My refusal to use beat/basslines for for anything that is not a
beat or bassline. :) ...
So.... When I envision another track in that mix, I truly, honestly believe
it is in the wrong direction of an already growing problem of too many
tracks.
Issue #1 will be fixed with a new SampleTrack
Issue #2 will be fixed with a "drum pad" type instrument (assign a
different sample to each key).
Issue #3 will be fixed with time and experience.
Issue #4 probably won't be addressed at all. Time will tell.
On a side note.... tap, tap BPM would be a fantastic addition!
I do find myself to be more productive with LMMS than any other DAW, so the
decisions made withe the interface thus far work well enough for me to
choose it over commercial software, so I can't knock it.
However, I do feel compelled to share my thoughts when asked and find
myself to be a fairly good judge of interface and usability design so I
hope the discussion to be well received.
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