Family Name: Gloomii

Region (NA/EU): EU

Suggestions/Comments:

Hello!

I want to preface this post by introducing myself. I'm Gloomii. An avid musician/music producer of 10+ years with extensive experience with many DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) and Piano Rolls and I've been using and creating music through the music composition tool (music album -> compose) on and off for many years, recently getting back into it more.

During my time, I've encountered many and multiple inconveniences that I believe hinder the workflow and overall experience for both beginner musicians and experienced musicians alike. I feel that, with the ever-growing community and more people being interested in both playing and creating music, that the composition tool needs some more love and care to both refine and upgrade the experience; Allowing more musicians to create the kind of music they want.

I will be grading each problem and their proposed solution with the following priorities so the most important suggestions can be taken into consideration first:

High Priority

Medium Priority

Low Priority

HIGH PRIORITY:

- Increase Max Shai Musicianship Grade (preferably to A or A+)

We've been stuck at C for many years now, and I think its about time for our shais to graduate. With this graduation will of course come with an increase to the note and measure limit. Would allow for more complex compositions and greater creativity.

- Note and Measure Limit Increase to 4800 note limit and 150/200 measures, respectively.

Shais with a max musicianship grade of C- are limited to a note limit of 1200 (per instrument) and a measure limit of roughly 100. I believe this is simply not enough. For example, currently a 3 minute song at 140bpm can barely just about make it if you adjust the time signature to 6/8. Compromising a song's BPM in order to facilitate most songs isn't and shouldn't be the only solution to resolve this. 150-200 measures should allow for almost any song to be created with ease.

As for the note limit, it has become increasingly more frustrating to not have the freedom to accurately create instrument parts, often having to make compromises that often times, negatively affect the end result. For example: If you are someone that enjoys creating rock and metal songs, you'll soon realize that trying to accurately represent any guitar part will absolutely eat up your note limit. This is relevant to any song that has fast strumming notes or power chords. Having to adjust your composition to compensate for this often-times leaves it sounding worse than you intended.

Overall expanding the note and measure limits would significantly improve the composition experience for all players, especially those looking to create longer or more intricate compositions.

- Hotkeys and shortcuts!

This could be chalked up to a workflow thing but I would personally LOVE to have hotkeys and shortcuts outside of copy/paste be a thing. The current copy/paste is slow, requiring you to click the measure you want to paste at. I personally utilize hotkeys ALL the time to shift notes about and duplicate notes in my own work and I think this would overall speed up the arguably sluggish and slow workflow we currently have using the mouse. Here are my proposed hotkeys and shortcuts.

Upon highlighting a note(s):

Shift + Arrow Keys - Note Transposition/moving

Moves/shifts the position of the notes up or down, or repositioning the note left or right according to your Note Attribute setting.

CTRL + Arrow Keys - Octave Transpositioning

Transposes/moves the current selection of notes up or down an octave depending on whether Up Arrow or Down Arrow combination was used.

CTRL + D - Duplicating Notes

Duplicates an exact copy of the note(s) highlighted to the end of the last note highlighted, or in the case of a single highlighted note, duplicate it next to the highlighted note.

Scroll wheel - Velocity increase/reduction

Highlighting and using scroll wheel on a note will increase or reduce its velocity in increments of 5-10. If velocity increment is 127 with any of the increments of 5 or 10, etc bring velocity to 125 or 120 respectively.

This change would help streamline the composition process and enhance workflow by making it more efficient for experienced players.

MEDIUM PRIORITY:

- Give certain instruments a "Legato/Glide Technique"

This would be a great addition as it would allow notes to essentially glide from one to another. Think picking a string and sliding your finger from the 12th fret down to the 1st on a bass. The possibilities would be endless. Would help to give compositions more depth and enhance "realism". This would be most beneficial for the following instruments: Guitar, Marnibass, Marni Pianos, Violin, Contrabass.

Proposed solution/implementation: 

Clicking on a note will display its velocity and technique. Changing "Basic" to "Legato/Glide" will enable new functionality to the note that allows it to glide to whatever note is layered with it, with the legato/glide duration being determined by however long the note its layered with is.

- Key and Scale Highlighting and Triplet Grid toggle

Scale highlighting is essentially temporarily locking the piano roll to notes within a certain key/scale. This could be implemented as 2 additional buttons next to the Techniques button, allowing you to set your composition to any Key and Scale. For example. C major, C minor, C phygian, C dorian or NONE scale selected to display original piano roll (Drop down windows for both)

This would help tremendously in aiding new and experienced players for adhering within a particular musical context.

It can either work in 2 ways. Simply highlighting all notes that adhere to that key/scale. or DIM the notes that aren't within that scale.

Here's a rough example of the "key" and "scale" drop down menus would look like, and if a player chose F# Major as their key and scale:

- Unrestrict the piano roll for all instruments across the board.

There are many issues with how the current system is. First of all, almost all of the instruments outside of the florchestra piano are limited to the PLAYABLE RANGE of notes they can use. While this makes sense because the soundfonts (I'm assuming the game uses soundfonts for the instruments) may not have samples for notes outside of its playable range, thus nothing will be heard if you try to place a note outside of it, it makes no sense with how the tool currently works when it comes to how it displays these notes.

Making such notes completely inaccessible to be deleted, thus clogging up your note limit.

Here is a video example of the issue: Music Composition Tool | PIANO ROLL ISSUE - YouTube

As you can see in the video, once I copy notes from one instrument to the next, some of the notes are essentially "hidden" from view because the piano roll for the violin is limited to its playable range. It is only after you drag these notes up to fit in the range they are all visible. However, if you were to miss click, those notes will continue to be present for that part and contribute to the note limit.

Suggested fix

To open the piano roll up to same range as the piano, but instead DIM the upper and lower notes outside of its playable range, so you can adjust these notes and/or remove them accordingly.

Here is a visual example of my proposed solution. Bare in mind it would obviously look better as well as apply to all other instruments except drums.

LOW PRIORITY:

- Include 1/2 Note Attribute

We have everything from a quarter note to a sixty-fourth note, why do we not have a half note? Sure you can adjust any other note to account for it but it seems like an oversight to not have had it in by default.

- Improve linearity of instrument velocity

Using the florchestra piano, going from a velocity of 90 to 100 is an incredibly huge jump in volume to what you would normally expect. This velocity jump is also present on almost all instruments but isn't as extreme as the florchestra piano. This change would make the instruments more consistent and contribute to a more polished sound in player's compositions.

- Improve the sound quality of the florchestra violin

This is more of a nitpick on my end. In my opinion, the florchestra violin is one of the weakest instruments out of all florchestra instruments in terms of sound quality, it is relatively simple to make it sound good but that results in merticulous velocity changes and effects to make it sound better.

 E GUITAR