The FIll function is one of the amazing features of the Tracker but there is some room for further improvements. One area where it can be improved is the Where section.
Currently only one condition can be selected which can be limiting at times.It would be great if the user could compose more complex conditions, like ‘Note AND No FX’ or ‘No Note AND Random’.
Existing conditions can be grouped into three independent groups:
- Note and No Note.
- FX and No FX.
- Random, Euclidean, Each.
The proposal is to allow the user to multi-select up to three conditions but no more than one from the same group. Note and No Note make no sense together 
What is the problem?
The current FIll implementation is good for filling empty patterns with initial sequences but it’s not quite useful when you have an existing pattern which you’d like to modify further to build some variations.
What do you want to achieve?
Some use cases which I can think of right now:
- ‘Note AND No FX’ to populate FX for steps which have a note but no FX yet. Existing FXs must not be changed.
- ‘Note AND Random’ to change some of the notes of the existing melody to generate a variation of it. No new steps must be filled only the existing ones must be changed.
- ‘No Note AND Random’ to add new notes to the existing melody. Existing notes should not be changed.
- ‘Note AND Each = 2’ to populate every other note step with random panning or another type of effect.
Are there any workarounds?
No.
Any links to related discussions?
No.
Any references to other products?
No.
There is a completely different way of achieving the same without indroducing of tricky multi-selection UI which also looks way more versatile and powerful.
If Fill would allow selecting steps without filling them (through Shift + Fill, for instance), the user could first select steps by some criterion and then run Fill over the selected steps and apply the second criterion they want. Fill works over the selection, right?
Let’s consider the ‘Note AND Each = 2’ scenario. Run Fill, Where? = Note, Shift + Fill. All the steps with notes are selected. Run Fill one more time, Where? = Each 2, then apply Fill as usual. Boom, every other note step gets filled with data.
This approach would bring much more than just that. Currently the Tracker doesn’t allow selection with gaps which means only steps that go one after another can be selected. But this way the user could, for example, select every fourth note step and transpose them octave up with the Jog. Or select every other step and delete them. This would be excellent for variations creation.
This is a more prefferable approach to me, but I can’t decide on which one the wish should be focusing. Thank you for your attention. This is definitely not a voting-ready wish yet. Let’s discuss, please
