Improved Pattern Navigation for Pattern-View

Wishlist Draft wishes
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1

For the Tracker and Tracker+ the pads are a great way to navigate between patterns (or visualize the active pattern). But this functionality is currently not fully fleshed out.

This wish is already very opinionated, but if you feel there is room for improvement, please feel free to do so! :blush:

What is the problem?

At the moment you only have access to the first 48 patterns via the pads. This is most likely because there hasn’t been a good UX proposal yet, to go beyond.

This wish proposes an enhancement to this functionality that should cover most usecases when used in Pattern-View.

What should this feature achieve?

When you Press and hold the Pattern Button, the screen should change from this:

865×66 10.1 KB

To this:

865×66 9.45 KB

This enhanced view can cover most use cases and gives a visual indicator where you are (in conjunction with highlighting the physical pads).

Naming Convention used from here on out:

  • Pattern-Button = The regular Pattern Screen-Button. Indicated by Pattern 7 in the screenshot.
  • Page-Button = Newly proposed Screen-Button. Indicated by the text 01-48 and the Indicator-Dots. Pressing this button will cycle through all available Pattern-Pages
  • Add to Queue = Newly proposed Screen-Button. Specific for queuing patterns during playback. This should work as a toogle (ON/OFF)

Pattern switching has multiple contexts where it can currently be used:

  • Non-Playback / Editing - when editing patterns or no playback is active
  • During Playback - when patterns are playing during song mode or regular pattern loop

It also can be used in different ways:

  • via Pads
  • via Joghweel
  • via Arrow Keys

Thereby below you will find multiple usage-scenarios.
In every scenario, the goal is to jump from pattern 1 to pattern 49.

To make it easier to understand the behaviour and get a feeling, i’ve also created a small interactive demo, It is by no means a complete demo (requires keyboard and mousewheel):

Non-Playback / Editing Scenarios

Navigating with the Pads

  1. The first pad is highlighted, indicating that Pattern 1 is active
  2. Press and hold the Pattern-Button
  3. Press the Page-Button to cycle between all available pages
    • Press once to reach Page 2
    • The text above the Button changes to 49-96 and the second Dot is highlighted.
  4. The first pad is no longer highlighted, press it, to activate pattern 49
  5. Let go of the Pattern-Button

Navigating with the Jogwheel

  1. The first pad is highlighted, indicating that Pattern 1 is active
  2. Press and hold the Pattern-Button
  3. Move your jogwheel to switch between patterns, the highlighted pad moves with your changes (current behaviour).
  4. Once you reach Pattern 49, the text above the Page-Button would change to 49-96 and the second Dot would be highlighted
  5. The highlighted pad would round-robin to the start (top-left pad) to indicate pattern 49.
  6. Let go of the Pattern-Button

Navigating with the Arrow Keys

There are two possible behaviours here - depending if the current Arrow-key behaviour should be kept or changed.

Based on how Arrow-Keys work right now, it would have to be the following:

  • Arrow Up / Down - Navigate between patterns one pattern at a time, as expected.
  • If Pattern 49 is reached, the Page-Button text would change as explained above.
  • Arrow Left / Right - Does the same thing, but it will queue the pattern (again - this is the current tracker behaviour)
  • Pressing the Page-Button would allow you to quickly cycle between all available pages, to quickly jump from one set of 48 patterns to the next.
    • When jumping between pages, pressing a key to navigate further should always start at the first pattern of that screen.

Alternate Behaviour:

  • The arrows allow you to navigate within the 2 dimensional grid of the pads
  • Arrow Up / Down would be +/- 12 patterns. Visually navigating up and down on the pads.
  • Arrow Left / Right would be +/- 1 pattern. Visually navigating left and right on the pads.

During Playback Scenarios

Navigating with the Pads

  1. The first pad is highlighted, indicating that Pattern 1 is active
  2. Press and hold the Pattern-Button
  3. Decide if you want to immediately switch to a pattern once you press a pad or if you want to queue your final destination.
    • If you want to queue: press Add to Queue to enable it.
  4. Press the Page-Button to cycle between all available pages
    • Press once to reach Page 2, indicated by the text changing to 49-96 and the second Dot being highlighted.
  5. Press the first pad to active it or queue it
  6. Let go of the Pattern-Button

Navigating with the Jogwheel

  1. The first pad is highlighted, indicating that Pattern 1 is active
  2. Press and hold the Pattern-Button
  3. Decide if you want to immediately switch to a pattern once you move the joghweel or if you want to queue your final destination.
    • If you want to queue: press Add to Queue to enable it.
  4. Move your jogwheel to switch between patterns, the highlighted pad moves with your changes.
  5. Once you reach Pattern 49, the text above the Page-Button would change to 49-96 and the second Dot would be highlighted
  6. If you decided to queue: the queue will become active once you let go of the Pattern-Button. If you wanted immediate changes, the pattern will already have changed.

Navigating with the Arrow Keys

There are two possible behaviours here - depending if the current arrow-key behaviour should be kept or changed.

Based on how Arrow Keys work right now, it would have to be the following:

  • Arrow Up/Down - Navigate between patterrns as expected. If Pattern 49 is reached, the Page-Button text would change as explained above. Pattern change is immediate during navigation.
  • Arrow Left/Right - Does the same thing, but it will queue the pattern (again - this is the current tracker behaviour)
  • Pressing the Page-Button would allow you to quickly cycle between all available pages, to quickly jump from one set of 48 patterns to the next.
    • When jumping between pages, pressing a key to navigate further should always start at the first pattern of that screen.

Alternate Behaviour:

Here you also have to decide before moving if you want to immediatly change patterns or if you want to queue the change. If you want to queue it, press Add to Queue first.

  • The arrows allow you to navigate within the 2 dimensional grid of the pads
    • Arrow Up / Down would be +/- 12 patterns. Visually navigating up and down on the pads
    • Arrow Left / Right would be +/- 1 pattern. Visually navigating left and right on the pads

Sidenote:

  • The Trackers currently support 255 patterns.
  • 255 / 48 = 5.3125 Pattern-Pages

To make full use of this paging system and to not have one page that only supports a handful of patterns, it would thereby be useful to increase this limit to 288 Patterns.

Are there any workarounds?

Use the current implementation

Any links to related discussions?

Discussions:

Existing wishes that will be superseded by this one (but cover their usecases as well):

Any references to other products?

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3 Likes
2

Perfect

3

Added an interactive demo, so people can get a feel of what i mean (requires Keyboard and a Mousewheel):

2 Likes
4

This wish would supersede two existing wishes:

I’ve asked the wish-makers if they’d be willing to retire their wishes in favor of this one, as it solves both problems.

2 Likes
5

And you told me that you are not a developer ) Great example, that’s what I meant.

6

So. Only one question, what think about this Polyend Developers.

7

Hey, Queuing Pattern wish “owner” here. Just reading to understand now. Let me see.

8

I am in favor of this enhanced wish. I agree to have mine closed in favor of this one.

3 Likes
9

Hey @Meitao, thank you! :heart:
I’ll keep yours open for as long as this one has not been approved