Describe the improvement here, in one paragraph. Then fill the sections below.
Song mode could benefit from allowing the user to see more upcoming Slots during playback. The current playback only allows 1 additional slot to be seen as it plays through the song. This could be achieved if Song mode mimicked the playback of Pattern mode by moving the page when the cursor reaches the middle of the screen.
What is the problem?
It is difficult to anticipate upcoming Slots in Song mode, especially when playing a longer song with many slots.
What do you want to achieve?
Allowing the Song mode screen to progress with the cursor, or when the cursor reaches the middle of the screen, while playing a song.
Are there any workarounds?
Kind of, a user can hit REC and turn the jog wheel to show upcoming slots in the Song. Pressing REC again will snap the cursor back to the currently playing Slot, and the screen will continuing showing all slots past the current one. However, this becomes tedious as a user can only see an additional 13 slots before needing to repeat the process.
Any links to related discussions?
I included this discussion because I believe we have the same end goal - to make song mode more accessible with the playback screen:
Any references to other products?
- The Pattern mode of the Tracker is a good reference. You’re able to anticipate upcoming and previous rows really well the way it locks the screen to the cursor with playback.
- The Octatrack’s arranger feature uses this kind of playback, it’s surprisingly robust for such a frustrating screen!
a.) As an alternative also in line with the OT’s arranger, I considered suggesting an ‘Empty Slot’ feature where we could simply add text data across the row, and during playback the slot would simply be skipped. However, this wouldn’t really work without the above feature as the skipped row would only appear for 1 slot before its skipped and the song moves to the section we were trying to anticipate.
