Thoughts about pads colors and scales

Play
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Hello everyone!
Happy owner of a Play+ for a few months now, I can only congratulate Polyend for the joy and new creative doors this machine has opened for me. However, I have two issues, and I don’t think there’s a practical workaround for them. I’d love to get your opinion before maybe submitting something to the community vote.

1. I’d like to be able to color the pads in the “patterns” panel.
I sing, sometimes play synths or other instruments, and in some songs there are more “free” moments. For example, if I’m playing guitar, I can’t press the pads to switch sequences — so I have to program all the sequences one after another so they play in order. That can lead to a lot of pads, and I sometimes get lost in a sea of white buttons.
I’d love to be able to color certain pads to quickly find my way, know exactly where I am, and see when the next change is coming.
It’s especially important for live performances — moments when I’m both super happy… and very, very stressed. (And that’s one more source of stress!)

2. Scales.
I’m a strong supporter of user scales.
I hate scales — I find them anti-creative. If I set my track to C major, I’m cutting off the black keys before I even know what I’m going to do, and defining a scale after composing is useless to me (we’re not in the Middle Ages — I’m not sending sheet music to another monastery!).
I started making music thanks to Sonic Youth — a good note is one that sounds good; good taste matters more than academic theory.

BUT when I began making sound for radio fiction, I got into VCV Rack and generative music. So I needed to limit which notes could be generated. But even then, I didn’t use scales — I used a keyboard module that let me allow or forbid specific notes, because (and this is important) even if those notes fit into a scale, I never want all of the notes in that scale to be available.

That’s why I don’t use the generative note functions of the Play+, which is a shame — they seem incredibly powerful.

I have the feeling that many users of your product might not be familiar with music theory and would feel much more comfortable with a note selector instead of traditional scales. But that’s just my impression.

In any case, it would be a big plus for me (and It would definitely upgrade my lovely partner in crime to a… Polyend Play++!).

Am I alone feeling all this?

Thanks for your attention !

4 Likes
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+1 for custom scales and coloured pads, both features I’d love to see

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I was going to post about having the ability to color code pads, but saw this so I’m going to boost this instead as it’s a new post.

I’d like to add on to the color coding of the pads. I think a good way to go about it would be to allow the user to apply colors to different sample folders. That would probably allow for the easiest way to color code things and it also would fit perfectly in the folder structure the Play uses. You could probably have the color options set in the menu system for loading and viewing samples and folders.

An example of this would be importing a folder that contains all drum sounds and then being asked what color samples from that folder should be. So you could pick blue and then any note that is placed from a sample in the “drums” folder would show as blue when put on the grid

I think it would also be incredibly useful for identifying where certain samples come from when using the randomize feature.Even if you wanted to just apply a universal color to each track, that would be an incredible option for helping to distinguish what tracks are what in a busy arrangement.

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+1 for both