Workflow improvements

[shield]

Hi,

I'm mostly happy with nerdseq, in particular I love the sample tracks that have brought back the fun of breakbeat slicing for me. I love to use nerdseq like the clipview in ableton and enjoy editing the patterns live.

However, I'm frequently running into a few smaller issues that quickly cause disaster in a live situation. My biggest gripe is the input of the effects. While scrolling through the massive list of effects, these are already active and can cause huge mayhem (setting tempo, active playing pattern, break, ...) once the sequencer plays the step that is currently being edited.

I think this could be much improved by having a way to edit the effect in a separate menu and to commit the effect into the sequencer.
For example you could press OK on the effect field which brings up this menu. In this menu, the commands could be grouped together in multiple lines to allow quick access, for example for trigger commands, sample related effects, etc. The ones most likely to be used should be at the top for quick access. I would essentially imagine this as a 2D array of effect commands.

This means while you select the effect, it would not be active, but only go live once you press enter to insert it. In this screen you could also enter the actual effect values to avoid disaster while scrolling through, for example when setting up the sample offset. Maybe this could even be considered for the note column as well but I feel that note entry is much more fluent than effect values.


The most frequent way I run into this:
I set a BREAK command after 16 steps and then want to start slicing the break. But since BREAK now was the last active command, when I want to change sample offset somewhere I will instead insert BREAK. And at 170 bpm chances are high that your pattern then is thrown out of sync. Bonus points for accidentally triggering STSP in the process which basically means game over.


Another minor annoyance: when entering offset commands and you press shift + arrow up it will go to the highest possible value, however you cannot delete this value again but have to painstakingly scroll down both fields. (shift + down arrow down does not work). I feel like this behavior is wrong in multiple ways:

• The higher byte can only go from 0-16, shift + up should use a slower increment, maybe 4?
  
• Shift + down arrow should go all the way to zero (this is true for the cursor being on high or low byte)
  
• Editing the higher byte should not change the lower byte
  

Using shift+down arrow on the effect column does not go all the way to zero either


And lastly, for convenience it would be nice when setting up the BPM value command if the bpm value could be displayed in decimal somewhere. I also noticed that the BPM value of nerdseq seems to be incorrect: When syncing elektron devices to nerdseq, they report a higher BPM than what nerdseq claims. Found the option to show the decimal value. It does not work for midi program change though. Wrong bpm was fixed by updating the firmware. I missed the the 1.21A update over 1.21.

Sorry for this long wall of text, I love my nerdseq despite these frustrations


edit: rembered two more suggestions:

It would be awesome to allow one of the CV inputs to be used to enter effect values / notes / etc that currently are under the cursor. I thought that Cursor CV would be the correct input but I cannot get it to work.

For the sample load menu it would be awesome if nerdseq would remember the last folder visited and maybe even remember the last sample selected.

[XORadmin]

Hi there and thanks for the suggestions. Let me get into it:
A extra menu for the FX input is already planned. Since the FX list is only growing, it is not the nices option anymore to browse through them.
As for the break command problem. SHIFT+ RIGHT will insert the last used FX command. However, SHIFT+LEFT will insert the first FX command, so you won't end up in a break at any time.

Another minor annoyance: when entering offset commands and you press shift + arrow up it will go to the highest possible value, however you cannot delete this value again but have to painstakingly scroll down both fields. (shift + down arrow down does not work). I feel like this behavior is wrong in multiple ways:

• The higher byte can only go from 0-16, shift + up should use a slower increment, maybe 4?
  
• Shift + down arrow should go all the way to zero (this is true for the cursor being on high or low byte)
  
• Editing the higher byte should not change the lower byte
  

I understand that. But there is an issue here and if you got a good idea on how the editing should be (and don't think only about the offset value only, because that one is only a 12 bit value and so the highest byte is not used and you can't edit it with SHIFT UP/DOWN.).
It has to be comfortable to edit 16 bit values, but without a high effort to get to the higher values or the lower values. I guess it might be better already to get the overflow situations better. But adding 4 instead of the Higher digit is not a solution as it would not be comfortable anymore to edit higher values.
For now, each pair of the digits is being seen as it's own number, except for the lower one can overflow.
The last 2 of your 3 examples are not consistent to each other. If you got a good and consistent idea, i'd be happy to try it out. Don't forget also the FX functions which have multiple functionality. Any overflowing might be unwanted. So a generic situation is needed.

It would be awesome to allow one of the CV inputs to be used to enter effect values / notes / etc that currently are under the cursor. I thought that Cursor CV would be the correct input but I cannot get it to work.

That should work. You would need to add also a Gate to this, on the gate situation it will enter the note. (or when holding it, removing the note)

For the sample load menu it would be awesome if nerdseq would remember the last folder visited and maybe even remember the last sample selected.

On my 2do list and requested before. There is not much memory to load a full directory in there (thats also why sorting is not easily possible). Last folder is definitely possible to add, really on the last sample is something i got to check out and see if i can realise that consistently.

[shield]

Thanks for the detailed answer and thanks for pointing out the effects shortcut to insert the first effect, this will certainly help! Just for consistency, shouldn't this also be working for note input?

If I understand you correctly you are saying that all of the increment/decrement handling of the effect values is generic/shared, regardless of their resolution or effect. I agree that point 2 and 3 of my list contradict each other. I think the easiest fix for consistency with the current behavior would be to allow going to 0 by changing the higher byte with down-arrow.

[XORadmin]

Thanks for the detailed answer and thanks for pointing out the effects shortcut to insert the first effect, this will certainly help! Just for consistency, shouldn't this also be working for note input?

If I understand you correctly you are saying that all of the increment/decrement handling of the effect values is generic/shared, regardless of their resolution or effect. I agree that point 2 and 3 of my list contradict each other. I think the easiest fix for consistency with the current behavior would be to allow going to 0 by changing the higher byte with down-arrow.

It works the same for note inputs. SHIFT-Left will bring you always C-4 which is kind of the base/first note.

The increment/decrement handling is kind of generic. It used to be completely generic, but later on some functions turned out to be better edited in different ways and a generic usage would not be enough (see for example with the CV16 Expander effects). But to have a different behaviour for every FX field is so much work, i rather spend time integrating new cool functions.

Changing the full FX value to 0 on the left byte when SHIFT-DOWN on that is definitely an option, but also dangerous because one would directly get rid of probably lower byte details. So holdnig SHIFT+DOWN can be 'destructive' as well.

[shield]

It works the same for note inputs. SHIFT-Left will bring you always C-4 which is kind of the base/first note.

This works for me on the sample track but not on the modular or midi tracks.