Sorry everyone that it's taken several months before I've had a chance to look at this feedback.
miek wrote: ↑05-06-20 5:44 pm
... for it to have a drop off (hysteresis) effect going on if you don't make any mistakes at all - eg: play 10 notes correctly, then one wrong - it goes up to count that error - but if you make the next ten notes then the counter goes back to zero.
This sounds exactly like the "life meter" you find in rhythm games like DDR, Guitar Hero, or Beat Saber. As long as the bar isn't empty, the song progresses. Mistakes drain the bar. Correct notes re-fill the bar.
Because it's such a familiar idiom (and with good reason: it works very well!), I'd probably choose that one first whenever something like this makes it in.
miek wrote: ↑05-06-20 5:44 pm
But when your mouse pointer gets near the top left of the sheet music, clicking there will take you back to the beginning of the song
That's a known issue, sorry! Instead of fixing it this time around (10.7) I was planning to revamp the whole sheet music scrolling behavior some more in 10.8. It will be fixed by then.
miek wrote: ↑05-06-20 5:44 pm
The loop control buttons (Loop Start / End / Entire Loop) don't now move/stretch the loop start and end like they did before.
I wasn't able to reproduce this. Is this in every song or only a particular one?
miek wrote: ↑05-06-20 5:44 pm
When dragging with the mouse in the measure window at the top, when the pointer moves out of the measure window you stop dragging it and have to start again.
Oh, interesting! The sheet music is stealing the mouse focus. If you turn off sheet music, it doesn't happen when the mouse goes above or below the timeline, but with sheet enabled it stops dragging when you cross into that area. I'll get that fixed. Nice catch.
miek wrote: ↑05-06-20 5:44 pm
... when you have sheet music up on multi line and try to create a loop, the page does not shift when you drag over the visible page.
These are the sorts of things I was going to try and tackle with that additional revamp in 10.8. There are a few situations where it doesn't behave quite the way you'd like it to... and we can do better than that.
miek wrote: ↑05-06-20 5:44 pm
... it doesn't scale, so you loose the spots on the white keys first but it still shows the black keys until it is moved almost off the page.
Do you mean the note labels? What are "the spots on the white keys"? Do you mean the round, colored "next note" indicators? This has been a thorn in Synthesia's side for a long time. There is a pretty major under-the-hood technology revamp coming to labels in 10.8 (to make them use
much less CPU). I'll see if I can't fit a fix for this in the meantime. Rather than squashing the keys vertically, I'd rather just slide the labels up (or, rather, keep them in the same place relative to the screen; vs. relative to the keyboard).
miek wrote: ↑05-17-20 4:52 pm
It doesn't say 'F' properly - All the others are fine.
We caught that just after this preview went out the door, sorry! It's already been fixed and will show up in the next preview.
Gregor wrote: ↑05-18-20 4:54 am
... no error appears when showing the note tag
I'm afraid I don't know what this means. What do you mean by a note tag?
paronym wrote: ↑05-19-20 6:04 pm
... so I could immediately play back my recording.
If you just press the record button again (but then don't play any notes), it should play all your other tracks back immediately. Or is this too different than the usual Play screen? (E.g., there is no timeline, which makes it a little tedious waiting for a part you were curious about.) I went back and forth a few times about making a kind of "quick play" button that would jump you over to the play screen. I can still see lots of pros and cons. (The main con is simply the added complexity of more controls on the Free Play screen.)
paronym wrote: ↑05-19-20 6:04 pm
Also, it would be useful to be able to delete all the tracks/instruments at once, rather than one-by-one.
I could probably fit this in somewhere. It could even be framed as "New Song" or "Start Over" instead of "Delete All Tracks".
paronym wrote: ↑05-19-20 11:53 pm
In this 10.7 Preview, I've found that when I go into 'Play a Song', the very first note of any music doesn't play any sound on my Casio keyboard.
I'll check this out. I've got a couple Casio test keyboards around here. I'm having trouble imagining what might have changed to make this happen, but then again it's been like four months since I've looked at any of the code.
Gregor wrote: ↑05-20-20 12:24 pm
It would be nice to give the option to overwrite file if possible
I was trying to save a little effort with handling all the edge cases and adding lots of confirmation prompts. Hmm. I always worry about touching people's files, which is why Synthesia never modifies an existing MIDI file. Overwriting one feels almost as bad. Maybe it could suggest a number that could be tacked onto the end to prevent the duplicate?
Are you running into this problem because you are jumping over to the play screen to audition the song between edits? If there were a quick play button that didn't require saving the song to disk, would that solve this problem a different way?
Gregor wrote: ↑05-20-20 12:35 pm
When it comes to deleting a track, I think it would be much more practical if you could drag the trash directly onto a track.
It's a little tricky to signal when a drag is possible. And then a tap (or click) on a screen with a tiny bit of extra movement can sometimes be tracked as a spurious drag and lead to a bit of confusion. Going in the opposite direction, I could have gone further with the current style and added the little "jiggle" animation that you see in places like the iPhone to let you know you're in a special "deleting" mode.
Gregor wrote: ↑05-20-20 12:35 pm
I find missing the possibility of being able to individually listen to the created tracks
This one is all about balance. For each control that I add up in that top corner, it continues to eat more screen real-estate and give a first impression of clutter and confusion.
I had considered a little mixer-style volume bar below each track. Not only would that let you listen to things individually, but it would even let you balance things for the eventual saved song. So instead of being an edit-only feature, it would enhance the richness of songs you could produce with the tool.
The idea is to get something out there and gather feedback on the most important parts that are missing. Rather than front-load it with a bunch of stuff that is completely divorced from reality that I thought might be useful, I figure I'd put it in your guys' hands and hear about what's actually going to make it useful. 