Re: [Lmuse-developer] Drum tracks should have selectable channel, patch and bank

[Florian J. <flo...@we...>]

Am 17.09.2011 15:42, schrieb Florian Jung:
> Hi
>
> the drum tracks should have a configurable channel, patch and bank
> settings (patch and bank seems to work, but not channel!)
>
> there is an extension to general midi: Yamaha XG. XG allows you to use
> any channel as drum channel, as long the bank is set to 127 (i believe
> but am not sure that it's enough if the low 7bits of the bank are 127).
> so muse should support this as well.
>
> first, all the channel spinboxes and the channel entry in the list
> (which are either grayed out or set to "-") should be accessible as well.
>
> second, whenever the user changes some drum track's channel from 10 to
> something different, and if the bank is NOT 127, the user gets prompted
> whether he wants muse to set the bank to 127 ("yes", "no", "yes,always";
> "no,never").
>
> i don't know which code parts are responsible for this, so i'd ask
> someone of you to either do this or tell me which places i have to look at.
>
> greetings and thanks
> flo
>    

oops. i just looked at it... it's not as easy (or hard? we'll see...) as 
the above:

the drum editors support setting an own channel and port for each 
"sound" (entry in the list. expand the list then you see it). however, 
there is some stuff missing:

    * (it's impossible to add or remove entries to/from the list. maybe
      this should be kept, as it may be really hard to change it. it
      seems that drum tracks internally map their drums to midi notes,
      but when playing, they've some kind of "dictionary" to translate a
      "midi note" to a combination of "port, channel, played note".)
    * there must be some window or sidebar (<-- yay!) which lists you
      all "channel/port" combinations used by the drum editor, and
      allows you to set their patch and bank. alternatively, there must
      be a "patch" column in the drum editor's "sound" list. whenever
      changing a patch and/or bank, all sounds with the same
      "channel/port" combination must be updated as well.

with these two things done, the drum editor would be able to deal with 
non-channel-10 drums


alternatively:

    * the "channel" and "port" column are removed from the drum editor
    * the drum track's "channel" columns are made accessible (as
      described above) again.


i prefer the first solution, as it's more powerful. however, some 
user-friendly way to simply change the patch must be provided. this can 
be done, for example, by some side bar which gives you a patch/bank 
spinbox for each "channel/port" combination.

the second solution is simple, but doesn't really abstract nice.


my favourite solution:

    * add an hideable side bar to the drum editor which lists all
      "channel/port" combinations, and allows you to set "patch and
      bank" for them.
    * whenever a MIDI track wants to use some channel/port combination
      which is already occupied by any drum track, display a warning message
    * whenever you change a drum's channel from 10 to something
      different, ask the user whether he wants muse to automatically set
      the bank to 127 or not.

this seems quite simple to me.
if you (robert :)? or anyone else?) offer me a backend function for 
setting and getting "patch/bank" for each "channel/port" combination (of 
course, with all the stuff required that muse really SETS that patch and 
bank when playing), and tell me at which places you can change a MIDI 
(not drum) track's channel, then i could take care of the rest (that is, 
the GUI stuff).



what do you think about this? (especially you, robert, as you seem to be 
the one who knows the drum edit good ;) )


greetings and thanks
flo