Posted
I would like to be able to mouse-sketch in, and also to mouse-edit, melodies straight into a HN window, piano roll style -- a basic and (I would have thought) indispensable function which befits a programme of this complexity and sophistication in this price range. Am I really the only person who misses this? I don't see it on to-do list on the website.
I would like to use HN to suggest chord progressions for melodies, but I have been unable to find a cheap or free Mac programme with which to input my melodies by mouse (or, if necessary, keyboard -- though I am not a keyboard player, so I would at least need to edit them), just as I used to be able to do with Cubase on an Atari 1040ST in the mid-eighties, nearly 25 yrs ago.
I have tried recording straight into HN with my MIDI Keyboard controller, but although it works as expected in triggering off chords in a palette window once all the relevant preferences are set and tick-boxes are ticked, any attempt to record a melody in the Accompaniments window as per instructions results in a few very long, drawn out, random low notes played back to me which were not the ones I played and are not the ones showing on the screen (which appear to be the ones I played), an absence of audio feedback while playing, no chords appearing in the chord selection field when a note is selected, and no way of correcting, editing or otherwise altering the recorded notes (which can be seen, messy but correct as I played them, on the screen, but which play back incorrectly as described above).
I would very much like to work with both the melody and the accompaniment in a two-way process, as I do when composing on guitar. But all this makes it impossible.
Due to the extremely unintuitive and very un-Mac-like interface, and the incomplete documentation and tool tips, I am finding myself using the programme rarely although I have had it for some time, and am only accessing a fraction of its power when I do use it. I cannot afford Synfire Pro, and anyway there is no demo of it so I don't know for sure if it would really make it easier to do what I'm trying to do, although I would probably be heartbroken to find out that it did, given the prohibitive price. Of course, everything looks easy when an expert demonstrates it; even HN does.
As a chronic, bedridden invalid with substantial medical debts and decreasing ability to play the guitar due to autoimmune arthritis of the hands, and neurological co-ordination, learning and memory problems, I am beginning to feel quite desperate, as I live for music and always have done.
Ultimately, I find myself drifting back to the guitar, Sony DiscMan Recorder and TextEdit for composing -- while I can still play it at least -- because when I have the tune in my head, HN is of no immediate use, however educational and fun the palette window may be. It seems like such a waste of potential not to use HN for the purpose for which I bought it, because it's harder, not easier, to fit chords around an ever-evolving melody, with HN ... Trouble is, I am in such a rut with guitar chords, even after 35 years of playing, and HN is a good way of breaking those ingrained habits.
HN could do so much more with just that simple addition of piano roll melody mouse input and editing (not to mention a complete redesign of the GUI, following Apple user guidelines, although I suspect that some form of cross-platform IDE, and perhaps the ingrained habits and assumptions of the developers, are ensuring that HN remains awkwardly designed, even by M$Windows standards).
Surely a bit of code could be borrowed from Synfire Pro and modified to suit? Such a shining exception from the run of the mill music software should not be hidden behind such an interface and crippled by such an omission. I want to use the software regularly, not wrestle with it increasingly infrequently, give up in frustration and feel so much power so inaccessible.
Wed, 2009-04-22 - 23:30 Permalink
Thank you for your elaborate and honest feedback. A piano roll editor for melodies seems like a good idea and we will consider it.
Originally HN was designed mainly around the palette window and the intended purpose was focussed on "surfing harmony space", with a little progression editor attached. So the general UI concept was point-and-click-and-listen with additional information about the harmonic context on floating panels for different instruments.
A workflow focussed around building a song and editing a melody inside HN was not part of the original design. Those features (multiple parts, harmonizer, import) were added later on and in a way conflicted with the previous palette-centric UI scheme. It felt very much like attaching a house to the window.
We are familiar with the Apple HIG (and all of us work on Macs, btw), so we are aware of the usability issues with 1.6.1, which is why 2.0 is already on its way. However, as the same code needs to run on both Mac and PC, we need to find a balanced solution.
The major problem until now was the lack of a main document. Instead there were many of them: Palettes, catalogs, progressions, accompaniments, etc, all of which are not necessarily related (which is actually a good thing, conceptually). With HN 2.0, the new Song document will be the project to edit and save and all the others are arranged around it. Some of the achievements we made for Synfire Pro will also occur in HN 2.0.
The HN family will be split in two separate products: One lighter product that follows a simple "surf harmony space" approach and a more powerful product that features a song document, harmonizer, etc.
BTW: I can not reconstruct your recording problem. It might result from having the wrong interpretation set. To me it sounds like you have the automatic chord accompaniment turned on, or a very coarse quantization.
We much appreciate your opinions, so if you have any more suggestions, go ahead.
Andre