Posted
I've brought it up before, but I think it is important. Make SFP make much use of colow in its pages
Make colors user definable.
I want to color my containers, I want to change hues of some containers to recognize they are similar to other containers, but with different bass parts, etc. Color is an easy way to distinguish changes.
I want to color instruments, to instantly see where parts are in each container.
I'd like to be able to see velocity as color/ switch to monochrome where appropriate
The brain and the eye work very well together and quickly grasp relationionships (sometimes not on a conscious level).
Any data you can intelligently colorize (and switch off) for simplicity. You don't want to make SFP a 3 ring circus. But when you have a program as complex as SFP 64 colors might be very usefull.
I sometimes use large amounts of color to help me discern what's happening in Logic. For instance bass parts in the verse, chorus, bride, prechorus, might be in different shades of blue to help me more quickly grasp what I have set up.
I often take a dozen snippits of drums, each a different color, then I can see where rolls, need to go, I know that the light green snippet, has crashes, different colors are more busier etc.
Part of the issue for SFP is the user is overloaded with so much data, much of it in the same format, it is very hard to assimilate it, only with much time and effort, Colors would helpl ease that burden.
Wed, 2012-05-30 - 08:36 Permalink
I generally agree. The challenge here however is that the number of available colors is limited, because saturation and brightness are used to indicate container nesting. This leaves color hue the only distinction. The human eye has difficulties with distinguishing more than, say, 16 hues.
Or in other words: If green is taken, all the thousands shades of that green hue are also taken.
I'll see if I can make the menu items use colored boxes instead of color names. That would allow for more hues without the need to change anything with the internal color calculations.
Wed, 2012-05-30 - 08:46 Permalink
Part of the issue for SFP is the user is overloaded with so much data
On a side note, this is partly because you are using a lot of long phrases that often span the entire song. I see this is due to your import/export driven workflow. It however defeats the purpose of prototyping, because your work is molded inside a monolithic block, rather than being a set of smaller components that you could play with.
Wed, 2012-05-30 - 19:15 Permalink
mmmnn...ok.. I'll experiment with that.... However that is probably the first step someone mght take.. I do remember a mention of short phrases. Maybe you should re-inforce that statement in manual.. Perhaps I was worried that using a lot of small phrases being manipuled would sound too repetitious. Another part of it is that I would like a reasonable amount of continuity with the midi file I started with.
I will attempt your suggestion, seeing as that is what you had in mind when developing the software.. Realize that the the more users you hope to attrack, the more ideas and features they will want, that might be different from your original vision
Thanx again for the insight, Andrew, you are doing a tremendous job.
Wed, 2012-05-30 - 19:35 Permalink
Consider giving up the saturation and brightness feature and let the user color things according to their own workflow.
In my many years with Logic (version 3), I have seen a lot of power users, who use their own scheme on how they use color. On my two monitors, the present color situation of SFP leaves a lot to be desired, It's fairly hard to distinguish the small pallette you are already using. The heirachy of nesting is immediately apparent as soon as you open up a container, Saturation and hues serves little here. Where as different colors for many small containers would be much more useful.
You could immediately discern that what smaller containers are similar, or have subtle differences.. And each user will develop their own color scheme.. Dont' lock that out to the user. A fair amount of people, are color blind in part of the visual spectrum and have trouble discerning certain colors, especially with certain monitor.
It took me a whle to get used to Logic's 98 colors, but I do make use of a good amount of them.
Sorry to be stubborn on this issue, of course you have a strong point if requires a lot of code rewriting. With my still very limited knowledge of SFP even after a year, I am beginning to see the forest from the trees. I am bringing up issues, that appear as stumbling blocks to me..
Respectfully