Taps, double taps, long presses and other fingering techniques
I’d like to start a discussion about what people think of efficient use of touch input methods in Drambo.
There seem to be two groups of targets of these actions depending on whether it should happen instantly or whether some delay can be allowed.
Also there is that issue of Drambo distinguishing between tap and and a long tap or double tap and whether the extra 10ms of latency introduced by this will cause issues.
Imput methods: tap, long press, double tap, swipes (up down sideways etc). Others?
Fast actions: mute/solo, trigger, note input, undo?,
Slow actions: clear, delete, reset value, access menu, disconnect, remove modulation source, select module etc.
I generally like what’s happening in Drambo, partly because of the thought that’s gone into it by @giku but also because I’ve gotten used to the way it works. I don’t expect a revolution but I thought it would be nice to brainstorm through this and hear opinions coming from different perspectives. I think this discussion is important to have at this point where Drambo is still relatively new and quite a few features are still to be added which may make some input methods more logical than others.
I generally use Drambo in conjunction with a couple of controllers and this side of things is my dear to me and as mentioned with other posts I’d love double tap and hold actions to be added to midi control. These have a massive capacity to extend the amount of control from a midi controller. Personally I’m a big fan of ‘long press to clear’ action on a foot controller. It works amazingly well in loopy and I have it set up on the same switch as record so if I make a mistake I don’t have to move my foot to another switch to clear, which makes for much smoother operation whether jamming at home or in front of an audience.
Anyway, what do you guys think?
Comments
I also used to be a big fan of swipe and down for mute/unmute/solo in impaktor albeit my brain always got a bit confused by it. Someone’s suggested this recently for enabling and disabling of modules which I though wasn’t a bad idea.
I generally want to:
Regarding gestures, I think that it's always a good idea to consider other apps with similar functionality and if they're halfway popular then copy their gestures.
No matter which gestures we're going to choose for what function, we'll reach a point where hardly anyone is able to remember them all. Some kind of help is essential, be it a simple screen overlay text (like we have it for p-locks already) while holding a button or a separate gestures help or better both.
This is where uniformity across the app helps, a set of rules which can be easily put at the beginning of the manual. With little time muscle memory kicks in. Let’s not overestimate users mental capacity but let us not underestimate it either. What I mean is: people who don’t get on with complexity will not be naturally drawn to Drambo. However, those people are willing to slow down and learn if they see it working out for them in the long run. I am one of those and I’m willing to persevere because I like Drambo’s flexibility and know where it can take me.
Having said all that, badly implemented use of a touch user interface can make or break one’s relationship with the app resulting in bad press, bad reviews etc. Hence this thread. ;)
I understand where you’re coming from but I don’t see the two necessarily greatly related to each other from a user’s perspective. On-screen actions in loopy and the ones I have mapped to my controller when using it live are completely separate in my brain. Two different worlds.
I do understand that you’d want to streamline it, even if only from the coding management perspective.
Swipe up/down for trigger velocity would greatly improve speed. It’s a hassle to have to enter edit mode, select the note trigger, edit, back to next note... it’d make sense to be able to just swipe up/down from the main seq window.
”Hardware contolller incompatibility”?. Who cares, not critical. If you’re on a controller you probably input notes with velocity anyway.
Velocity / modulation editor is cued
swipe from left to right to draw velocity for track
couldn’t be any faster
Sorry I don’t understand. “Swipe left to right to draw velocity”. What do you mean?. As far as I can see that’s for trigger gate length, not velocity. Am I missing something?
One gesture I have been really liking is the swipe down on a Flexi sampler to copy/paste its contents.