10 Preview r3209-r3255 - Custom Hand Assignments

kiwi · Post by **kiwi** » 11-10-14 4:40 pm

Hi,
The tonality is labelled eg: Cmajor maybe the simple notation would be less intrusive on screen per eg:
"C" (for Cmajor) And "Cm" (for C minor); can also be written "C-"

Also i have often Cmajor for tonality even if it's not the case so i have attached a midi file if you want to look at it.

I have right to share it if i credit the author

Here's the author website for Top quality Reggae midi files.
(Ps: it's an error to think reggae is easy on keyboard)
http://dubroom.org/main/intro.htm

613Skier · Post by **613Skier** » 11-10-14 7:07 pm

Where did play game feature (enter into the song) in the hands, color, instrument section go? Kind of annoying to have to go back a page in my opinion though I figure you're doing this to cater to the tablet/touchscreen crowd..

Also, anytime I drag a lighting bolt to change settings it crashes (Mac) I email you the report.

613Skier · Post by **613Skier** » 11-10-14 7:15 pm

I took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to even enter play mode. Comparied to previous versions I don't find the new settings intuitive. (Maybe it's easier on a touch screen I don't know) maybe having different user interface for those with hardware vs touchscreens.

Maybe i'm just an old dinosaur who doesn't like change I don't know.

Post by **Nicholas** » 11-11-14 8:48 am

PHIDIAS wrote:ARE YOU SURE TO HAVE A "HALF CHINESE HALF ENGLISH" SYNTHESIA ???

Like I mentioned the last time you asked: Translations are the very last step before an official release. Any new text added in development previews will appear in English until it's been finalized and I have all the text that I need to send off to the translation service.

PHIDIAS wrote:also,the theme has some latin words.what's that mean?

That isn't exactly Latin. They're just gibberish filler words to show what something will look like with text. They don't mean anything at all.

kiwi wrote:... maybe the simple notation would be less intrusive on screen

That's actually not a bad idea. Although, I wonder if just seeing a "C" down in the bottom-left corner of the screen might be confusing for people that are new to music terminology. And "C M" looks strange to me.

613Skier wrote:Kind of annoying to have to go back a page in my opinion though I figure you're doing this to cater to the tablet/touchscreen crowd.

Actually, that particular change wasn't motivated by touch-screen use at all.

The old Simple vs. Advanced screens were always a little awkward because there were two ways to do or choose everything. In other words: two competing methods to learn for no reason.

The new method ("Song Settings" vs. "Hands, Color, and Instruments") ends up being a lot simpler once you become familiar with it: there is exactly one way to perform every operation. And the things you can do in Hands, Colors, and Instruments are (generally) one-time setup tasks. Once you've shown Synthesia how the tracks should be interpreted, colored, etc., then you don't have to drill down into that screen anymore.

In the meantime, this is all temporary. In Synthesia 12, both screens will be merged into one, so you won't have to switch back or forth anymore.

613Skier wrote:Anytime I drag a lighting bolt to change settings it crashes (Mac) I email you the report.

Thanks for the report! This is definitely a bug that I've seen on the Windows side, too. I'll be pushing a small dev preview today or tomorrow with a handful of fixes, including this one.

Post by **Nicholas** » 11-11-14 12:38 pm

PREVIEW r3215

Flat note graphics.
"Split Whole Song" is now the much more useful "Split From Here".
Reset + All was totally broken and crashing.
New "Keyboard.LabelBackground" advanced option to add contrast to note labels.

Let me know what you guys think of the flat note graphics. I still consider them an experiment that can be rolled back if no one likes the change.

: flatNotes.png (21.92 KiB) Viewed 14093 times

Birdman87 · Post by **Birdman87** » 11-11-14 4:01 pm

Although i think the flat note look is okay, maybe it should be an option? I still kinda prefer the old ones but it's probably cause i'm used to them.

Do you think it would be possible to make the keyboard labels a circle? The rectangles are okay and they help a LOT with eye strain but they're kinda, bulky.

Post by **Nicholas** » 11-11-14 4:20 pm

Better solution coming in 10.1!

kiwi · Post by **kiwi** » 11-11-14 4:27 pm

About the flat notes i love them and it is better for to visualise the black & white keys.
About suggestion for to be optionnal am for this too but i know that you wan't to keep things simple and the flat have good advantages (less size in the exe and no layer to draw) but it's an essential part of the software so i think the option to have both 'll be essential.

Anyway let's see if the others dynosaurus like or not ^^

For the C and Cm you can add a little text to explain it on the f1 screen or at the other screen where the 2 cute hands moves (at the right bottom)
Anyway C are Cm are explicit i think and if someone is carying about the tonality i think he's familiar with terminology.

PHIDIAS · Post by **PHIDIAS** » 11-12-14 5:24 am

Also,after changing right hand to left hand,the color should chnage also?

kiwi · Post by **kiwi** » 11-12-14 7:35 am

What do you mean Phidias?
Yes if you make custom hand assignement you can colorize the left or right hand with any colour provided by Synthesia.
See the video at the first post.

Birdman87 · Post by **Birdman87** » 11-12-14 7:46 am

About the custom hand splitting, would it be possible to make it so i can simultaneously edit both tracks of a song that was already split into two hands but some right notes go to the left and some left go to the right, i find it very cumbersome to edit them separately as i would be constantly uncertain of which note goes where.

And related to that, zooming into the usable are when splitting a song is very strange to me, i don't really have a good idea of where i am on the piano in that current area, so custom zooming maybe like in the normal playing area?

kiwi · Post by **kiwi** » 11-12-14 2:32 pm

Nicholas i have noticed you have forgotten some vertical bright line on the play screen (see screenshot)

Spoiler:

PHIDIAS · Post by **PHIDIAS** » 11-14-14 1:57 am

Nicholas! Can I get the newest language.xml ? I mean traditional Chinese one.
Thanks!

PHIDIAS · Post by **PHIDIAS** » 11-14-14 10:35 pm

before

Spoiler:

changing

Spoiler:

after

Spoiler:

the color should be changed?

Spoiler:

Post by **Nicholas** » 11-15-14 6:46 pm

kiwi wrote:Nicholas i have noticed you have forgotten some vertical bright line on the play screen (see screenshot)

What did I forget? To mention them? A while back someone asked for the B/C boundary to be different than the E/F boundary, to make it easier to know where you were. I mentioned it in the readme.txt, but left it out in this forum topic because that list was getting pretty long.

PHIDIAS wrote:Can I get the newest language.xml ?

It would take some work to compare all the new stuff in language.xml with what's still missing in language_zh.xml. I'm going to be sending those out for translation in the next couple days. I can post the finished version with all the changes after they come back.

PHIDIAS wrote:the color should be changed?

The splitting screen always uses fixed blue and green colors. After you split things up, you still need to change the track's color:

: colors.png (21.55 KiB) Viewed 14003 times

Birdman87 wrote:... would it be possible to ... simultaneously edit both tracks...

... zooming into the usable are when splitting a song is very strange to me...

Both of those sound related. That is, if the tracks weren't already split up kind of strangely, it seems like it would be easier to tell where the split between the two hands should take place. What strange MIDI files. This almost calls for a track merge feature!

In the short term, what you're describing might still be better tackled with an external MIDI editor. While both you and Jim have mentioned strange MIDI authoring conventions of splitting things up non-uniformly, I hadn't ever encountered anything like that myself... and I'm hoping it's rare enough that this new tool in Synthesia is still useful.

With a new feature this large, I like to wait and see how the majority of users are (or are not) able to use it before adding more complexity.

PHIDIAS · Post by **PHIDIAS** » 11-15-14 9:10 pm

Nicholas wrote:I can post the finished version with all the changes after they come back.

So when you done,I can get it right?

Nicholas wrote:After you split things up, you still need to change the track's color...

Change that "setting button"s color for the the notes that I use split to change color?
Thanks

jimhenry · Post by **jimhenry** » 11-16-14 1:12 am

Nicholas wrote:While both you and Jim have mentioned strange MIDI authoring conventions of splitting things up non-uniformly, I hadn't ever encountered anything like that myself... and I'm hoping it's rare enough that this new tool in Synthesia is still useful.

I believe all of the numerous MIDI recordings "Perfessor" Bill Edwards makes freely available at http://www.perfessorbill.com/ are split in a way that would be very difficult to assign to hands using Synthesia. I imagine an external editor could merge the tracks pretty easily and the resulting single track could then be assigned to hands pretty easily. Maple leaf Rag is here if you want to look at one of these files:
http://www.perfessorbill.com/midi/maplea.mid

PHIDIAS · Post by **PHIDIAS** » 11-16-14 1:38 am

Nicholas can you tell me when synthesia 10 will publish on the store?
I might can help you advertise it in my community and by words and tell friends.
(when to publish mean:a version that is more steady and less bugs for users.)

kiwi · Post by **kiwi** » 11-16-14 6:08 am

Nicholas wrote:What did I forget? To mention them? A while back someone asked for the B/C boundary to be different than the E/F boundary, to make it easier to know where you were. I mentioned it in the readme.txt, but left it out in this forum topic because that list was getting pretty long.

This person (me ^^) asked for to make it easier and is happy with it. And you have mentionned the change in the changelog of this post but you haven't looks closely so i have remade a screenshot recheck it i have added infos where is the mistake.

Spoiler:

Birdman87 · Post by **Birdman87** » 11-16-14 8:03 am

I believe he's saying you forgot to put a vertical line in.