Over a year ago PGMusic asked in the forum for ideas to improve the style picker. I’ve finally figured out my idea. I’m too late for 2009. Maybe 2010?

The style picker is great because it is a long list of styles, any one of which can be simply clicked to invoke. What is more, they are categorized by genre like Blues, Folk, etc. to shorten the list I need to peruse. What is more, they are also categorized by characteristics like Waltzes, Styles with RealTracks, etc. that slice the list another way, again shortening the list I need to peruse.

BUT, what it can’t do is combination of these things. Yes, I’m talking Boolean selection. Before saying how, here are the capabilities I envision in the Boolean Style Picker. Click zero or more genres and zero or more characteristics and get a list of the styles that meet that criteria. Like pick Folk and Waltz and see only Folk genre styles with a waltz characteristic. Or pick Folk and Classical genres and Waltz and RealTracks characteristics and, well you get the picture.

By having a verbose list of the characteristics, including tempo ranges, number if instruments, “no piano”, “includes solo instrument” (for RT), the user can really zero in candidate styles.

If we’re talking Boolean, consider the “NOT” operator, so the user could specify “NOT Waltzes”, for example.

Obviously there are many ways to implement the user interface. The challenge would be to make it powerful, obvious, and uncomplicated. Suggest trying to do it so it will work much like it does now so users not interested in these Boolean would use normally. So if the list was clearly divided into two lists - Genre and Characteristics, and you allowed “Ctrl-Select” to do a multiple select, much of this could be done. I think it would be better to have next to each entry a toggling on/off button (like check / uncheck, lit / unlit). Then, for NOT, Alt – Ctrl – Select. We could go on and on.

In addition to the sorting math being more complicated, you may also have to watch for mutually exclusive or otherwise conflicting selections. And have an easy way to “clear all” selections.

This approach could also be applied to the soloist picker et. al.

Last edited by kelso; 12/18/08 02:27 PM.
kelso

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