Here are my suggestions for the main screen GUI; these are visual suggestions, not changes in how the program works (for which I have ideas also):

1) When you enter information in the chord grid, it should more Excel-like. That's what people are familiar with and new users will already know how to do that. Right now, you type in the little box in the upper left and the chord shows up when you hit enter. Just type it in the chord grid, be able to edit what you type while you type (using left, right arrows, mouse swipes, highlighting, cut, copy, paste, etc).

2) I agree with others about having the separate play and regenerate button. Play should be play and should not regenerate the song. Yes, I know BIAB was designed to play something different each time, and that worked well when it was only MIDI because regeneration took less than a second. Now with RT's and RD's, it takes longer to get sound going. So I like the idea of essentially swapping the functionality of Play and Replay. Play would play the current song as is (and generate it, if it's a new song or changes have been made), but if I want to listen to the song three times, it plays the same thing those three times (again, unless changes have been made, which necessitate a regeneration). The former replay button would now be a Regenerate button, and would regenerate the arrangement. I might go so far as to say it doesn't necessarily start playback unless you then hit play, but I suppose that could be a toggle option.

3) The main tool bar needs to be broken into smaller parts and allow moving around like in RealBand/PowerTracks. I would like to be able to move the Play/Stop/Pause buttons to the left side of the screen, for example.

4) All the toolbars need to be able to select "small" icons (like you can in RealBand) to take up less screen real estate.

5) There is no indication (especially to new users) that the "Audio" track is available to do anything. Visually, it looks like a label (but the wrong label) for the harmony settings. All the other tracks have radio buttons, the audio track does not.

6) Replace the single letter buttons with text. What the heck is "S"; make room for it to say "Sng" or better yet, "Song". The "F" buttons should at least say "Fav".

7) There should be some visual way to better help folks understand that for each half beat, you enter a comma in the chord grid. Maybe have a cell for each beat and do away with the comma (the program should then be able to interpret older files properly, which would have the comma).

8) Why have two different reverb spinners for the tracks? When you select a RealTrack, the A Reverb (what's a reverb?) allows you to select the value and the M Reverb (what's m reverb) goes grey. And vice versa. Why not just have a single Reverb setting that is sensitive to the type of track selected.

9) Why is LoopSec and Loop in two different parts of the screen? Seems like looping functions should be kept together.

10) The Wizard checkbox should be relabeled. It's not really a wizard in the current context of wizard. Maybe label it "Keyboard" or "QWERTY" or something similar.

11) When you have a MIDI track, you can select the patch you want from either the drop-down box or the GM2 box. Actually, I don't know why you need both. If you are using a GM2 synth, then those instruments should be shown in the instrument drop-down. Also, the drop down should (like the GM2 button does) break the instruments down into groups, not just a long list of 128 instruments.

12) When you select a RealTrack, instead of greying out the patch list, why not allow users to select the RealTrack (maybe using a list version of it) or RealDrum from the list just like MIDI tracks.

13) When I right-click on a track, I should get an option to assign plug-ins without having to go to the mixer to do so.

I have some more ideas and non-main screen ideas, which I'll post later, but gotta go to work now.

John

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