PG Music Home Forums PG Music Wishlists RealBand Wishlist Suggestions to Improve RealBand

Here is my list of suggestions to improve RealBand:

1) A much better system to control Audio Volume because:
a) recording mixer moves is clunky and inaccurate
b) when you draw volume changes as controllers in the Piano Roll view, you can't tell what you are drawing in relation to the waveform
c) it would be best to draw a volume envelope directly on the wave form, or in a separate window where you can see the waveform.

2) Standard Solo, Mute, Record buttons for each track.

3) When highlighting or selecting something in Track View, that same selection region should appear in other views, e.g., Piano Roll. Selecting a region in any view should appear in any other relevant view.

4) Make a better way to make sure NOTHING is selected. I discovered that you can move the mouse vertically in a spot to select a very small region, but I haven't found a way to deselect everything. Most programs have an easy way of doing that.

5) Sometimes it's hard to tell if a button is on or off. Change it so that it's more obvious what the status of a button is. I'm thinking particularly of the Snap, Solo and Lock buttons, but it should apply to any button status.

6) In the Mixer window, it should be obvious if an effect or effects is present under the FX button. Maybe have the FX button change color (a very obvious change) if effects are present.

7) In the mixer, the "all" button for Volume seems to keep the relative levels of different tracks as it increases or decreases volume. On the other hand, the Pan button automatically changes the pan of all tracks to whatever setting the All pan knob has. I don't know why you would ever want to do that.

8) Piano Roll horizontal zooming should center around Now Time.

9) There needs to be a <-- LEFT arrow for editing midi notes so that the end time of a note stays the same and you can change the start time, essentially doing the opposite of what the --> Right arrow now does. So there should be four arrows for midi editing:
<--left, -->right, double <----> and the vertical arrows for pitch.

10) In the Track view, Snap seems to be set to quarter notes. It would be nice if it could be set to any note value, or to measure.


Thanks,

John

4) Make a better way to make sure NOTHING is selected. I discovered that you can move the mouse vertically in a spot to select a very small region, but I haven't found a way to deselect everything. Most programs have an easy way of doing that.

Hit the ESC button

I agree with the better envelope issue, i would like something like Sonar uses.

4) or alternatively, F7 then F8 in succession because the escape button does not work universally in all windows.

Although everyone can definitely benefit from Real band, it's greatest apeal is to a new audience (even a new market). I would love to see a simple "Song Wizard" dialogue that would enable the user to create, customize and use song templates. I have some great ideas about navigation and dialogue. To Whom can I submit a diagram along with splash screen sugggestion?
The over all idea is a single user dialogue that enables all of the basic song structure such as Key, tempo, length, form, and even select song sub-styles to be assigned. It would be great to have the Wizard save the Chords as a template also, The wizard would serve as a one stop for real band - In actuallity, this info would be given to the band mates in a real scenario - so this carries that idea forward. In other words this dilogue should be treated as...
"tell your band about your song..."

I can see this evolving to where you actually select the members of your band...
some really cool marketing could be done here...
I know I already have some favorites in BIAB 2009.5

maybe it's just me - but setting this up before you hit the "play" button makes sense to me
and enables an easy approach to the new customers...

Another thought especially for Rock, Blues and Pop Real tracks -
It would be nice to have the the track be able to render both with and without the effects (such as distortion).
this would enable the user to take the original (unnaffected) performance into the preferred DAW and utillize 3rd party amp simulation...
yep that's a good idea!

Welcome to the forum, realtime

As I understand your first post, this would be too complicated for RB and would not add any value. BIAB is a great compositional tool and PG is also involved with something that seems to fit your wishes here - M$ SongSmith.

As to your second post, RB is a DAW. What's more - DIY. If you don't want the effects, simply render with no effects in the chain. If you want them, add to flavour...

I think that this is "just" another request for "real" Volume Envelopes and DRY RealTracks, Sam.

The Wishlist shows requests for dry RealDrums, too, as well as requests for the RealDrums to be broken out into dry multitracks...

Maybe in future there will be a version that includes that, likely for more money, like the current Audiophile version. Time will tell, I'm merely conjecturing here.


--Mac

DRY? Hmm, yes, Mac - I think you're right.

Personally, I am quite happy with the RTs as they are but I can understand that somebody might want to remove the FX that they come with automatically. One or two of them sound just a little over-engineered.

Just a thought, as I don't have them, but aren't the audiophile versions dry?

Totally agree - the heavy distortion makes many tracks unuseable. The effects are best saved for final mixing - give us clean tracks so we can decide how much distortionn etc fits a particular tune.

Add string quartet, in the style of 'Yesterday'. That would add a real touch of class to pop songs.

Thanks LynB for the F7>F8 to Deselect solution.

Been trying the Escape key and like you said, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Also trying to click around outside the selected area is very hit and miss and usually results in another selection.
A universal 1 click Deselect for all windows would be GREAT!!!

PLEASE PG, it would make a great XMas gift for the next upgrade:)