Killer feature for scrolling through list

Tigerspy

I've started handing out my song list during gigs and people shout out requests all the time. The problem is, I hate the downtime of scrolling through 300 songs or typing in the search bar.

What would be AMAZING is if I could hook up an expression pedal and use it to scroll through my entire songs list. That way I could pop up the side view, scroll to the next song, then hit the "queue" button. That could all happen while I'm playing the previous song so it would be very smooth.

Please please please tell me this could be a feature in the future!

Damir

Tigerspy This can already be done by foot pedal , you assign two foot switches to scroll through your Playlist while playing you can find the next requested song , I don't use QUEUE I use PLAYLISTS for that reason as it gives me this capability. and I don't use PDFs because I can have the iPad in landscape mode so I can always see my song list and be able to choose my next song by foot, also my text lyrics are all synced to the backing and segmented in to loops so I can clearly see large text and jump to any part of a song without worrying where are my lyrics.
Its much more flexible on stage and I can see all my information at a larger distance from the iPad.
But it just all depends on how you are use to working and what you are comfortable with, in my mind I don't want to push too many buttons while performing and I want as much as possible the software to work for me so I can get on with entertaining the audience.

peter

Interesting idea. I will think about it.

Tigerspy

Damir

Kind of, but foot switches can only go one song at a time and take longer to scroll through. An expression pedal scroll would all me to scroll the entire 300 song list in a couple seconds. I wouldn't expect it to select the exact song I'm looking for, but I could at least get it to the screen so I could tap it quick.

Damir

Tigerspy

Tigerspy foot switches can only go one song at a time and take longer to scroll through

Have you tried press and hold the switch so it auto scrolls, that is similar to expression pedal but it has a preset scroll speed , I agree it would be great if the scroll started slow and speeded up slightly as you held the foot pedal longer , this would allow for more precise search. And an expression pedal would be great as you could adjust your own scroll speed to your liking.

Lishy

Pressing and holding a footswitch works as just tried on my Morningstar but not sure how that or using an expression pedal would be any more accurate than just selecting the letter of the song you want or doing a search to get you in the ball park.

JonathanS

Lishy You can only do that between songs, not during playback.

Damir

Lishy Pressing and holding a footswitch works as just tried on my Morningstar but not sure how that or using an expression pedal would be any more accurate than just selecting the letter of the song you want or doing a search to get you in the ball park.

Our way uses foot switches while performing, your way uses fingers which is not ideal while performing with an instrument in hand.
An expression pedal could progress through the list as you press the pedal and give you very fast and accurate way to get to a specific point in a large list.

Using fingers on screen is not an option while playing a guitar and singing .

Lishy

JonathanS can only do what?

mattdaltonrules

FWIW if this was a feature, I would definitely use it

Lishy

Damir maybe but given the short sweep of an expression pedal and the high level of sensitivity it will need to be able to scroll through 300+ songs I can’t see it being accurate at all.

Damir

Lishy yes I agree , I was thinking of it being like a speed control , but then there’s another issue how does it know which direction it’s going in , it almost needs to be like a pitch bend control on a keyboard so it’s not really viable on an expression pedal, unless you could program it where the default centre point becomes the next song if you leave the pedal in one spot for a period and by moving the pedal in either direction starts the scroll slowly and gradually speeds up as you move further away from this centre spot and as soon as you have made your choice and you don’t move the pedal for 3 seconds the next song is chosen and the default is reset to the centre point of the pedal again so you move the pedal to the centre of pedal and this automatically allows you a new search of up or down movement with pedal and the further you move to any direction increases the scroll speed a move the other way stops the search and as long as you stay on that song 3 seconds later it’s selected.
So basically you would have full easy control of direction and speed and selection of next song all on the one expression pedal. Centre point being 64 one end point and direction 0 and the other 127.
As you move the pedal it always starts at 64 and depending on which direction you move and how far to the extreme ends varies the speed, starting very slow to very fast .
Quick revers stops the scroll another movement starts slow to fast again depending on how much pedal movement there is and once you are on the song you want just wait 3 seconds and the song is selected and the pedal is reset to default 64 setting but it won’t do another search unless you return the physical pedal to the middle again to start all over again.
I hope this makes sense operationally , technically is another issue.

Tigerspy

Damir I don't think it needs to be precise enough to make your choice at all, and would add a lot of complexity to the feature. All we need is a way to page to songs quickly, because as long as the next song is on the screen, a simple one-touch would be enough to queue it up. It would be cool to select the next one and auto-queue, sure, but I can see that complexity causing issues. Even a foot sweep + one touch would be way easier than what I've been doing now.

mattdaltonrules

I think just the movement of the expression pedal would be enough to trigger a value "reset" in the sense that like, if an expression is used as a wah, the frequency response knows to increase or decrease based on the direction of the pedal regardless of what the previous state of the pedal was, so for the purpose of using the expression as an up/down scroll wheel, essentially the program could do like you say and have an internal reset of 64 for center, and then the first touch of the expression pedal would sync up to the actual value whether + or - and within milliseconds start scrolling the intended direction. I think I would get frustrated with an auto-select if I were pause and it would queue something for me. Sometimes it might be nice just to browse the song list and have internal dialogue about what would be good to play next by using the visual cue of the songs list. Prior to ST3, I've been shuffling paper lyrics and a master list, and for me I really like having the ability to scan my list at a glance to help me pick what I want to play next. RARELY do I go in with a pre-set set list. I think many of us like to feel the crowd out and have that flexibility to flow which keeps things interesting for both the audience AND ourselves so we feel fresh playing. Having that foot control ability to do a smooth flowing scan of a vertical list of songs while still using the hands to play an instrument would be really really cool and I think the expression pedal would kind of just "figure itself out" whether it's meant to scroll up or down if all it had to do was reset to a current state of "middle" after a short time-out.

Damir

mattdaltonrules i like your thinking perhaps the computer wizzes out there can come up with an answer the challange is a good one.
This is all ST3 needs now is small but useful advances 👍

peter

These type of pedals just send a cc value and have only 128 distinct values. Assuming you have 1000 songs in the list, each single step movement of the pedal will jump 8 songs up or down. The pedals I know are very hard to control in a way that only sends 1 increment. Usually a minimal movement will make the value jump by maybe 5 which would already result in 40 songs being skipped.

So while I think this proposal might work with small lists containing maybe 100-200 songs, it will certainly not work for a large list.

And I am not willing to spend weeks finding an algorithm for this feature that might make it usable in large lists.

Damir

peter that’s exactly what I thought knowing very little about expression pedal operation, that’s why I was thinking if the movement of the pedal adjusts scroll speed not song progression and a 64 setting is a default stop position and a movement in any direction starts from slow to faster , a sudden stop or reverse of direction stops the search and selects that song and resets itself to 64 default waiting for a pedal movement again but the pedal needs to be placed to centre point to start another fine tune of exact song , so basically you just move your pedal to search the amount of movement determines speed of movement and a sudden reverse action stops the search on existing highlighted song , a quick move back to centre of pedal starts another search movement , if it’s a slight gentle increase or decrease it allows for precise selection if it’s slightly more movement it moves a bit faster and if it’s all the way to 0 or 127 it’s full speed which is still visually acceptable so you can quickly move through 1000 songs but still know where you are roughly, this means no buttons to push just a pedal to move one way or the other which moves through the list allowing easy selection of next song.
At the moment you hit one of two buttons for direction and do not have great speed control, I would make it the other way around on expression pedal.

Tigerspy

peter Functionality for even 100-200 songs would certainly be appreciated! Especially since larger lists can be filtered down ahead of time (genre, etc.). Even being able to sweep the list and get in the ballpark would be really nice.

Damir

Tigerspy I don’t use queue at all , all I do is have a 350 song playlist that I occasionally need to jump to a particular song , having fast and accurate next song capability by foot control is most important , if I am going to touch my iPad at all then I don’t really need a foot pedal.

mattdaltonrules

I'm not a programmer, but my idea for a solution to the scroll value being less reliable as the song list grows towards 1000 is to have ST3 capture the value of the total number of songs in the list and do a quick mathematical conversion in scroll intensity, basically like an offset / compensation to what the pedal sends vs how the program interprets it. It would be a native calculation governed by the total number of songs in the list as the variable and the expression pedal send values as the constant.

Damir

mattdaltonrules I like your thinking, the only issue is yes if you get to a quick ball park area your next song exists I still want to accurately choose this next song without touching the screen by finger using only the expression pedal, so that’s why I would prefer if the speed of scroll is affected by how far you move from 64 to either 0 or 127 depending on direction of movement from centre point and a reversal of direction stops the movement this then chooses the next song if you missed the correct song the pedal is reset to the centre point as you stop , now to start a new search around that point you need to bring the pedal to centre point to trigger a new search start but now you are in the ballpark of the song you need and a slight movement of pedal around the 64 centre point will give you a nice slow movement of songs so you can easily stop on the exact song you need all you need to do is move your pedal in reverse as you hit the song you need.
This logic gives you fast search if you have lots of songs by using the extreme ends of pedal and Very slow accurate movement by slightly moving the pedal around the 64 centre point .
And a simple way of choosing a song by reversing the pedal movement which acts as a stop not a reversal , a new search always starts from the centre point of the pedal , a press back down scrolls the list down and a press forward on pedal scrolls the list upwards.
The speed of scroll depends on amount of movement on pedal.
Changing direction on pedal STOPS AND CHOOSES NEXT SONG.
A movement to centre point of pedal starts a new search.
So you can’t automatically reverse search you always have to start a new search from the centre of pedal position.
This then makes the pedal all you need to quickly hunt down that song you need next even if you have a 500 song playlist .
I doubt any bands or solo artists would go past 300 to 500 songs in their repertoire, DJs are the only ones that might have thousands of songs but they can touch the screens anyway so it is not a major problem.
Not touching the device is the challenge for all those that also have instruments in hands.
If anyone can think of some other way please share as it would be great to be able to easily choose the next song while performing.