peter I'm pretty I understand the scenario because I would also use it (most likely). @SouthsideJimmy please correct me if I've misunderstood or mis-represented anything.
Scenario
- You have a guitarist with a multi-effects unit that you are controlling via MIDI from ST.
- The guitarist uses a variety of patches - clean, overdriven, high-gain distorted lead sound, etc.
- The high-gain patches can be noisy (squeals, squeaks, etc.) if left on between songs so you generally want to switch back to a clean sound at the end of the song, for that between song period, to keep the sound clean.
- When using ST at a gig, you set up a Playlist as your set list. You hit the Play button (or someone uses a MIDI trigger) to start each song, and they play through to completion and autoload the next song, ready for playback (@SouthsideJimmy, I've made an assumption on this point - feel free to correct how you operate if relevant)
To achieve the last point, you decide to use the Global MIDI Send -> Playback Ends command to send a patch change to a clean sound.
Now, whenever the playback of the song ends, your guitar MFX device switches to a clean patch. All Good.
At rehearsal, you then realise that whenever you are practicing a song and manually hit the Stop button in ST so that you can maybe play through a section with the band, or just run through that section yourself, your Guitar MFX is changing back to the Clean patch. This makes practising that solo entry, or that bridge part, that uses a different sound, not 'quite right' because you have the wrong sound loaded. The guitarist then has to manually select the correct patch on their MFX device. Not a deal breaker, just inconvenient when you are doing this 10 times in a row at rehearsal.
For people using ST like this, they are never hitting the Stop button on ST at a gig unless it is a massive crisis. However, in a rehearsal scenario, they might use that Stop button a lot as they practice parts of song.
In this type of scenario, having "Playback Ends" not include the manual action of hitting 'STOP' would be quite helpful.
In this scenario:
- Song runs to completion - Global MIDI Playback Ends fires
- Song is stopped by MIDI trigger - Global MIDI Playback Ends fires (or treat same as below?)
- Song is stopped by STOP button in ST UI - Global MIDI Playback Ends does not fire
The problem is, changing the existing behaviour of 'Playback Ends' to not include manual STOP will be bad for people who have already setup the 'Playback Ends' MIDI trigger based on the fact it fires is every scenario when, well, playback ends (myself included - I use it to send a stop playback to Stage Cue 🙂 )
Maybe the middle ground is an additional global MIDI command/s that sits between the behaviour of the existing Stop and Playback Ends? E.g.
- Stop (UI Button) - only triggers when you hit the Stop button in the Stage Traxx UI
- (new) Stop Playback - only triggers when you receiving Stop Playback action via MIDI
- (new) Song Completes - only triggers when normal playback of song reaches end of song
- Playback Ends - triggers when playback ends via any means (incl. pressing Stop button in UI, receiving Stop Playback action via MIDI, end of song reached through normal play)
I think the 'Song Completes' trigger would solve @SouthsideJimmy problem.
Otherwise, current workaround (I currently do this) is to put a timestamped patch change at the end of each song that requires a change from a 'noisy' guitar patch back to a clean patch.
The workaround works perfectly fine, but is more song lyric maintenance work, harder to go back and change later if you want to use a different patch, etc.