Hi Peter, here are some ideas of what i would find very usefull on stage for you to keep in mind when considering introducing looping.
This suggestion is looking at it from an on stage usability point of view not the software designers view of how possible it is to achieve.
If anyone has better ideas please itroduce them to this conversation because if we dont do this now we might end up with something that does not work well on stage and actually decreases the value of ST3.
I feel this area of the software is the perfect spot for looping as it already is where you can touch and move around the song its a perfect spot to give us 6 programable switches where we can accurately jump around the song allowing us to rearrange the song on the run, this feature is sucessfully used on midi keyboards which is much easier to implement but lately i have found software that has successfully done this with audio.
Intoducing this to ST3 would absolutely place this software in a class of its own decades ahead of its nearest rivals.
Something i really needed and wanted 15 years ago and hope to see in my lifetime.
OK, to the details of expected operation.
You see five different figures with different operations.
Fig 5 shows in red the ending is playing and the selected yellow chorus will play after the ending, you can see a progression bar in the button representing the loops position but in the background you also see another bar pointing out to where you are in the overall song this is in the background as it is not vital but nice to see where you are in the overall song.
The button operations are , a single push on a button selects/deselcts it, a quick double tap places it to permanent loop, a long press opens the audio edit window to accurately adjust the loop points and rename/delete and add another loop button, six is maximum.
Having six loop points also allows a six foot switch pedal to be used to control the looping.
To activate loop mode a long press on the Auto play button places a default blank single loop button on the left of the wave display.
You could name it ENDING allowing you to jump to the ending with a single or double tap.
The software should be capable of recoqnizing bars so a single tap on a next button will end the now playing loop and then jump to the next loop but a double tap on the next selection will end the now playing bar of music and jump to the next selection, meaning you would have complete control of your arrangements.
You could jump half way through a verse to the ending.
The button moving bar will indicate to where you are within the existing loop.
You could setup a default loop setup prefferance.
So as you long press the Auto Play button and activate loop mode you might have only 4 loop points with apropriate named loops already for you to use just long press on the button and choose the edit option to set the loop points.
Fig 1 shows a continual loop was activated on the chorus, but because a single tap of solo was also put in place an arrow appears to indicate solo is next, once solo takes over chorus returns to blue state and the song continues normally to end.
Fig 2 shows red playing chorus with a purple surround meaning it will loop continually until it is single tapped to cancle the loop and once the end of this loop reaches its end will continue song to the end.A single tap on another loop will also finish this loop and jump to the next, but a double tap on another loop will finish this bar and then jump immediately to the next loop point.
Fig 3 shows the corus was in loop mode and will jump to ending next when it finishes, if the ending was double pressed the arrow would not appear and at the end of the now playing bar would immediately go to the ending and finish the song as long as no other selections were present.
Fig 4 shows you have reached the end and have double tapped it to create a continuous loop but then have single pressed the chorus meaning the next absolute end will jump to chorus and play through to the end, the arrows appear when single pressing next choices, but will not appear when double pressing next choices as this is using end of bar point which will happen very quickly so no point of visual effect.
By using single tap only you are just simply manouvering around the song no arrows are shown or purple button highlighting is used.
Once you introduce a double hit the purple button highlight is present showing you the looping state either continual loop is present or an arrow is introduced to show where you are going after the loop end.
If you long press the Auto play button while in loop mode and playing a song the loop system is canceled and will play the now playing song with no looping functions to the end as expected.
A six switch foot pedal will represent the six loop point switches, so you could use four looping points only and still have two more switches to control other functions.
So if you only need an ending capability you just program one loop and use the double tap to access an ending anywhere in the song.
The software would need to be able to recognise the bars in the music and loop points now this is aready possible in cubase and logic, i hope ST3 can be made to have this capability, it already has a great tempo/ pitch change capability.
Thats it for now but i will update this page as i get inspired.
I noticed a lot of effort has gone in to midi control, this is old tech and very time consuming to use (been there done that) i am on the older side of life and have no time to waste i want things that give me maximum audience impact for minimum effort.
Come on guys lets do this , any other suggestions?
Happy new year!
