If I take a step backwards, and try to analyze what I really do not like about a common pianoroll (here Bitwig pianoroll), then I think there are these points:
- It always turns into a mouse clicking orgy, at least for me
- There is no fixed raster as in Renoise, you always have to zoom in/out scroll x/y etc.
- No real keyboard shortcuts like Renoise. Can’t midi record a chord without playing, can’t play the notes under the cursor without playing
- No proper side-by-side view
- Grid lines do not really help me, eye is totally lost, there are no anchor points at all.
In the end these seem to be suble details each on its own, but in sum, it annoys me every time.
So at least I would improve these things then:
- Kind of x/y subtle highlighting the row/col I am currently targeting, like crosshairs
- By default zooming in only on x-axis, remembering y-zoom. Minimum unit is a measure.
- Writing notes of pianoroll also on the right
- Never ever not printing note names on the bars
- Not wasting so much space on the borders, so only for touch enabled devices this wasting
- introducing a second “playhead” only for editing, so I can record a chord on another place in the pianoroll than the actual play position. The editing playhead does not progress and can be moved around
- Removing outlines, even double outlines
- Adding shortcuts to move editing playhead around, playing notes under editing playhead, all that fine Renoise stuff. Shortcuts writing/deleting/moving/shrinking a note
- multi view never layered, instead each on top. Vertical and x zoom synced, playheads, too. So does not require additional borders.
- Remembering a lot of view settings when coming back, saved in the song
- Quantization options back into inpsector panel
- drum view can have full y-size
- Highlighting measures on the grid
- Increasing contrast of the background pianoroll, highlighting the octave line. Increasing the contrast overall (but still obviously separating background from foreground)
- Option to remove the keyboard, just confuses me, writing only note names instead (but not wasting so much space, again). Never seen a piano standing on the side…