Marker Locking and Multi-Editing

[Hatchling]

Hey there,

One thing I've noticed in using OS is that the markers (which control parameters like detune and volume) are frustrating and limiting to work with when multiple overlapping instruments use markers at the same time.

Here are some (presumably) simple improvements to consider:

• Make the instrument lock also lock markers associated with the instrument. This will allow you to easily select all of the markers for one instrument to move or duplicate them for another section of track.
  
• Selecting an instrument modifies the instrument associated with selected markers in a similar way that is done with selected notes. This will allow one to change an instrument after markers for it are assigned, to experiment with different samples or duplicate a sequence for a duet. Currently, this requires exhaustive manual effort for long tracks that are marker-dense.
  

Here are some ideas I had for making markers (among other things) easier to work with, but may require more extensive work to implement:

Note Groups
Similar in concept to Prefabs in Unity, or Symbols in Flash.

• When you select multiple notes and markers together, they can be moved around as a whole but ot modified individually.
  
• In order to edit the contents of a group, you need to "enter" the group whereby only objects within the group are editable; all other notes are locked and transparent.
  
• Duplicating the group creates an instance; modify the group and the other instances of the group are updated.
  
• In order to create a separate non-instanced group, you can "empty it" and regroup the contents dumped into the parent scope.
  
• Nesting groups may or may not be a good idea but something to consider.
  

Marker "Roll"
The idea here is to treat markers similarly to regular notes in how they are laid out on the piano roll. They can either occupy the same space as regular notes, or have their own dedicated plane.

• All markers can be made visible at once. This can make it easy to multi-edit markers of the same instrument/type.
  
• If markers occupy the same space as notes, they can be manipulated in a similar fashion. This may be a practical solution, since notes are generally a lot easier to modify as a whole than markers, and markers would inherit this ease-of-use. Vertical positions of notes perhaps would have no effect on sound, but can be used for organization. However, vertical position could be used to express pitch bends (perhaps using the position delta from the first detune marker), volume changes, etc., though there is a risk of this becoming messy.
  
• If a separate collapsible space for markers is provided, vertical space could be used to sort markers by type, and/or be used to express parameter changes over time (e.g. pitch bends). Locked markers could be hidden to reduce on clutter and focus on a single instrument.
  
• This could open up the possibility of markers having arbitrary time resolution, similar to notes.
  

Depending on how this is implemented, you may need to maintain support for "legacy markers" as separate data. Though, I believe this may be a matter of simply changing how the existing marker data is displayed and how the user interacts with it, and would not require maintaining a separate legacy feature or require sweeping upgrades of old songs.


Thanks for your attention!