[madoues]

Hi again,

Another idea I have (it may have already been discussed, idk), 
would be to  either upgrade the audio plater with six tracks each with a volume controllable via midi,
or have MS use an external player; I'm thinking of Audacity, but it could be any other audio multitrack player.

That way, using stems, you could start an evening as a duo, 
then other musicians or invited guests come later or at any point during the night.
If you add a bass player, just lower the volume of the recorded bass while he is playing.

This is what I am thinking of doing.
In our small town, there are not really any bands any longer, mostly just duos and solos.
But there are several musicians that would love to play a tune or a set when they go out to a club. 
I know that I would love that possibility if I wasn't the one with the gig.

Has anyone discussed this before on the forum?

Sincerely,
Dan

NB: BTW, I discovered stems recently, so if anyone doesn't know what it is,
        it's a (usually) 6 track song recorded in one mp4 file (in the program I use anyway) .
        When playing back, the mix of the six tracks can thus be altered at will.
         Mute the vocal track, and the file is now a vocal backtrack.
         Got a bass player, mute the bass track, etc...

[GraemeJ]

Please - NO!

This is the sort of feature creep that will destroy the very purpose of the design.

[madoues]

As with the other idea, I am not sure I get what you mean.
Do you mean that these are not features a pro would use?   

I use MS in several groups for church music, playing live for dances and  and jams.
Along with practices, that's pretty much every single day.  
The possible features proposed, I personally would use. Maybe others would also...

So what is "the purpose of the design"?
Is my situation so different than most MS users?

Confused...
Dan

[Skip]

It seems that can be done already using the link feature.

There are probably a lot of things folks could do using Links instead of bloating MSP with addon stuff. It seems to be a very powerful but under utilized tool.

[Zubersoft]

The existing audio libraries I have at my disposal do not have support for stem mp4 files. I would need to have access to open source libraries on Android, Windows and iOS before I can consider supporting this. I did not find any Android libraries while searching.  Android applications can only communicate with other applications through things called Intents. Unless Audacity has specific intents it can use to allow other applications to play audio through it in the background, I doubt that would work. Most Android applications are not really designed to be used that way unless they are a background service. 

Mike

[madoues]

Ok, I'll have a look at links. 
I am not even sure exactly what it is, so I'll read the manual.

Stems are fairly new I think, so it may be a while before they become common usage,
if they ever do.  

It may be possible to send midi commands to a DAW for this purpose.

Sincerely,
Dan

[GraemeJ]

So what is "the purpose of the design"?

The basic function of this software is to store and display music.  It has already come a long way from the original design, including MIDI, fairly advanced audio player, alternate libraries, etc.

The problem, as I see it, is the more stuff that gets added, the more complicated its use becomes and the more hidden the basic design features - not to mention there's more that can go wrong that Mike has to chase down and correct.

I have seen excellent softwares (and this is an excellent one) that have been totally destroyed by feature creep.  I don't want to see this happen with MSP.

[Skip]

My mistake, I was thinking of smart buttons.

[madoues]

GraemeJ:
I guess I can relate to that.

I have been using Band-In-A-Box on occasion for 25 years and have always hated it because of the clutter of functions.
However, I haven't found anything that can do all it does, so I still use it, on occasion, and have even upgraded every 3-4 years.

Skip:
I had checked links after your post and didn't see how that could have worked because it applies to the chart, not the audio.
I already use smart buttons to start the audio, so maybe it would work for looping, I'll definitely check it out. Thanks!

Dan

[otnt]

As with the other idea, I am not sure I get what you mean.
Do you mean that these are not features a pro would use?   

I use MS in several groups for church music, playing live for dances and  and jams.
Along with practices, that's pretty much every single day.  
The possible features proposed, I personally would use. Maybe others would also...

So what is "the purpose of the design"?
Is my situation so different than most MS users?

Confused...
Dan

You're saying "playing live" but using pre-recorded backing tracks doesn't sound live.
This app is called "Mobile Sheets" and that's what I use it for: displaying, organising, managing, annotating sheet music.
I have my metronome and player in my head so I would be happy with streamlined version of MSPro without midi, metronome or audio player.