It would be great if there was an option to have Markers be Auto Colored upon creating them (unless there is an option I’m missing?).
Having them be different colors adds good visual cues to new sections or important things in the song. Having to select one at a time, open the color palette, change the color, select the next one (color palette disappears), open the color palette again, select color, and so on gets a little redundant.
It would also be great to be able to pin the Markers Window so that you can leave it open at all times if you choose for quick navigation. Clicking anywhere else in the project window makes it disappear (unless I’m missing something?), which gets redundant hitting the key command over and over. It would be a very welcomed workflow feature as well.
The way I got around this is I created 2 Marker Tracks in my Templates. One I use as just a regular Marker Track and it is always set as the active Marker Track. The other one is named Marker Library and it is pre-populated with pretty much any Marker I might need. Then when I want to use a Marker I just drag it onto the active Marker Track. Not only can you color code them, for example make all the chorus Markers green, the Marker Numbers will always be the same between Projects. So ‘Verse 1’ is always Marker 5 and ‘Verse 2’ Marker 6. This is useful for Key Commands and MIDI Remotes.
EDIT:
Right+click on the top of the window and you can set it to Always On Top.
That’s a cool workflow above! Not exactly my thing, but cool! It still leaves the auto coloring to be desired and results in a long workflow like I mentioned above about selecting a marker, coloring, selecting another marker (color palette disappears), open the color palette, select color, select another marker (color palette disappears), etc.
Make a new project template. You will fill up the space anyway so might as well make most of your markers in advance.
I put the marker track divided up top to freeze it vertically.
My color palette default preset is 8 colors but a light and dark shade of each. So the first color is grey (Intro), which represents both the section and the two shades of grey are to alternate between phrases. (1 Intro A, 1 Intro B)
For another example, the blue Chorus section. Blue will be the “Chorus” color. And within that blue section each 8 bar cycle marker is an alternating blue shade. So I can easily see that blue envelopes my chorus and I can still see where the Chorus B starts.
The number I put at the front of the marker. When the second verse starts it will be 2 Verse. Then the letter is the section. 2 Verse A. 2 Verse B. 2 Verse C. So all those sections are in part 2 and each has their own letter.
So if I have 4 phrases in my 1 Chorus section it will look like this:
Start and End marker is red to see it easily. I keep it all on one marker track so I don’t have to bother with activations, but dragging markers is a pain cause modifiers won’t constrain the direction. So to increase the length of my song I make an 8 bar range and Ctrl + Insert to create time, to push the End marker down and then create more markers.
These are pretty cool ideas! I may have to try something like that.
That being said, is it possible to make a Marker Track Template as opposed to whole Project template so that it’s just a matter of importing or recalling a Marker Track?
On another note, having a bunch of markers ready to go won’t always fit every project, so at some point, it still kind of brings up the idea about create marker, name marker, color marker, select next marker to color (color palette disappears), open color palette, change color, rinse repeat etc. It would still be beneficial to have the optionin preferences to auto color markers upon creation. That way, it adds contrast without having to overthink.
To take it further, it would be great to be able to select any amount in the Marker Window and change their colors from there, in the event someone adopts a workflow like yours and wants to color specific markers by name all to the same color.
Nonetheless, an auto color markers feature would be very welcomed.
Not exactly. But since you can create multiple Marker Tracks you could create a bunch of different Marker Tracks, each Track configured for one of the different ways you use Markers. Then just set most (or all) of them to not be visible and save it in your Template. When you create a Project from the Template change the Track’s visibility to suite you current needs.
Alternatively you could keep your collection of Marker Tracks in a dedicated Project and then use Import Tracks From Project… But I think this is a bit more cumbersome approach.
Got ya! That’s why I’m trying to avoid that or make the case that having an auto color option would be better since templates and projects and markers are ever changing.
For me, I don’t mind that every chorus, or every verse would be a different color. I’d just rather that every marker be a different color in general to visually cue me that it’s a new section. I have the Marker names to know what they are.
However, that’s why I also propose an option in the Marker Window to be able to command click any number of markers you want, and change their colors in one go all from the Markers Window. That way, if the Auto Color Newly Created Markers feature isn’t checked off in Preferences, one could still create their Markers as they normally do, but then command click each one in the Markers WIndow and change them all to the desired color all in one go. Further, you could even have a “Randomize Marker Colors” button within the Markers Window by the color selection as well. That way, it gives everyone useful options.
I haven’t thought of making a marker track preset yet. Don’t know if that’s a thing.
You’re right that auto-color markers would be ideal too. We would set up rules: “If the word ‘chorus’ is in the name, then it gets this light blue color” etc. Or “if a new cycle marker is created after an existing light blue one, then it gets dark blue.” That kind of thing. Or, “if you just created a marker that’s within the ‘Verse’ transport marker jurisdiction, it gets the grey color.”
We could set up song sections in the color palette. If we rename a marker and a particular word is in there, it’s auto colored, by our custom marker palette.
Intro = Grey
Verse = Green
Chorus = Blue
Bridge = Orange
That kind of thing.
Auto naming would be good too. Just like MS Excel can infer patterns, if I’m doing a new marker beside “1 Verse C” then obviously the new marker is going to be “1 Verse D” and be my alternating shade (or default color for that section).
