as a Keyboarder I am working with multiple Keyboards and it would be important / helpful for me to see within VST Live which sound on which of my Keyboards is placed. The current View in the “Zone screen” a mix of overlapping keyobard-splits is shown, which are not differentiated on which keyboard is is located.
Especially for cover songs with multiple sounds and key-splits it makes it not easy to get an overview. The Keyboard-Velocity is a helpful information but is less important for me compared to the keyboard-split and sound allocations.
As-Is: Below please find a screenshot of the As-Is-screen-design in the zone menu:
Furthermore it would be also helpful if it would be possible to configure the key-rang for each keyboard. In my screen you can see that the Keytar, Keyboard and Stagepiano have different numbers of keys. This would help also to reduce complexity and make reading easier and to prevent mistakes based on an easier navitation.
It would be great if you please could check if it would be possible to enhance the “zone screen” by a keyboard-split-oriented screen.
Thanks in advance for your feedback and
your great work on improvements of VST Live :-).
If we would continue thinking the request above it would be also great (maybe in the mid-term future) if VST live would be usable to create keyboard-pictures which I could be shown in the scores / notes of a song in VST live.
Below please find an example how I am currently vizalizing key-split-layouts per song in my notes / scores which helps to get a better orientation at the gig where to find which sound on the keyboard at which keys:
Theoretically such a layout could be automatically generated by VST live based on the configuration and could be copied / shared also within Dorico. But this is another use case which is not directly related to this topic. I just wanted to show an potential outlook.
We had it similar to that originally, but decided on the current one, which is not really that much different, albeit with a better velocity resolution.
Many thanks for your answer / feedback.
I am not sure if you had the time to read my ticket from the beginnen.
My feeling is that you only answered to the last aspect in the ticket.
But if you read my ticket from the beginning then your answer is not fitting.
Therefor I try to summarize again.
The current vizalization of keyboard splits works perfectly but only for musicians that have 1 keyboard / instrument.
I am playing 2 keyboards and because complex songs as a keyboard I need to cover multiple sounds or also a 2nd guitar which is not part of our band. In some cases I need to fast move in a Medley between 5 songs so that I have in VST Live 1 song with key-splits I use in reality for 3 songs on 2 keyboards.
Below please find an example for the songs “que sera + I will survive” where I have placed different key-splits in a long list (different layers in 1 song @ VST Live):
Unfortunately VST live is currently not able to help me to see what sound / key-split I have configured in VST live.
From my point of view many keyboarder work with more than 1 keyboard and it would be great if you could try to improve this topic in the future. Maybe not a top short term priority.
This would help make my life easier. I am using primarly VST sounds from Steinberg and using midi keyboards with VST live as the single sound engine. The keyboarder before me used 2 hardware keyboards and 1 keyboard expander. That means I have no other hardware which could help me to get a better overview.
I guess there are many bands which have more than 1 keyboard (like depeche mode) or single keyboarder which have more than 1 keyboard and would love to get a better transparency regarding key-splits.
Would be helpful, for a start, if the naming of the zones could be switched between MIDI-input and layer name? Or if both could be displayed at the same time, in two rows?
@SKO, I would say that only inconvenience is that you cannot filter zone view by keyboard (MIDI) or track. Let’s say there could be a selection box where you select keyboard 1 and see only pizzicato and string; then select keyboard 2 and see piano blaser and strings.
I’m not sure that the zone view should be changed cardinally. It does its job perfectly. Need only additional filter. Another filter, because existing filter (button SPLIT) can filter only two zones, so if you need to see three instruments/manage three zones (or two splits at the time), it’s not convenient.
Hi, I also play on two keyboards and think Sam’s suggestion is brilliant. It’s a really good solution.
I sometimes hit the wrong octave, which is annoying; this visualisation would make things a lot easier. Keep up the good work.
Best regards,
Kyru
Thank you @musicullum for your feedback.
I am not sure if I can fully follow the previous discussion but for me it would be extremly helpful if I could see for my 2 keyboards at the same time which key-splits for which sounds are on which keyboard. If I need to filter, this can maybe help me at home in the studion when i prepare a new song. But live on stage it would be great if could see without filtering for the current song key-split.
I am using sometimes multiple key-splits and on stage I have no time to filter something.
On top in the ticket you can see an example for the keyboard player of Billy Joel Mr. David Rosenthal how he can see the current key-splits per Song. I can pre-post it.
Currently I am creating with my music score software pictures which show the key-split.
His is also a nice screenshot but unfortunately It works only for 1 keyboard and in case of using 2 keyboards for me it becomes very complex and I need to make notes outside of VST live to not loose the overview. Better would be to get this overview inside of VST Live.
Will check what can be done, but what I don’t understand is why you don’t use input colors. With complex splits that always helped me to see how my keyboards are distributed.
Yes! Brilliant!
And if two layers/zones share the same range but have different volume, then they can be stacked one below the other according to the volume value. Right?
The free area under layer title could have additional info:
Volume values from-to. And can be empty if it’s full-range 0-127
MIDI connection. Yes, colors help, but they can differ from project to project, so text would help more.
Edit: Oops, sorry, stupid me, I forgot to mention something important in the first place …:
@ArthurNeeman Each row represents a different Layer, they are not stacked according to their velocity range.
And, I think what Arthur means is that there’s enough space left in the “layer boxes” to display, for example, their (editable) velocity range. Like so:
Sorry, not Volume, but Velocity. These two always confuses me, because in my native language there is no exact translation and we have only one - the loudness or volume (LAT: skaļums).
So, theoretically - imagine that we can have 9 virtual instruments (layers) on one keyboard - three tone ranges - C0-B2, C3-B4, C5-C7 or so, and three velocity ranges - 0-39, 40-89, 90-127 or so. In @musicullum’s picture, Layer 2 (velocity 90-127) would have another two layers beneath it (velocities 40-89 and 0-39 in correct order - upper layer in the stack is with higher velocity).
Otherwise, I can’t imagine how velocity differences between vertically divided layers can be represented.
