Questions & Answers

[Feature Request] Abillity to combine selected tracks to multi instrument

+8 votes
469 views
asked May 23, 2020 in Look and Feel by jasonwilmans (1,510 points)
The multi instrument feature is awesome. Thing is, sometimes I don't notice that a number of tracks is actually a layered instrument that would work perfectly as a multi instrument. It would be really convenient to select multiple instrument channels, right click them and say something like "Create multiinstrument".

I imagine a new track with a multi instrument containing all the instruments from the selected tracks. The old instrument tracks would then be muted. Probably the new track wouldn't contain any events yet, but it would be easy to drag them from one of the old tracks.

2 Answers

+1 vote
answered May 24, 2020 by tothrec (32,280 points)
Could you provide some more details for your use case?

I'm struggling to see how this would make editing or mixing easier (seems it would do the opposite).

Thanks!

Steven
+2 votes
answered May 24, 2020 by jasonwilmans (1,510 points)
edited May 24, 2020 by jasonwilmans

It's not so much about the exact UX solution. The core problem is creating multi instruments from existing instruments is way more complicated than creating them with new ones. But I would bet for most people combining existing ones is the far more common use case.

It's not a new feature per se, but a more convenient, faster way to use Studio One's existing capabilities. It also would make a killer feature of Studio One more discoverable.

I can do the steps by hand already

  • Create a new instrument track
  • Open the mixing view
  • Open the instruments in it
  • Drag each instrument I want to the new track, always selecting the 'Combine' option

This works, but it is kinda tedious. Especially if I have multiple instances of instruments already in the session, all with the same default name. Now I have to spend significant time identifying which 2 of the 5 Kontakts and which one of the 3 Serum instances were the correct ones. And then I have to drag them individually and click the dialogs for each.

It would be cool to just select a number of instrument tracks in the arrangement view, right click one of them and click a menu entry that says something like 'Combine to multi instrument' or something like that.

It would speed up the workflow. As it is now, I kinda have to deliberately plan using a multi instrument beforehand. But in reality I don't plan like that. I just write write parts on instruments and later notice "Wait, those three tracks play the exact same stuff". Which would be the exact moment I would use that option, because multi instruments are awesome, But now it's too late because while setting up a new multi instrument is as easy as it can be, creating one with instruments I already created and fine tuned is pretty tedious and gets me out of the flow state.

An alternative UX solution would be (in the arrangement view) dragging the instrument symbol from one instrument track onto another instrument track to trigger the 'Combine' option.

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