improving PITCH functionanlity --> tune for DJ use

[fouronefive]

I recently installed Rockbox and wooohooo! finally my ipod is what i wanted it to be all the time! I am sooooo happy about it, i want to thank all you folks big time for contributing to this great piece of software.

There is the pitch functionality in the wps context menu. great feature! however i d have a few suggestions to improve it to fit demands of actual DJing.

while on the PITCH screen you need to be able to start/pause, rewind your song (no cue points or alike. a DJ should be able to find the bass 1 or the snare manually) . An idea about the button layout: (talking about ipod 5G)

***Layout 1:
select short: toggle play/pause track
select long: stop and go back to beginning of track
left and right: nudge is a great feature. keep it the way it is.
menu and play short: well i dont need the semitones, sou you could do something else here (see layout 2). on the other hand, real musicians might need it.
play long: go back to wps.
wheel: keep it the way it is; adjust speed.

if you want to make it even better for Djing, skip the semitone feature and follow the below button layout:

**** Layout 2: (incremental to Layout 1)
menu and play short: nudge +-2%
left and right: cue within current song (no skip to next song functionality! to make sure you dont get lost in your playlist). maybe accelerating to allow you to cue to that break in the middle of the track quickly.

a lot of people suggested to implement a "keep pitch, adjust tempo only" feature. in my opinion this is not needed. as it is, its just like vinyl. if it was okay for carl cox for decades to mix with weird pitch , its good enough for me.

and well, i have seen there were a lot of threats about bpm counting. if it was possible to have a bpm counter it d be great. NO tapping though. if i understood the other threads correctly, an analyzing  on the fly routine would drain the CPU too much. so here comes an alternative suggestion. you can tag your songs with bpms upfront, and there is a simple calculation based on the currently selected pitch %, displaying the actual bpm (or a reasonable approximation, its all empirical anyways)

I have read about features offering a pseudo mixing capability with a single ipod. forget about that. What i have in mind is turning an ipod into a capable single deck you plug in to your mixer to play along with other sources. For that i d love to see layout 2.

Alright, Djs out there, give me some feedback. what do you think about the button layout? let's discuss! Please let me know if you need any clarification.

Apart from playing a bit in VBA in dont know much about programming. So, eventually we d also have to find someone able to implement the above suggestions.

cheers,

chris

[Llorean]

This would all make more sense in a DJ plugin.

Rockbox is designed around DAPS, which fundamentally are personal audio devices. If you're going to be DJing something, a PC offers a significantly wider array of options anyway.

I sincerely feel the Pitch interface is already problematic and needs to be simplified, not made more complex. All of this functionality could be put in a DJ Plugin that normal users would never need to see or be confused by when they're just trying to get a simple speed increase on their audio book.

As well, this could recover some binary size in the process.

[fouronefive]

Llorean , thanks for your reply.

This would all make more sense in a DJ plugin.

good remark: lets get this into a DJ plugin! anyone can think of additional features for such a pluging?

I sincerely feel the Pitch interface is already problematic and needs to be simplified

Apparently there is currently some discussion about the PITCH feature as a whole. this d be a great approach: remove it for regular users, have it as a seperate plug in and expand the features for "musicians".

--> anyone out there who likes the idea and knows how to program for rockbox?

Rockbox is designed around DAPS, which fundamentally are personal audio devices. If you're going to be DJing something, a PC offers a significantly wider array of options anyway.

I am aware of the fact that my notebook running ableton can do more than my ipod. I am just thinking of this "cute" solution: you show up at a party, all you need is your ipod and an audio cable to plug into the mixer as an extra channel and off you go! (I know, you cant mix with such an Ipod alone, but need other sound sources as well) You have your easy to control personal ipod deck without the need of any additional hardware like this: http://www.thomann.de/gb/numark_idj2.htm.

I m sure there mus be more DJs out there who like this idea.

[mborus]

Apparently there is currently some discussion about the PITCH feature as a whole. this d be a great approach: remove it for regular users, have it as a seperate plug in and expand the features for "musicians".

One of the great things about the current pitch plugin is that you can access it with one click, one scroll to the end, another click. (holding down SELECT, scrolling to the bottom, clicking SELECT again). This is easy even on targets, where the keys are a bit difficult to navigate (like the Ipod Nano)

To make this approach useful, there could be "last used plugin" or "favorite plugin" entry as the last entry of the Context Menu where "Pitch" currenty resides.

I see a lot of problems with pitch as a plugin - mainly to keep the pitch running when you leave the plugin to do other things and to keep modules like the crossfading mode running. Currently pitch and crossfading work together great. But when I forget to leave the pitch screen, crossfading settings are ignored and the music stops between tracks.

I tried beat-mixing with two Ipods via the Pitch menu and I agree with fouronefive: The problem is mainly the lack of a pause/unpause feature within the Pitch screen. On the Ipod Nano, the MENU button resets the pitch to 100%. PLAY/PAUSE selects Pitch mode.

Suggestion: Put both of these on the MENU button. If short MENU click would select the mode and long MENU hold would reset to 100%, this could free the PLAY/PAUSE button to it's original function. Suddently basic mixing would be quite usable. I assume the PAUSE/PLAY status is kept both when entering PITCH as well as when leaving - as it is now.

I don't agree with fouronefive on the rewind: Once you can un-pause a track in the Pitch screen, rewinding and cue point finding can be done outside of Pitch. Cue points can either be found earlier and bookmarked. Or you can change "Playback settings/skip length" to a small value like 5 seconds to allow searching a track for the cue point fast. This will also prevent most accidental track skips. (and you can still skip via the playlist!) Almost all of Layout2 is already available outside of the Pitch screen.

Regarding real DJ-ing with Rockbox: I once ran a private 200+ people party off a H140 plugged directly into the room's sound system for 6 hours after they decided to fire the DJ. It got it to work (including loads of on-the-fly playlist changes) but it was extremly complicated and every incorrect keypress risked a room full of angry people. So I'm with Llorean here - that DJ-ing is not a core Rockbox feature.

[fouronefive]

thanks for your feedback so far.

Almost all of Layout2 is already available outside of the Pitch screen.

The idea is that once you have selected a track, there is no need to switch away from the "pitch screen". You dont want to scroll in menus once you are in the mix. Its a usability issue, not a matter of availability.
The workflow i have in mind is as follows (requiring multiple sound sources and an audio mixer; see also last paragraph):

1) use the Rockbox tools available (folders, database, playlists) to select the track you want.
2) play the track you want to prelisten
3) start the PITCH feature (or future DJ PLugin)
4) stay on the same screen to beatmatch the song (you'd need the cueing as described in layout 2)
5) do your mix-in of the ipod (still on the same screen, ready to nudge and finetune)
6) Prepare the next track on a different sound source before the song played from Ipod is finished.
7) Play alternative sound source. (You are still on the same screen, ready to nudge the mp3 or finetune speed, while in the mix-out of the Ipod)
8 ) do something else or go back to 1)

Regarding real DJ-ing with Rockbox: I once ran a private 200+ people party off a H140 plugged directly into the room's sound system for 6 hours after they decided to fire the DJ. It got it to work (including loads of on-the-fly playlist changes) but it was extremly complicated and every incorrect keypress risked a room full of angry people. So I'm with Llorean here - that DJ-ing is not a core Rockbox feature.

Maybe i should refine what i have in mind: My vision is not a single ipod running a whole party. I agree, this is neither a Rockbox core feature and probably wont be feasible anyways ...  (e.g. prelistening wont ever work as you only have a stereo out. )
I guess most of you are familair with DJ set ups, but just in case: What you typically have is a X (X=2,3,4,more ) channel mixer with different sound sources on the channels. Each sound source typically has a way to adjust the playbackspeed. Lets assume you have a 4 channel mixer and there are two turntables hooked up. Then, i plug in my ipod via a regular 1/8 jack to tulip audio cable on the third channel. Now i have the freedom of playing from TT1, TT2 or IPOD. (Thus it wont be necessary to play more than one track from the ipod consecutively - IMHO this will also never possible in a serious way, unless you go for additional hardware)
So, what i have in mind is turning the IPod into a device for DJ-mixing to complement existing DJ set ups with an extra deck. All i d propose is being every once in a while able to beatmatch a track from my ipod to other sources in a easy and straight forward way (not too much scrolling around needed).

[sqgl]

a lot of people suggested to implement a "keep pitch, adjust tempo only" feature. in my opinion this is not needed.

It is important for spoken word and it has just been implemented recently. Woohoo!
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=21931.0

PS For DJ'ing I suggest an Atom notebook computer running Linux and the open source mixxx app. I use Traktor but that is overkill for private house parties.