Musician Tools

[graey]

Hello everybody. About a week ago I bought a second-hand Sansa e250 for the purpose of using rockbox, and it's veeery sweet.
I've set up the dev-environment on my linux-box, and I'm going to write some plugins that will be useful to musicians. First I'm going to have a go at a metronome app, as versatile as I can make it, and then I'll try to make a decent tuner app that makes use of the microphone. The tuner is probably gonna prove to be a bit hard, but it should be possible I think.
Is there anyone out there that knows other things musicians might like (apart from MIDI playback which is perfectly fine on my sansa if I don't use more than 3-4 instruments per file  .

[evilnick]

There is already a metronome plugin (Plugins > Applications > Metronome) so that would be a good place to start, and perhaps expand the options.

[aaron424]

The tuner would be really great, and the metronome does need some expanding.

[jochen]

What about a plugin that can just play a note or chord that you can specify using

 * a keyboard
 * a guitar/bass fretboard with different string setups
 * a textual interface where you can choose notes by their "name", for example f#''
 * a staff with the most common clefs
 * guitar tablature...

This would be nice to "tune" instruments or choirs (just in case you forgot your fork but brought your dap ;-) )

[Chronon]

Some sort of DSP effects for processing signals at line-in (obviously only available for certain targets).  (Ideas: distortion, flanger, EQ, delay, etc.)

There is indication that this sort of thing should be possible on those targets that have suitable hardware:
http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=11734.0

[raudonkepuraite]

It would be nice if someone could make plugin that could show BMP/ tempo of line in, mic or now playing song... it would be a good start for dj or automix plugin since rockbox can stretch and crosfeed but thats only a dream... isnt it? Anyway a metronome with more expanded tempo, rhythm and beat functions as well as a plugin that could play a note with manually set pitch would be really great

[Chronon]

There's already a feature idea topic for those things.  This is more aimed at utilities that a musician-on-the-go might find useful.

[Piesia]

How about looping?

While listening to an mp3, you could hit (some button, let's call it) A to start a temp recording at a point in the mp3 (or just remember the section of the mp3). You'd then hit (some button, let's call it) B to stop at the end of a section of the same mp3 and Rockbox would repeat that loop over and over until you stopped the loop. It would be nice if the Pitch menu could be displayed while repeating a loop, so you could change the Pitch or Speed of the repeated loop as required to learn a difficult part, for example.

Perhaps it could be on the context menu that Pitch is on as a new menu item called Loop.
It would be an added plus if loops could have a persistent state and stay around until cleared, if the user wanted. If this happened, perhaps the state info could be stored in the same place as the mp3 is.

<Edit>
It would be an added plus if pitch information could have a persistent state and stay around until cleared, if the user wanted, It would be stored on a per song or per album (folder) basis. If this happened, perhaps the state info could be stored in the same place as the mp3 is. If I'm playing along with song A or album X, I might need to change the pitch for just that song or album (as it is not in standard tuning). For other albums or songs, I'd not want to change the pitch as they are in standard tuning. When I went back to song A or album X, it would be very nice to have Rockbox remember the pitch so I don't have to change it all over again to try to match my instrument in standard tuning to the song or album all over again. It is generally difficult to retune many stringed instruments, especially on a per song basis, and this would be very useful for musicians.
</Edit>

Many TASCAM guitar trainers have this type of looping built in, for example, but it would be good for musicians of any instrument.

Thanks!

Piesia

[evilnick]

There is a repeat mode (AB Repeat) that loops part of a song, check the manual for the details.

I haven't tested this, but would expect that pitch changes would still work when the AB Repeat is on.

[Piesia]

>There is a repeat mode (AB Repeat) that loops part of a song, check the manual for the details.

I searched The Rockbox Manual for Sansa e200 and e200R Series October 29, 2009 and can't find anything about AB Repeat mode. I found a section in the gigabeatf manual which lead me to it in the Rockbox firmware on the sansa.

I can see AB Repeat on the sansa under Settings Playback Repeat, but I haven't figured out how to set a or b points or how to clear them.

Can you tell me if I should be looking in another manual? If you can point me at it, I will try to update the sansa manual if the support is built in to sansa Rockbox. (I tried to google it and could only find one thing in a Rockbox manual about it, I also searched for 'ab' in the Rockbox pdf manual for sansa and couldn't find it).

>I haven't tested this, but would expect that pitch changes would still work when the AB Repeat is on

It would be perfect if you can still make pitch changes while looping

Thank you!

P.

[evilnick]

This should tell you what you need to know: http://download.rockbox.org/daily/manual/rockbox-sansae200/rockbox-buildch7.html#x10-1180007.2

I probably should have used "A-B" as that's the specific term in the manual. 

[Piesia]

Sorry, my bad! It was (of course) there all the time, I don't know how I missed that!

Next time, I'll read more of the manual. 8-( My apologies for wasting your time, and thanks very much for the help!

P.

<Edit>
I just tried it out on two sansa 250r v. 1s (both running the latest version r23406-091029). Setting the A point with power left is easy to do, setting the B point with power right is quite difficult -- I can only manage it occasionally, I couldn't get it to clear with power play at all.

I'm not sure if the problem is with my fingers, the sansas or something else...
</Edit>