I’m considering adding support for metronome lead-in beats. The idea is you set a lead-in measure count and when you hit play, the metronome will sound out N measures of beats before the transport actually starts.
But… it raises some interesting questions which I’d like everyone’s thoughts on.
Most importantly, does this just need to be just the metronome sounds/flash or would you expect the transport to actually start at the lead-in with either negative transport position, or everything else offset into the future? Should synced MIDI devices see the transport start before or after leadin? What should MTC position and MIDI Song Position be reported as? Should plugins see the transport starting when the lead-in starts or when the play actually starts. ie: It gets complicated.
So, I’m starting to think this should just be an audio/flash lead-in, with actual transport only reporting as playing and moving after the lead-in. Is there any ever reason to transmit the lead-in timing to plugins and external gear?
Some other questions:
Would you only want this at the start of a song? What about a play-range that you’re using for practice - would you want lead-ins to happen there too? I presume no lead-in when resuming from pause.
What sort of control over the metronome sounds would you want - eg: only during lead-in, during lead-in and regular play, lead-in + N measures etc…
Would you want separate play commands - one to start play normally and one to start play with lead-in?
Personally, I have the lead in as part of my click track. So no precount needed here, but it may be more useful to others, and options are what makes Cantabile so flexible.
I vote for the transport starts at lead with a negative transport position for these reasons :
Since Cantabile can act as a multi track recorder it would need to be able to be recording before the first starting beat of a song to cover any notes that lead the first zero marker beat of the song
in some cases backing tracks will need to be aligned that have lead notes before the first zero marker beat
if your are recording the metronome as a stripe track it would be good to have all the lead-in clicks recorded
It would be nice to have an option to choose per song because a lot of users might never need lead rolls or notes that are before zero transport position but when you need it it would help to have it.
Yep it does get complex in a hurry and I’m not sure what the working version of negative time would look like. In the end I still vote for negative time and a zero marker for the reasons I stated above regarding notes and other events that occur prior to the first zero marker beat.
Yes
Not so much for me because on the fly play ranges for practice are not that precise as when I set them as a rule.
Yea, overkill I think
I would want optional control of the 3 choices you listed
Yes, or maybe separate transport modes. One like we currently have, one with the lead in feature added to what we have that starts transport play after the lead-in and the negative time marker type that starts the transport play prior to the zero marker (during the lead-in).
I hope I understood the questions and didn’t get into the weeds …