Conditional highlights?

[JerryK]

Hi Arlo & all
I'd like a way to conditionally highlight items in an obvious way.  Maybe if Personal Offset is set, then those Icons could optionally invert their colour, etc.  I'd like to place a box around an item (perhaps any item or text or perhaps the whole lyric or chords background) and if a song has maybe more than 1 (pick a number) Lyrics or Recordings, or pick-a-field has or contains a given value (whatever, usual conditionals) then the box will appear in a chosen colour, instead of background colour.  Maybe an outline to the box if preferred. Optional.  Make some text appear, with optional background or inverted colour if a chosen Tag is on.  I suggested once before, showing the number of recordings/lyrics if more than 1, or at least a field for that which I could add.  I already did that for BPM in the metronome.
For example, I sometimes fail to notice that I should use a capo.  Or I (or someone else on stage) will not know there are other lyrics available.  I don't like the list of lyrics field because it's too costly on space.  Probably many other uses would occur to other people.
Any chance of testing Recording names for a character match, example if I've made a backing track with "Duo" in the name?
Anything that makes for more concentration on the singing/playing/performing and less on the process & tech.  I mix the show too, of course.

BH is already an excellent tool for what we do.  Well done.

[arlo]

I think it would be more practical to simply use the Notes field to add reminders for yourself. Or if you're already using the Notes field for other things, you could use a custom field instead.

You can place either one onto your layout. With the Notes field, you can add different formatting for each song, while with a custom field you can set a single text color to use for all songs.

[JerryK]

Thanks but Notes are in use.
As for the rest, the facts already exist, like tags, number of docs/recs, personal offset and so on.  Repeating those facts into yet more fields and then having to also maintain those going forward is not doing it for me I'm afraid.  That would also be more on the screen to read when performing, when I'm wanting to reduce that workload.
It's also not as striking as a conditional background-colour box or inverse colour icon/field, which would occupy zero or near-zero screen real-estate in many cases.

[JerryK]

I'm already maintaining Tags for Capo, 2+Docs, 2+Recordings and 2 different kinds of backing track.  Arguably, conditionals could do all of those things for me with zero input on my part.  Typing them as text into 1 or more extra fields as well is a lot to do.

[arlo]

For the capo, I would recommend a custom field named "Capo" with an entry like "Capo on 3." That seems easier to manage than tags for this purpose. You can add the "Capo" field at whatever size, color and position you want in your layout.

For the multiple documents and recordings, are you aware of Settings > General Settings > Defaults? You can use these to automatically select the version of a document or recording needed for the current gig. It's much easier to just display automatically the info you need than to display a reminder to manually switch to different info for every song.

The approach you're suggesting definitely wouldn't be "zero input." You'd have to navigate a new interface to program the conditions you want to catch and the actions you want to trigger, and then this more complicated system would have a greater chance of failure than the functions suggested above. I can imagine troubleshooting along the lines of, "Why didn't this reminder appear based on these four criteria I set up."

So my instinct here is to simplify and focus your setup rather than make it more complicated. Feel free to say more about the specific friction points you're trying to smooth out.

[JerryK]

Fair comment.
I don't have all this mapped out, sadly but for example some tags are there so that they appears under the song title in the setlist or perhaps in a Smart List selection.  Tricky because I've now got more tags than will fit, in a few cases.  However, a field with "Capo on 3" is simply duplicating what I've already input in Personal Transpose.  Doing that again in another field (with actual typing - shudder!) is unnecessarily labour-intensive and then has to be maintained if that capo position changes in the future.  Whereas, Personal Transpose is already populated and would already track (itself, obviously) when changed in future.
Defaults, for the default recording - yes I'm aware of that feature (very cunning of you) - except that the duo doesn't use backing for all songs, so that doesn't quite work.  Better, therefore, to have my proposed test for some text in the Recording name - in this case, containing "Duo".  I have considered using a 1 second, silent track for those without backing but the jury is still out.
Multiple documents are rare for us, currently but I can imagine the band's keyboard player scanning his 'dots' for some songs - but probably only for some songs - so it's not easy to see which songs have extra documents.
Also, my approach simply highlights existing data; where yours gives me more to enter/maintain and more to read on stage.
With conditional highlights, several of my Tags could become unnecessary.
Can I already include a field on the screen for an existing Tag, so the Tag name appears (perhaps in a chosen colour)?  I know you're always adding things, so it's quite possible.
I think the web screens recently got wider, for example.  Nice.

Happy to navigate such new features, once for each Layout where they are used.  And that's the point: such features could just work, based on number of documents/recordings/semitones or existence of selected Tags and so on.  Otherwise, it's extra data maintenance work per-song.  All up, I have over 800, so it's not trivial.

[arlo]

For the capo reminder, you want to show the Personal Transpose setting in the layout somehow. I already have a wish list item from you on that. The transpose up/down buttons already highlight to show that a transposition happened, and I have a wish list item to show the number of half steps and in what direction is currently set. I'll add a vote for that as well.

Can you say more about why the default recording setting doesn't work for selecting your backing tracks? Surely having the correct backing track selected automatically would be better than displaying a reminder that you need to manually select a different backing track.

I'm not sure what you're saying about the keyboard player and multiple documents. Can you describe that situation?

[JerryK]

Ok, thanks for the votes.

On the capo item, I often add the bpm count as an item in the 'box' of the lower part of the metronome, which works quite nicely, and I imagine something similar for the transpose icons.  I would also like non-zero to be a bit more 'stand out', if I'm honest.
That metronome tweak came about because several times I had been asked "what speed is that", which is now much easier to answer.  Happily, bpm is available as a field

Recordings.  It's not so much a reminder to pick a different one, rather an indicator that one intended for Duo backing is available for this song.  So if a recording exists with "Duo" in the title, my proposed highlighted/reversed text would appear, to indicate that.  The chances of me remembering all the songs which do and don't, correctly, are quite small, while singing, playing, stamping on FX pedals, mixing and remembering to smile.
The number of attached recordings, which we discussed once before would be nice, on the Recordings & Documents icons too, as discussed.  This of course ceases to be useful if I go down the road of brief, silent recordings in order to maintain the, perhaps 3, 'standard' number of recordings attached.  As I suggested, that thought is rather a work in progress.

Keyboard player.  He's from the Musicals and cruise ships world, and uses sheet music for a number of our songs.  If he/we get around to loading those into BH, then some songs will have his documents attached; and some will not.  A recent bass-player also had the dots for a few songs.  I'm wanting an obvious indication that there are more than the usual 1 Lyrics document attached to a song.  Or are you going to tell me that a default Document of "2" would display a second one if it exists and normal Lyrics if not?  I just thought of that.

[JerryK]

I just noticed that adding Tags to a layout always gives me all of them.  Again, a lot to take in on the fly.

[arlo]

It's not so much a reminder to pick a different one, rather an indicator that one intended for Duo backing is available for this song.

For certain gigs, do you always want to use it if it's available? Then having it selected automatically at those gigs seems better. If you put the alternate recordings in second position and set the default recording number to 2, the first recording will play when a second recording isn't available. If you have a situation where you have no recording for the first position and want no recording to play when set to 1, you can add an empty recording to the first position. With the most recent update, you can add the same empty recording to multiple songs. Another new option, if your two kinds of set lists are in two different projects, is that you can assign a song's recordings to separate projects. So in Project A, only Recording A would load and in Project B, only Recording B would load.

If he/we get around to loading those into BH, then some songs will have his documents attached; and some will not.  A recent bass-player also had the dots for a few songs.  I'm wanting an obvious indication that there are more than the usual 1 Lyrics document attached to a song.  Or are you going to tell me that a default Document of "2" would display a second one if it exists and normal Lyrics if not?

That's right. The other way to arrange this is to put your user-specific documents first in the song and assign them only to those users. Then those users will see their special documents when available, or the default document or lyrics when not. Using the default document or recording position is better if you want to switch between entire sets of documents or recordings depending on the gig or the person using the device. Placing user-specific files first and assigning them only to those users is better when each person always wants to see a specific file regardless of the gig.

BTW, these options are described in "How can I set up my account so each band member sees his or her own document for each song" in the FAQ:

https://www.bandhelper.com/support/FAQ.html

[JerryK]

Thanks Arlo. That goes some way towards what I need. 

Thanks & well done for all the effort you put into the product.

[arlo]

You're welcome!

[elliptic]

I'm a bit confused by the Capo thing. It's only mentioned twice in the Help and neither are about the actual Capo option that's in the Song List layout.

As far as I can tell you need to edit the Capo setting for each song at the Setlist level, there's no setting at the Song level that you can choose to optionally override for particular Setlists? I get that you might do songs in different keys in different Setlists, like if it's for a different singer, but most of the time you do songs in the same key, with the same tuning and capo settings.

In any case, I've added the Capo button to the Song List settings in my Layout, and I've used the Setlist bulk update function to set the Capo value for a few songs but nothing is appearing.

And it's even stranger for the Tuning setting - you can set it using the bulk update at the Setlist level but I can't find a single place that it can be displayed in the Layout editor.

[arlo]

I'm not sure what you're referring to here because there is nothing called "Capo" or "Tuning" among the standard app functions, although you can add custom fields for these if you want.

All song fields are set at the song level. If you want to override a field for a set list, you could make a smart copy of the song, change that field in the smart copy, and add the smart copy to the set list. All other fields will be inherited from the original copy.

If you need further help, please submit a help ticket so we can look at what you've set up:

https://helpdesk.arlomedia.com/arlomedia/add.html

[elliptic]

Really sorry, user error.

I had created these as custom fields on another project years ago and forgotten about them because they were only in that one old project. I was confused because they are there in the Layout editor, but of course they have to be. Once I added them to the current project everything works as expected.