Perform: what are your initial thoughts?

[Mhaeric]

Also there are 37 buttons, which is quite an odd number. The way I see it, the best thing to do is slot them temporarily as need be for specific compositions.

There's 37 because that gives exactly 3 full octaves including both the top and bottom octave.

I have a macro that shows/hides some blank hotbars and have them aligned how a piano's keys are. I click on the "Performance" macro to bring up the virtual keyboard, and on any of the other macros to hide it again. It will also automatically hide if I switch jobs. Admittedly, I'm only able do this because I use the 7-10 non-shared hotbars solely as a database of sorts for switching between preset hotbars in a menu-style system to save screen space and my Bard's 7-10 were empty.



What I do want is a way to /micon the note icons so that I can set it as my "Performance" macro icon.

[Reinha]

They intentionally made it so you can't use macros with the perform actions because they want people to actually develop their skill as an in game musician instead of just copy / pasting macros from the internet.

Macros aren't just for copying though, they are also for creating your own things. I have no musical background whatsoever so I don't remember what each note sounds like. It makes creating songs really difficult when most of my effort goes into finding a key that doesn't clash with the previous one. If I wanted to learn music properly I would buy a real instrument and get lessons, not mess with a game system with horrendous timing and combat job keybinds.

If there was a way to save my melodies and have them played without mistakes, I would enjoy and use this feature. It doesn't have to be our current macro system. Special hotbars with a "play all notes" button would work fine. Then I could place the notes on the bars and play the whole thing in rhythm.

[Labrini]

I just wish we could "save" notes in any way and after making a song, to be able to see the bard playing it again with only one click!

[Laerune]

I just wish we could "save" notes in any way and after making a song, to be able to see the bard playing it again with only one click!

Like a macro?

Yoshida did not want this so they made it so we can not do it, atleast not legally.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

I've started using my Shared Macro tab space for putting down "sheet music", so to speak, in the macro table for ease of reading a piece I might want to practice - but in all honesty, without a dedicated UI for the keys and the ability to macro in any capacity so the music can be replayed easily and without error on my part... I don't really see myself using this system much. Maybe to waste time with on the odd days I queue endgame stuff up as my BRD, but never much beyond that.

Macros aren't just for copying though, they are also for creating your own things. I have no musical background whatsoever so I don't remember what each note sounds like. It makes creating songs really difficult when most of my effort goes into finding a key that doesn't clash with the previous one. If I wanted to learn music properly I would buy a real instrument and get lessons, not mess with a game system with horrendous timing and combat job keybinds.

If there was a way to save my melodies and have them played without mistakes, I would enjoy and use this feature. It doesn't have to be our current macro system. Special hotbars with a "play all notes" button would work fine. Then I could place the notes on the bars and play the whole thing in rhythm.

This quote pretty much sums up my opinion. I want to enjoy the Perform action - they obviously did put a fair bit of work into it, to give us such a wide range of notes. But with how it is now, I'd just be better off buying a real instrument and learning to play that.

[Hyperia]

I can’t even play hot cross buns on a recorder let alone play any actual music as a bard. So while this is of no use to me, I hope people who do play music and who understand notes enjoy it. For those of us who can’t play music, it would have been nice to have the bard auto play safe music like the music player in our houses.

[LaylaTsarra]

I can’t even play hot cross buns on a recorder let alone play any actual music as a bard. So while this is of no use to me, I hope people who do play music and who understand notes enjoy it. For those of us who can’t play music, it would have been nice to have the bard auto play safe music like the music player in our houses.

Even a small number of tunes would be nice. It's going to definitely reduce the number of people using the feature. Most of us are not musical... although when i get some time I'll play with it a bit.

[Malzian]

My only major gripe (as someone who does play an instrument) is that the way the system is designed utilizing skills in this manner... You can't play chords. Single note is fine and all for simple pieces, but the only way to make chords with the system is to record a song multiple times utilizing each note in the chord at its position in the composition (with millisecond precision if you want it to be seamless) and then layer those tracks together in a video/sound editor.

It's not a system breaking thing and you can still make music with it, it's just a little disappointing. I understand the technical issues involved, but I'd still love to have some chords available to me.

[Fhaerron]

My thoughts?

Well why don't we have an option to mute all those sounds??

I logged in yesterday after a very long tiresome day... it gave me a headache, I swear I never saw so many bards even though my server is a ghosttown, seems like everybody logged in just to play music, everybody was just standing there and no matter where I ran to, loads of people just playing weird tones trough each other ... I teleported to my house.

Seems I'll be avoiding people/town for another month.

[Zfz]

I do recall that when they first revealed this system in a Live Letter, they said they're going to start small with single notes only, then add more instruments and chords etc. So I'm looking forward to it.

I just hope that they at least do something about the local delay and UI experience.

Note that I said local delay because some people in the thread don't understand what it's about. The idea is to have the client software immeidately play the note without waiting for server acknowledgement. This helps tremendously for people who have played instruments before but aren't necessarily real musicians who can probably easily adjust to such delays.

If I press a key, the note sounds as I press it. That's how instruments work, and it's a very important part of the experience, similar to how professional drawing tablets at the very least will track pen tips without lag, and tablets that show tracking lag are basically all classified as amateur/entry-level products by today.

seems like everybody logged in just to play music, everybody was just standing there and no matter where I ran to, loads of people just playing weird tones trough each other

Another difference between JP and non-JP data centers I guess. On my server (Zeromus) there are rarely people playing just randomly everywhere. The market, the aetheryte in Gridania were all just business as usual with no BRDs playing. People practise at home. At least when I was logged in it was like that.