I don´t know if this ever has mentioned before but for me the biggest improvement for Hookpad would be the possibility to import Midi files. Midi files which after import into Hookpad would show up in the band and those would follow the chords as the original files.
With some arranger keyboards and also DAW´s or Band in a box you can create your own styles from midifiles. The file has to meet some requirements regarding content and length like should be in C Major or so. There should be a database acessable for HP Users where you can upload midifiles and preview, download “style” files. So the community would create the content on their own over time.
Thanks for considering
Alex
Hey Alex,
thank you for the great suggestion! Right now, behind the scenes, we’re in the process of switching our patterns to read from midi files instead of having hardcoded values. All new drums are already doing this, but we didn’t implement that for bass and harmony instruments yet. When we’re doing this, maybe we can also implement a user upload on the way.
One thing which might be a problem is the amount of midi files a user would need to upload. We have 7 different time signatures and if you switch to eighth note swing the first four time signatures even have their own patterns, which is in total 11 MIDI files for one patch. For the drums it’s even worse as with fill-ins and pickup rhythms and alternating cymbals etc. this can go up to 88 files for one patch.
We could allow users to upload only one file in the current song’s time signature but I’, not sure if a community experience is great when the patches are only there for some time signatures.
So there are lots of things to think about but in general the idea to make things more flexible is always great!
Start small, i would suggest. I think you could start with the meter of 4/4 which is by far the most common. I guess nobody will complain if new features are limited at first. Regarding drums and fills, i think HP already offers enough. Drums are also less important if it comes to composing and which producer would use the hookpad drums in the mix? No offense. 
Just publish a manual, the demands how a midifile should look like one for bass and one for harmony and a midi-to-style import button in the band window. Import wise HP should automatically strip pitch bends, program changes, controllers, bars of midifiles longer than X bars and may even compress extensive note dynamics to make hookpad compatible to as many midi files as possible. That is my idea, so far.
Thank, Alex
