Rather esoteric one this...
Especially useful if you just recorded a new musical idea and you want to start recording different parts alongside it while you are still in the mood but the piece has lots of irregular changes and dynamics, perhaps it was done without a click as well, so you will need to add some visual cues first.
Well, I find markers are all very useful for dividing sequence into sections for editing tasks but when standing some distance from the monitor playing guitar, keyboard, vocals etc they all look the same and you can't see their names (and naming them takes ages anyway).
My solution?
Use a combination of:
1 - the waveform of your original track
2 - markers
AND
3 - modulation (or any continuous) data in a redundant MIDI track just for a visual reference.
All you need to do is run though your original piece of music quickly adding markers for the exact locations of abrupt changes and draw your continuous data to show the dynamics or playing styles and to give more info on what the markers refer to.
a rather simple example: a classic stadium R'n'R ending might look like continous data getting larger then going zig zaggy then dropping to zero - with a marker added for the exact end crash/chord moment- you see?
It sounds longwinded but it is actually very quick to set up. Using this method I find I can play along to passages of music without having to get to know it first and so keep an element of spontanaety and freshness. Great for guitar based music, orchestral (via keyboard obviously!), and multi vocal ideas.
