Are we talking about MIDI or Audio? You’re just very abstract and unclear. The OP was
For reasons that escape me, there has never been a one-button affair for copying an entire section of music and then inserting it somewhere else.
And the solution to that is called “Global Copy”, maybe used in conjunction with ‘Paste Relative to Cursor’, if that works.
But somehow this thread has morphed into a more abstract different feature request which is the second time this has happened with me and you - you seem to avoid solutions and your latest post still tells me absolutely nothing.
Notation is a very precise specific thing, it is like a method of pre-production.
Are you talking about spectrally merging audio events?
for example, you have an event that is a C-major scale, and next to it, you have another event that is an f-major scale, you want to be able to insert the f-major event into the c-major event creating a harmonized event? still confused if were’ talking about audio or MIDI events or both???
If audio, it seems sort of counter intuitive to just putting the f-major event on a separate track to retain ability to balance the volumes, edit, etc?
Yes it would, because how can Cubase know you want to include stuff outside the locators or selected range? Why not just make sure that those events outside is NOT outside when you select or set the locators?
Then use macros and let everyone else have copy/paste as we expect copy/paste to work. Actually the same way copy/paste works in every program and OS on a computer. You select something, you copy the selected part and paste it. We don’t expect anything that are not selected to be copied and how would Cubase know.
Because music sections often don’t have an exact defined start / end point where you can place them -
Melodic parts with a pickup start in the bar before…
Long note tails eg cymbal decays at the end run into the preceding section…
You often need a small amount of audio before the L locator on some tracks so that the transient of the downbeat isn’t compromised.
A new smart copy paste (or insert) option using the locators would take some of these things into account -
Parts or audio that fall exactly with the LR locators are copied across exactly as normal.
But a part or audio that starts in the bar before the L locator, or ends in the bar after the R locator would be copied across whole, as its assumed there are pickups and tails within it.
This alone could (remember its a new additional option…!) massively cut down on the amount of fixing that’s required following a copy or insert, where you have to drag out to get back your missed audio. It would never be able to totally know everything you wanted to do, but it would be better than the dumb version we have now.
You can’t currently do it with macro’s or we would do!. It may however be possible to add the necessary functions.
No ones suggesting changing the basic copy paste function!!! We’re simply asking for an additional smarter variation that’s geared to the way music works - kind of like the smart selectors you get in photoshop.
Melodic parts with a pickup start in the bar before…
Long note tails eg cymbal decays at the end run into the preceding section…
You often need a small amount of audio before the L locator on some tracks so that the transient of the downbeat isn’t compromised.
This is what ‘Set Snap Point’ is for
this is what ‘Grid Relative’ snap more is for
this is what ‘Paste Relative To Cursor’ is for
Three easy ways to do an otherwise complicated task.
Parts or audio that fall exactly with the LR locators are copied across exactly as normal.
But a part or audio that starts in the bar before the L locator, or ends in the bar after the R locator would be copied across whole, as its assumed there are pickups and tails within it.
To what extent? Every time regardless of length? If one of the events that goes outside the locators boundaries is 3 minutes long, is it to going to be copied? or only events that extend beyond the locators within a 16th?
It just seems counter intuitive compared to what is already available.
This is about the smart selection of parts to start with. Snap has nothing to do with it.
Just applying it to preceding and subsequent bars only would probably cut down by 50% the amount of trim fixing that’s often required when using copy / paste currently.
So we need Cubase to include data within a user specified threshold set by either dB’s or milliseconds outside the selected range on a per track basis. I imagine the dialogue would not look dissimilar to the track import dialogue where instead of selecting the destination track the user can specify the size and type of threshold for each track.
So if I have a low brass swell that builds into the next part, I just select what type of threshold and what size for the low brass track.
I think all the examples only prove my point: I want this to be SIMPLER. And by -simple- I mean, one shouldn’t have to futz with all these snap points and macros and ‘housekeeping’. Cubase should be able to detect automatically the -intent- of the user when they want to copy/paste content. That’s what I mean by ‘intelligent’.
And that also means not having to deal with Ranges and Locators, which, at the end of the day are SCISSORS. They don’t detect -music-. If the request for a mockup is sincere here is ALL you need to visualise:
I take the mouse, I lasso an area of music. I right click. A menu appears. I select “Copy this section of music” from that menu. I move the cursor to the destination. I right click. I select “Paste selected music.” Done.
Now… HOW Cubase does this under the hood? That is not my job. I’m just telling you how the program should work. SIMPLER.
“Detect automatically the -intent- of the user” This<<< is some new way out there sh*t man.
If computers new anything about making music they would be making it dude.
I’m pretty sure this is the first someone has mentioned this request being about smart selection…
but what does smart selection even mean? Are we talking about object selection, or are we talking about range selection or both? What are the variables of “smartness”, what is the “smartness” targeting exactly? Why does selection need to be “smart”? Just selected what you need - how can it be smart beyond that? If you’re using the range tool, use ‘Snap to Events’ Are you wanting the range tool to automatically highlight the totality of an event and individually sized per event per track? Why not just use object selection then?
Just applying it to preceding and subsequent bars only would probably cut down by 50% the amount of trim fixing that’s often required when using copy / paste currently.
You could only say that if you ignored my above solutions shown in the gif.
Why though? this seems just so much more complicated and time consuming and counter intuitive, than it would be to just do it manually… even without the utilities I’ve mentioned above.
I’m not sure it really gets more simpler than that mate… I mean, maybe we need to call up Elon Musk and get him to work with steinberg so Cubase is Neurolink integration… but you may be making your annual request for another 20 years.
You nit picked snap points out of my three examples while ignoring the others… There’s no futzing or house keeping mate, it’s uber simple.
And that also means not having to deal with Ranges and Locators, which, at the end of the day are SCISSORS.
Then use object selection and ‘Grid Relative’ snap more. Easy. Simple.
I take the mouse, I lasso an area of music. I right click. A menu appears. I select “Copy this section of music” from that menu. I move the cursor to the destination. I right click. I select “Paste selected music.” Done.
Okay, not I’m really lost. You’re wanting all this uber simple ultra intelligent quick copy pasting and here you are using the right click menu.
But nonetheless, I maybe understand what you are saying here, you want a lasso tool you can draw across multiple tracks across multiple events and have the lasso snap to example just before the start of a transient so it will snap to say kick transient on kick one, and you could draw the lasso to the start of the snare transient on track 2 which is offset from the kick.
The lasso tool could utilize transient and tonal information to determine what the user is trying to select. whens the selection is released, maybe it could convert to a range type selection where each track/event has it’s own tailored range selection based of the intelligent lasso, the user can clearly see if the correct things were selected.
If this is what you meant, you could have easily explained this better in post one - so you should do some self-reflection here and maybe realize why you’ve been making annual requests for 10 years - you aren’t taking the time to figure out how to clearly articulate your ideas so people/the devs can make sense of it.
Now, with this idea, I see some issues. Lasso tools are sort of a PITA to work with and be accurate with, the transient/tonal intelligence would definitely help but depending on the specific audio content and it’s complexity, it would still require some clean up and trimming by the user. I don’t find lassos that easy to work with, and having mastered editing controls and utilities as they are - it might be easier to just copy everything and trim/edit it because with the lasso thing, people will probably just end up auditioning each copied event section anyway to check it copied right and making adjustments/fades, etc - not really quicker than just copying it and editing it to ear if you factor in the time it takes to draw a lasso in which there can be problem like the lasso snapping to the wrong note in waveform you can’t even see.
I try -very- hard to be patient with these sorts of replies. But at the end of the day, it’s clear to me that the people (person) who have problems with my idea(s) have never worked with -any- modern video studio software. Video people have been doing these sorts of things for years now. They are MILES ahead of any DAW when it comes to simplicity and intelligence. You can tell the software “find this guy’s face and apply FX to -that- as he moves through the scene”. Nothing I’ve described is space magic or even particularly cutting edge.
And I can already hear the bitching… yes, those companies have bigger budgets. But at some point, these ideas have to trickle down to the DAW community.
Cubase is simply too hard to use. It’s reached the same point as VST5 in 2000ish when they started work on SX.
I’m failing to see the relevance and you’ve still haven’t really explained anything. I’m not see the correlation to facial recognition video fx to copy and pasting section a to section b.
Let’s just end this here: You’ve trolled several of my posts. Please -stop-. If you don’t like an idea, have the good manners to simply ignore it. I didn’t make the suggestion for you or for public debate. All an of us can ever hope is that someone at SB takes a look.
SB ignores almost all suggestions so it’s not like any of this matters enough to argue.
I think SB isn’t so much ignoring you as they aren’t understanding you and you seem incapable of reflecting on this, and or the possibility even that your ideas isn’t even good - but it’s very hard to determine that through the sort of abstract explanations. I’ve done you the favor of inquiring, to tweeze out a better explanation but I’m not sure SB and I would be any less confused at this point. SB doesn’t have a personal grudge to ignore you, so I would look at things from a different angle and examine maybe why you’ve been making some of the same ‘annual’ requests for 10 years…
I can actually agree with Suntower that copying/inserting sections hasn’t been improved for quite some time and could do with improvement.
I have worked with most of the main DAWs over the years and my experience is that the tools for this are quite blunt and dated.
If you work with loops and music with sections that have a clean beginning and end - fine - but if you do linear recording with regions with overlapping starts and ends outside the section - it’s mainly a pain in the butt.
Saying that “this can’t be solved” or that “it’s a bad idea” is just lazy, displaying a lack of imagination and underestimating the capacity of programmers.
I have a pretty good idea how it could be solved, it largely goes like this:
It’s basically an extended relative grid section copy. You create a cycle marker (or something similar) around the core of the section and then you select the regions that are to be included in the section and tell the daw that they belong to the section to define it. The regions might start or end outside the cycle marker but the cycled area in itself is still the “core” of the section. This way you can also define several versions of a section just by including or omitting regions when you define them. One chorus could be defined without percussion and guitars, one chorus could be without drums and so on. The defined sections could be shown in a list that you can drag onto an arranger track or you can insert a defined section anywhere on the timeline.
The main point being: When you paste/insert the region at the desired location the pre-regions will still start “pre-section” and the regions going further than the section are still ending “post-section”. If something overlaps - let them! If it’s audio it will be put on different lanes so you can select what you want to use. If it’s midi - it’s allowed to overlap. It’s not really a technical problem - it’s up to the user to fix any discrepancies.
I am not saying it’s an easy thing to do and of course there are a lot of considerations in order for it to work seamless and it’s probably why no DAW maker has made a really good version of this (that I am aware of anyway). It’s WAY easier to have an arranger track cut everything off at the start and end and “pretend” like it’s a viable alternative. It really isn’t. That’s why I never use any of those “Arrangement tracks” or such, because basically, they are quite useless for me.
Personally I stopped waiting for a solution a long time ago so I just insert time and copy and paste the regions with relative grid, which works ok for me, but a better solution with an arranger track that caters to regions that are longer than the core section would have been GREAT!
Maybe I’m missing something new in your post, but did I not already explain how to easily do this? Your explanation is very unclear and hard to imagine.
