Anyoing behaviour in key editor and Expression maps

There is a weird behaviour on the key editor when Expression maps are used.

Normally, without expression maps, you can draw notes and they sound for as long as you have the mouse button pressed. This is very nice.

However, if an expression is map in use, the notes drawn sound for a time so short that you can’t hear them at all.

For my way of composing I need to hear the notes I’m drawing, otherwise I have to draw a note and then click again to hear it, slowing the process, and in my case affecting my inspiration (melody flow breaks). This is not new, I think Cubase 5 had the same issue.

Please can this behaviour be fixed? It only needs to work the same way with and without expression maps.

Additionally I would like to suggest 2 simple changes that in my opinion will make editing in the key editor even more efficient.

  1. Now you can draw a note with the pencil, and make it longer or shorter by moving the mouse to left or right before releasing the mouse button, This is great. However, it will be even better if you could also change the height of the note by moving the mouse up or down without releasing the mouse. The way it works now if you input a wrong note you have to release the button, click again on the note and fix it, again affecting the work flow.

  2. When you want to change the height of a note, you can click it and move around. This is also nice, but when you move the note, the old one keeps sounding. In many cases this makes difficult to hear the tuning of the new note, specially for certain instruments or sound effects. I would suggest to stop the original note sound once it is moved.
    However, in certain cases it may be useful to hear the original note, for example if you are creating chords by drawing a note and copying it to different heights. In this case I would suggest to maintain the current behaviour when the Alt key (copy modifier) is pressed.

I hope it makes sense! :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Alberto

Seems that not many people draw notes in the key editor with Expression maps. VSL anyone? I’ts difficult here :cry:

I don’t think I’d like option 1. Drawing a perfectly horizontal long line is a bit hard, I’d have the note jump up and down while drawing it surely. I always use the up and down arrows for moving notes that I misplaced.
What I’d like though, is to be able to move the start of a note, not just the length. With the arrow cursor you can move both ends of the note, with the pencil just the end.

Well it depends on the zoom level. You would surely fail anyway drawing notes at low zoom levels, but at least you would be able to correct them in real time.