Basic MIDI editing question.

Hi,

I need to get better at editing MIDI in Cubase, learning to do the following would be very useful to me.

To keep it simple. Say I have one measure (4/4, 100 BPM) that contains a repeating 8th note pattern and I’d like to change the 8th notes to 16th notes, so the same part that was played in 8ths is now played in 16ths — making it play the same notes at twice the rate. You know the sound, I’m sure. I don’t want to simply double the tempo in this case, even while that would result in the same sound, since other tracks wouldn’t work. We’re not going into double time, we’re just changing a part. (Doing the same in reverse or other value changing would be helpful, as well – change 8ths to 8th note triplets, and so on.)

Example: 1 &, 2 &, 3 &, 4 &, becomes 1e&a, 2e&a, 3e&a, 4e&a. (Sorry, no music notation screen shot available.)

I’d rather not have to do this sort of editing by hand and need to find a better way. Learning to do this one simple task will be very helpful to me and, I think, help me get my music working better in Cubase.

Oddly, some older programs I used in the past actually had typical musical editing jobs like this readily available right out of the box on menus and commands. Ah, the lost technology of old… :wink: (TIC)

Thanks for any suggestion or references on this. :slight_smile:

I think the easiest way in this case (because there are a few others :wink: ) is to click on the Select Tool in the toolbar [EDIT] of the Project window [/EDIT], and change it to “Sizing applies Time Stretch”, then drag the end boundary of the MIDI Part to half (or double :wink: ) its length.

The MIDI Logic Editor is perfect for these sorts of automated edits.

Go to “MIDI/Logic Editor…” from the top menu of CuBase.

Here’s an example of a Logic Editor preset that actually changes the event data to ‘double’ the tempo (I.E. changes a 4/4 written rhythm to 2/8). In this case it’s not just changing the tempo of the sequencer, but actually redoing the MIDI events in the part.

This particular preset is actually already made for you in the box. Quite a few presets come already pre-made for you in CuBase. Take a close look at them to get an idea of how they work. Use what you learn there to expand and build new ones on your own :slight_smile:

Study and practice with that Logic Editor…it can automate many tediously repetitive editing tasks.
The concept is simple…events that match the if/and/or logic in the top half of the dialogue get processed according to what you set in the bottom half. It’s not difficult at all to build these as you need them…save the presets in case you need them again. It gives you some choices on the processing such as 'replace events, create new events, delete events, extract events, etc.).

I personally use the Logic Editor constantly!

  • I.E. Drop a new CC1 event before every note and set its value to the same as the note.
  • I.E. Raise the velocity of all selected notes by 10%.
  • I.E. Change the MIDI note and velocity of a hi-hat event that falls close to beats 2 & 4 to the ride cymbal (change the MIDI NOTE) and randomize the velocity to a value somewhere between 60 and 90.
  • I.E. Extract the 3rd of every chord to a new track.
  • I.E. Time shift all selected events 20 milliseconds forward in time.

Screens showing some different presets:



Since the logic editor only has one ‘process stream’…sometimes you’ll need to run multiple passes with different Logic Editor presets to get a job done. If it’s something you find yourself doing often, then you can create a ‘macro’ to automate the process of running different presets, and optionally bind it to a key combo. This is done through “File/Key Commands…” in the main menu.

Note, CuBase also gives you a ‘Project level’ Logic Editor, where you can use a similar booleen logic to build scripts at the ‘project level’. I.E. Mute all tracks with the pattern ‘drum’ in their track name.

Brian!

Thank you so much for this! The first one did the exact thing I was looking for! The others seem very interesting and useful and it was really generous of you to take the time to post them. I’m going to start reaching for the Logical Editors more when working on projects. The Process and Project Logical editors seemed opaque, but less now. The Operations Manual is thin on use examples and sometimes just talking things out is very helpful.

This one insight will go a long way for me, and the others you posted were an unexpected and welcome addition. If I come up with any interesting, useful things, I’ll post here as I learn more about editing with the P/PLEs. Take care, Brian. Cheers. :slight_smile:

Vic, thanks for answering. In this case, the post above by Brian Roland was what I was looking for being that I need to change both time and position of the notes. I tried a few combinations of time stretch with MIDI tracks and couldn’t get the data to transform as it does with the Logical Editor method mentioned. But, thanks for trying, Vic. Your posts and insights have been very helpful. In particular, your posts about how to record the arppache output presents via Merge Midi In Loop, if you recall that? Very helpful to me – resulting in some nice sounds. All the best, take care. :slight_smile:

Were you trying this inside the Key Editor? I meant, resize the Part directly in the Project window.
Does the attached screenshot achieve what you were wanting to do, or have I completely misunderstood?..

Vic,

No! I was working in the key editor and was too stupid to think about trying re-size on main track part.

I’ll give that a try, but, based on your example, it seems to do exactly what I needed. Between your tips and Brian’s I’ve got some great tools to work with.

I’m about six months into learning CuBase now and don’t want to develop bad habbits, I really want to learn the program better before settling down into what will become my “standard” work patterns.

Thanks for making things clear, Vic. I’m itching to try this when I’m back at it tomorrow.

There aren’t really any bad habits in Cubase (unless of course you include picking your nose then flicking it at the screen :mrgreen: ), there are merely (often) several different ways of arriving at the same result, and which one is better in a certain situtation isn’t necessarily the best for all situations, so it’s good to know your options :wink:.
And I couldn’t agree more with Brian about how powerful and useful are the Logical Editor/Transformer Insert FX/Input Transformer and Project Logical Editor… they are simply the best of any of the DAWS :wink:.

I always do that to get rid of the flare of my screen, works like a charm :wink:

LOL :laughing:

Brilliant! You can always rely on Vic for those now-why-didn’t-I-think-of-that answers. The one about the time-stretch, I mean…

You mean to tell us that you haven’t seriously thought about picking your nose while working on Cubase? :open_mouth: :smiley:

No, but I’m beginning to wonder if I’m missing out… (Maybe this should be made a sticky…)

(Sorry if this is veering too OT, but i can’t resist :stuck_out_tongue: )…
… sounds like it would be getting “sticky” enough, all on its own, if you did this often enough! :slight_smile:

anyways… back on topic…
“Sizing applies Time Stretch”, or Logical Editor… all good :wink:.

Very helpful and why didn’t I think of that before? :blush: – at least I got it now. I see there are many ways to. more or less, arrive at the same sonic result. It’s not so much bad habits, it’s more settling into a non-optimum work pattern based on not enough understanding of Cubase. It’s a question of seeing there’s more Cubase can do than I know how to make it do. The posts on this from you, Vic and you, Brian, really took me up a notch, to a new place. :exclamation:

This will all be a key point for better editing and creating some interesting sounds. I’m really happy to see Cubase “does this!”

Take care and remember, always keep your monitors clean! :unamused: :smiley:

I’ve found that it pays to periodically skim through parts of the manual that covers topics I already “know.” More often than not I’ll find something that passed me by before but now looks very useful. And of course always pay attention to Vic’s advice.

I do that too :wink:.

And, coincidentally, another post… here…

Shows yet another way of doing the same thing :wink:.