FEATURE REQ: Quant > Exclude 1st Note In Event

Steinberg Lounge
1

Like that ^

Here’s why:

Many of my projects have events divided up by bar, or multiple bars. Like this:

Reason being, so that when a client comes back to me and asks that bars 13-16 be removed, or replaced with something else, or that bars 23-30 be repeated, I do not need to go and chop things up; everything is already “chopped”, and I can select, and dupe, or delete, or select and open, or whatever. The problem is Random Quantizing. If I select all of the events I want to RQ, inevitably some of the first notes will wind up before the event start time. And unfortunately, I have no idea which ones. So, I am forced to:

RQ, open each event to see which first note are before the event start, and then correct those notes manually
–or–
Open each event individually, lasso select all notes except the first (cant use KC for select all obviously) and then RQ

Both of these methods are tedious and time consuming - more so than they need be.

So, I ask you please, SB, to consider writing some code that will allow for that checkbox ^ and functionality, so that one can select an event - or even multiple events - and the first note(s) in each event will not be quantized.

Hopefully this is clear.

Cheers.

2

I doubt Steinberg would consider implementing this. It’s really obscure. I think I have an idea on how to speed the process up for you. It works…but it isn’t perfect.

Let’s say you want to grab everything between bars 11 and 15 and move them somewhere else.

I’d set the cursor at bar 12 and use “Split At Cursor” (Edit/Functions). Follow that by selecting all the Parts you need between bars 11 and 12.

Then I’d invoke the Logical Editor, set to do as illustrated. Once the notes spilling over bar 11 are selected, set Quant to 1/8th notes and quant it.

This should grab all of the notes you randomly quanted over the bar line and reset them to position 1:0:0:0 of bar 11.

Finally, reselect everything between bars 11-15 and do what you need to do with the selection.

I mentioned this isn’t perfect. That’s because the range selection I used is arbitrarily assuming your random quant isn’t set to some extreme. YMMV. And once done, all those notes previously crossing between bars 10 &11 are now starting at 1:0:0:0 on bar 11. Not perfect, but fast and cheap enough for government work.

And it goes without saying that it’s a good idea to try this with a copy of your Project.

LogicalEditorSettings.jpg
LogicalEditorSettings.jpg891×416 56.8 KB

3

Aloha,

Nice work-a-round

He’s such a Weasel!
{‘-’}

Just zoomed in on your avatar and noticed the cornfield in the background.

4

Howdy, and thank you for taking the time to reply.

“I doubt Steinberg would consider implementing this. It’s really obscure.”

Agreed it is obscure, but I had to try.

So, in regards to your idea.

“Let’s say you want to grab everything between bars 11 and 15 and move them somewhere else.”

Ok, let’s stop there for a sec. I dont want to move anything yet; I possibly may need to move things later. But that rarely happens - I work with things in small events (pic) just in case.

“I’d set the cursor at bar 12 and use “Split At Cursor” (Edit/Functions).”

Mmmm…but everything is already split into 4 & 8 bar segments.

It sounds to me like you are suggesting I do not work with small events; but larger events that I can split later?

5

I don’t know if this will help but all my events go from beginning to end for audio and MIDI.

When I need to drop a section from a song I go into the key editor, remove everything in between the locators (shorten notes etc) then in project view I select all and cut on the locator points, remove those newly cut parts and then go to Range > Delete Time.

I only come unstuck when there is audio but then I delete those parts and revert to MIDI (most of my audio is frozen midi).

Is that anywhere related to what you are doing?

6

Ok, let’s stop there for a sec. I dont want to move anything yet; I possibly may need to move things later. But that rarely happens - I work with things in small events (pic) just in case.

Yes, I looked at the screenshot. But when you originally wrote this:

Reason being, so that when a client comes back to me and asks that bars 13-16 be removed, or replaced with something else, or that bars 23-30 be repeated, I do not need to go and chop things up; everything is already “chopped”, and I can select, and dupe, or delete, or select and open, or whatever. The problem is Random Quantizing.

…I was thinking about the problem with grabbing cut Parts where some notes have been pushed over a number of Part’s start borders. The Logical Editor preset example (followed with an /1/8th note quant) is designed to grab all of those “crossovers” and stick 'em at the beginning of the Part.

The imperfection is that if you were to select (as in your example) bars 13-16, this LE preset will select everything near the start of every Part selected. That would not be a good thing. So the suggestion to quickly split everything at the second bar of the mass selection and select those Parts only…followed by the LE preset, then the quant, would only affect the lead-in notes of the group. Once done, you’d reselect the whole 13-16 bar group…so they could be “removed, or replaced with something else”.

Please keep in mind that this LE example only deals with the beginning of Parts. You’d have to invert the Bar Range/TimeBase to deal with things peeking over the back end of a Part. The idea was to get you thinking about a quick way to consolidate the overhanging notes into a selection without screwing up the bulk of the random quantizing throughout the entire selection.

I tried this with a large group of variable sized Parts similar to your example. I even made a Macro to combine the LE preset with an 1/8th Quant. It took all of 3 seconds to slice through all second bar Parts, selecting all 1st bar Parts and shifting the “crossovers” cleanly into the 1st bar.

All it’s designed to do is make sure every note will be included in a group selection. And do it quickly. As stated earlier, the imperfection is it will change the timing of the “crossover” notes…but that’s the trade off for speed. And it may not be the best solution for you.

I’d suggest a little test…just to see what it’s doing. Create a Part and dump a bunch of notes into it. Push some of the notes slightly over start line and apply the LE preset followed by an 1/8 quant. You may find some value in this technique.

YMMV.

7

Thanks for the responses.

No - the events do not go from beginning to end, for the reason I mentioned above.

8

Maybe I am missing something. If I split everything at the second bar of the mass selection like this:

-that just creates another event (or multiple events) where there are now more notes near the part border(s) to be concerened with. That doesn’t seem to help - it actually seems like more work, even with the use of the LE. And so using the LE is to quantize those notes - where? In which event? And then I would have to go back and glue the events after the fact, thereby creating more work, no?

9

And why is this in the ML?

10

I have nothing useful to say about your feature request, but dude, don’t you like the pretty colors you can use in the Project Window? :laughing:

11

Yeah, Doug - colors only work when you own a color monitor. My 13" b&w dont do color. :cry:

Ok, so again - why did someone move this to the ML?

12

What – you mean an orchestration guy like you doesn’t have a HUGE thirty-incher like Hans Zimmer has?

:laughing:

13

I guess you’re referring to his monitor? :blush: