I’ll start of with the request and list the current problems afterwards.
Request: Make it possible to enable MPE pitch bend lines to be shown and editable directly on and correlating to the piano roll. Make the curves editable in the same fashion as regular automation curves and make it possible for them to snap to semi tones. For case study look at Abletons solution.
It would also be nice with a button enabling “Route each newly created MIDI note to it’s own midi channel”. I know you can select the notes you’ve created and then make Cubase route them all at the same time to individual channels, but having it do it as you create them would be nice.
That’s it. Thank you! Now to describing the current problems.
Current problems:
The pitchbending in Note Expression is nutorisously hard to edit. After first spending a full day of trying to make it behave correctly while MPE pitchbending Serum 2 I have finally succeeded (I just needed to route each note it’s own midi channel). But my conclusion is I will never use it to any extent since the editor is so badly designed for the purpose - or rather not designed for the purpose at all.
Firstly: Since Serum 2 does not provide a “tuning” in the note expression you are stuck with the pitch bend function and that does not snap to semi tones - tedious.
Secondly: There is no way to make the curve correlate to the piano roll in a good way since you need to use ±24 semitones to make all midi channels behave the same when using Serum 2 (channel 1 follows the pitch bend setting you choose in Serum, channel 2-16 follows its hard coded ±24 and you need each note on a seperate channel if Serum should be able to process it). Zooming out this much combined with the no snaping to semi tones makes it impossible to draw the pitch bend accuratly and you are stuck with typing in the values for your fixed points in pitch.
Thirdly: The curves are very hard to edit to satisfaction since you need to pencil them and can’t reshape them ina any good way after they are drawn - you just need to draw again. Yes there are shaping options, but not very relevant to musical pitchbending consistent over multiple notes.
Thank you for all your amazing work. I love my Cubase! And this improvement would make me love it even more.