How do I merge "overlaps" in MIDI tracks?

I’ve searched for a while, here and in general on how to merge overlaps on MIDI tracks. Sometimes Cubase is so unintuitive with things like this. So I record additional MIDI info on top of what I’ve already recorded (don’t need another track), and it creates an overlap. I’d just like to merge all the overlaps so that all the MIDI events merge into the one “take” in the track. The only option I see is “Remove Overlaps” but I don’t want to get rid of that MIDI data. Ironically if I search Cubase Help for “Remove Overlaps” no results come up… that’s a Cubase command so there should be reference to it.

There’s probably some hidden command to do this. Any ideas?

Lowell, right-click the first part of the MIDI track you wish to overlap, choose the Glue tool, and then click the first part of the MIDI track, then the second, then the third (assuming you have three overlaps) and all overlapped MIDI tracks will become one.

The Cubase documentation is well written when you can find what you’re looking for.

Thanks SO much! That worked perfectly.

The Cubase documentation is well written > when you can find what you’re looking for> .

Oh, so true for any documentation, eh? I just thought it was sad that a specific search for an actual option in the menu in Cubase yielded absolutely nothing. The more I use search tools in other software and by other companies the more I appreciate the big players (i.e. Google, Microsoft) on how they do search. Apparently building search effectively is rocket science.

Glad to help, Lowell.

I am a technical writer and technical writing instructor at Humber College, Toronto. My main writing activity outside teaching is scientific documentation. I recently filled out a survey from Steinberg about their documentation. Their individual articles are well written but often difficult to find. Online search tools depend on keyword matching. If the article in which you are seeking does not contain the keyword you used in your search, you will not be taken to the article you’re looking for. The search function must also have a “fuzzy search” code built in. This type of search returns the information based on a keyword search that closely matches the keywords in the article. It seems the Steinberg search function requires exact keyword matching. Many websites are like that. You should be able to type, “audio-interface” and have several matches to, “audio Interface” returned. Information that is difficult to find is useless no matter how well written.

My other note to Steinberg was that their content focuses primarily on an “expert” audience. The other two audiences, “inexperienced” and “novice” are basically ignored. The criticism I’ve often heard about the upper-level Cubase products is that they tend to be geared toward sound engineers, not musicians. That makes perfect sense because any professional level DAW is often used by the folks in the booth, not those out on the sound stage. On the other hand, a lot of musicians have built their own home studios and are turning out some amazing soundtracks using Cubase 10.5 Pro. Therefore, Steinberg needs to create documentation that provides adequate topic retrievability AND addresses all audiences. Content must be written so that a novice can understand the material but not waste the time of the expert. It’s tricky but it can be done.

Exactly! Also sometimes the documentation you get to is actually about Pro, talking about features I don’t see in Elements. Documentation should clearly state if the entire site is about Pro, Elements, etc. or they should tag sections that are “Pro only”, etc. I get so excited about something I read in the documentation, like bouncing down a single track to a single audio track, then find it’s only a Pro feature (my workaround for that is freezing a track, to free up VST resources, but that’s still not the same as bouncing 1 track to an audio track).

I see so many apps (I’m in IT support) and sites that do search poorly. It’s odd because I thought we “solved” search as a species a long time ago. Yet many don’t build search as you describe.

Agreed, Lowell. Being in IT, you know all about search engines. I think Google probably has the best algorithms on the planet. It’s so sad that many help files or online search tools use “exact match” as the default. My earlier reference to "fuzzy "search tools has been around for at least 35 years! I blasted Home Depot once about their website search box. I was looking for “2x4”. The results came back “Not found.” Are they kidding??!!! I had to type in “2 x 4” to return a result. Give me a break!! It’s a lumber store!!

Be careful with this approach!

There is a long standing bug in Cubase whereby midi that lies outside of your parts boundaries (and therefore should be ignored) gets included when you glue parts together.

For example, you record 8 bars of midi, and then trim the left and right hand sides to leave you with just 2 bars from the middle - there is data either side of these 2 middle bars that you no longer want. However when glueing parts together, that unused data sometimes ends up being included erroneously.

To get around this make sure you cut parts with the scissor tool and discard the unwanted bits before glueing.

Thanks for that, Vinylizer. I seem to remember that happening. Great idea!

You should change the MIDI Record Mode to ‘Merge.’ Then the behavior will be what you are after - no overlaps will be created.

Or bounce midi parts to do this in fewer steps.

Thanks, Steve! This mode will work much better for me for now. That’s perfect.