Hi,
I currently have the following logical editor preset that randomises note length up to a duration of 1/16. To use this it requires first inputting a series of straight 16ths.
I would now like to update this to include 1/8th length notes, however if I simply change the maximum length to 254 (from 127) I have overlapping notes, ie:
Ignore the fact they’re on different notes, I’ve moved them up to show the overlap. In this example I would like the second red note (ie, on the 5 to be removed so there’s no overlap. In fact, in this example the 3 would stay, the 4 would be removed and the 5 would stay.)
Also, just to complicate matters, I would like to be able to specify somehow the likelihood of the 1/8th. This can be fixed in the preset, I understand it can’t be changed in realtime.
I’m not at Cubase so can’t be too specific. But instead of setting the Length directly, you can also set it to change relative to the current value. So, for example, you want to tell it to randomly change the Length between -20 & -2 Ticks from its current value.
Also multiplying provides you a different way to adjust the Length from addition/subtraction.
Well if you start off without overlapping Notes and you shorten them, either by subtracting from their length or by multiplying by a number less than 1.0, the resulting Notes shouldn’t overlap because they get shorter not longer.
Yes, true.
However, if I start with say 8 8ths and shorten to 16ths, I then have 8 16ths when instead it should be 16 (or some random combination inbetween).
As I showed in the first screenshot, the current logical editor randomises note length on 16ths.
This is working very well, however I want to add in the occassional 8th (say 10-20% of the time).
Therefore, there are two extremes of the logical editor calculation:
16 16th notes at varying lengths (all of which must obviously be under 1/16th to avoid overlaps)
8 8th notes at varying lengths (again, all of which need to be at or under 1/8).
Ideally I’d like the output to be 20% #1 and 80% #2, however at this stage I’m happy with 50%.
The 16th focus will be phase 2.
I currently have a macro set up and working that randomises note length from a starting point of 16ths (ie, I enter a series of 16ths, press ctrl+r and all the notes randomize individually to a value between 1/64th and 1/16th).
This has been working perfectly for years and I use it in every session.
However, I now want to add 1/8th notes into that randomization.
The problem with this is, unlike the 1/16th method above, the macro is always shortening the note so there’s no overlap. If I now add 1/8ths I’m either going to overlap the following note that has already been placed on the 1/16th or if I start with 1/8 and shorten, this is still only going to have notes on the 1/8 and if one of those is shortened to <1/16th then I’ll be missing another 1/16th after it to plug the gap.
This is where you loose me, “add 1/8 notes” is ambiguous I’m not sure what that means. Could you post screenshots showing what a 1/16th Note only Part looks like before you apply your Preset and also a MIDI Part showing the added 8th Note(s) that doesn’t work both before & after.
So in your 3rd pic you show eight 8th Notes all full length & evenly spaced. And then in your 4th pic that is transformed (or???) into fourteen Notes, twelve are 16th Notes and two are 8th Notes and all of them are a bit shorter than full length.
So do you not only want to shorten the length of all the Notes but also want to split some of them into 2 Notes so you start with 8 Notes & end up with 12? Also further above you were having a problem with overlaps, which isn’t an issue here it appears. So how does that fit in the mix?
The 4th pic was manually edited to show an example of my desired output.
Yes, some notes should be split so that some become 2 16ths while some remain (or become 1/8 (depending on how the initial state is, which depends on what options there are for a solution)
Also, just to clarify, because this example shows 12 notes doesn’t mean it should always be. Sometimes it will 11, sometimes, 13 etc (ie, any number between 8 and 16).
There are no overlaps in the 4th pic because like I said this was manually adjusted.
OK, you’ll probably want to set this up as two different processes 1) randomly splitting some of the Notes 2) Shortening their length. You can then combine them using a Macro if you want.
In the LE there isn’t a mechanism (at least since I last looked) to randomly target some Notes & not others. So the trick is to randomize one of the Note’s parameters and use that to make selections. I’m going to use Velocity as an example, but any Note parameter can be used. You’ll likely want to pick one that doesn’t impact the performance (unlike Velocity). First make an LE Preset to randomly set each Note’s Velocity between 1 and 100 (for ease of calculation). Then make a 2nd LE Preset to only Select Notes that are within a specific Velocity range. For example Selecting all the Notes with Velocities between 1 and 10 should Select approximately 10% of the Notes. Finally cut the Selected Notes in half.
The reason you are getting overlapping Notes is because you are changing the Lengths directly to a value independent of of its initial Length. To avoid this multiply the Note’s initial Length by a random value between X & Y - for example if X is 0.50 and Y is 0.75 all the processed Notes will be somewhere between 50%-75% of their original Length. Doing something similar using subtraction also works if you prefer to shorten within a fixed range rather than a percentage.
