This has to do with entering chords when creating a chord track. When I have a song recorded, I then create a chord track, put X’s in with the pencil where I’ll need a chord change and then double click on the first X and start entering chords…I’m zoomed in enough so that I see 8 to 10 bars at a time…all good so far. So I put in the chords for the first eight bars by opening the chord dialogue, choose the chord, then click the little arrow in the top right corner of the dialogue; I do this until I reach the end of the visible bars on my screen. Here’s what needs addressing.
When I try to scroll to the right to expose the next page of bars, the project won’t scroll while the chord dialogue is open; it will advance to the next bar, but since the project won’t scroll, I can’t see it. So now I have to close the chord dialogue, advance to the next page of bars that I need to work on, open up the dialogue again and continue. So opening, inserting chords, closing, advancing to the next page of X’s in the project, then open again until I’ve finally finished the chord track for the song. Veeerrrrry sloooowwww.
So am I missing something here or could this be something for the next update?
Thanks for your time.
First, make sure Follow is active.
There are very many ways to deal with this. One that comes to mind is to shift-select a certain number of the following chord Xs, and hit the command Zoom to Selection (Horiz)
You don’t say if you are on 12 or not, but if you are have you tried dragging your recording onto the Chord Track? Even if it isn’t totally accurate with it’s Chord Detection it’s probably easier to edit the results than to hand enter a bunch of Chord Events.
You might also be able to reduce your need to even have the Chord Editor Window open. For example once you have a single instance of every Chord used in the piece you can use Alt+Drag to copy Chords to new locations - build verse 1 and copy it for verses 2 & 3.
Also you don’t need to use the Chord Editor dialog Window to edit the Chords. This can also be done using the Info Line. And if you want to edit multiple chords at once (say to transpose a section), the Info Line is the best place to do that. All my Templates have a Chord Track that is pre-populated with X Chords for a bunch of bars. So I can use the Arrow Keys to navigate between Chord Events and change their Values via the Info Line.
One thing I’ve considered doing (but haven’t yet) is to use Track Versions on the Chord Track to have a different Version for each Key. Then populate each Version with the Chords commonly used in that Key. Then you could copy & paste the Chord Events to build a progression. But after thinking about it awhile I realized that it would work better to use Versions on a MIDI Track instead. Populate the Versions with MIDI Parts instead - one very short Chord per Part. Now there is no need to copy or duplicate anything. The MIDI Track now acts as a Chord Palette - Select and Drag a Chord from the MIDI Track to where you want a new Chord Event to be created.