Hello, I have found what I thought was an enormous bug in Cubase… but in fact it’s not, and it’s an old subject of discussion here. Example:
The fact is, when you trim a MIDI part, notes continue to play as before if they are longer than the trim MIDI part. For example, you have a 4-bar sustained pad, then you trim the MIDI part to 1 bar, but the sound is still a 4-bar pad…
The most common answer is that “it is by design”. In my opinion, this design is completely illogical (I used to use SONAR and it wasn’t like that). But I respect those who find this good. What about an option in the preferences? It’s a basic feature, after all.
You can set some samplers to behave this way. If you want to trigger a soundeffect (for example by hitting a pad) and you don’t want to keep the key/pad down until the end of the sound effect.
with any instrument, just add a 3 bar note in a 3 bar event, reduce the event to 1 bar and the note will sound 3 bars…I didnt test it with every plugin I have but with many of them this is the behaviour.
I was talking about inserting a VST Instrument. I’ve just reproduced this “non-bug”:
Launch Cubase Pro 14, Create empty.
Insert HALion Sonic, “The String Pad” on track 1.
Draw (on this track) 4 measures with a C chord sustained.
Duplicate the instrument on track 2.
Reduce the length of the MIDI part of the track 2 to 1 measure.
Play each track successively with solo : they sound exactly identical. But, on the screen, there are a 4 measure pad (track 1) and a 1 measure pad (track 2).
Please see screen capture.
I’m a former SONAR user, as well, and I honestly don’t recall the behavior there. (It may be, though, that I was only comping vocals when I was using SONAR.) However, while, with your relatively extreme example, I can see how you might think this illogical, there is a common case I use where I’m really glad it works this way:
Consider comping a MIDI piano track from, say, 4 takes. The first thing I typically do is cut all the takes up into some meaningful units (e.g. song sections, 4-bar segments, or whatever might seem most applicable to the part and performances in the takes – basically logical divisions). While doing this first isn’t critical to the context here – i.e. the same considerations apply if making cuts while reviewing the tracks and comping the more micro-level parts – it may make it easy to understand. I do this visually. While it could be cutting exactly at measure divisions, I’m usually looking for natural breaking points, such as a rest that is consistent in all takes. But the most important thing I’m looking for is starts of phrases. For example, if there are pickup notes, I might be cutting before a measure start. And, of course, these parts are not quantized (if I do that at all, which is rare for piano parts, I’ll do it after finishing comping). The important thing to understand here is that there will be notes that overlap. For example, a right-hand lead part may have a break and a pickup prior to the start of a measure, but whatever I’m doing in the left hand (e.g. chords or bass notes) may still be sustaining over the start of the next part. Thus, it is critical that the cut does not truncate notes in the earlier clips based on where I’m cutting for the most important part for the next phrase.
I can see where it might be desirable for programmed music to have it work how you are requesting, but it would be horrible in manually played music. Yes, there might be times where something was very different in the takes (after all I’m making them up as I go along not playing the same thing in each take), but, when comping in this scenario, it just means doing some editing at the note level later after bouncing all the selected parts of the comp together. Most of the time, though, these overlaps are what is desired for smooth transitions.
Exactly HOW are you ‘reducing’ the part? Are you simply dragging the end of it from bar 4 all the way to the end of bar 1?
If those notes are 4 bars long, and all you do is grab the corner of the MIDI ‘container’ and resize it, those notes are still 4 bars long regardless of how big the block on screen is. You need to actually cut or reduce the the notes themselves., not the container.
Look at the Preferences > Editing > MIDI > Split MIDI Events.
With this preferences option enabled, if you don’t reduce the length by dragging the MIDI Part border, but you use the Split tool instead, the MIDI Note is going to be split as well. This is probably what you are used to doing in Sonar.
Yes, you’re right, I often use the split tool to avoid this. For me it was a workaround.
The basic problem for me with the part trimming is the fact that the screen gives me an information (for example that my notes are very short) that doesn’t correspond to what I hear.
The status quo:
Cubase sends any NoteOn message within the part borders. If the corresponding NoteOff message lies outside the part Cubase will send the NoteOff message once it is reached.
@synthmusic_51’s expectation:
Cubase should send a NoteOff for any “unfinished” NoteOn upon reaching the part end.
Edit: Furthermore a Sustain CC64 value = 0 would need to be send.
Possibly other CCs?
Probably at least pitch bend to zero, but others could depend on status – e.g. should mod wheel also be zeroed out if it would have been prior to the end of the note that got cut off? Seems to me there are too many question marks on what should happen in a case like this. As it happens now, anything past the trimming of the clip, other than the corresponding note-off, is trimmed, which can mean, for example, stuck sustain pedals if the sustain-on was before the trim and the sustain off was after (one of the complications in my piano comping scenario).
I’d definitely agree that if this was implemented, it would be critical that it is an option. There are too many gray areas on what should be expected, and they will all, or at least mostly, depend on how people are using the trimming of the MIDI clips and what data is in them both before and after the trim point.
