move notes diatonically?

Cubase
1

Hi everyone,

In the piano roll, is there a simple way to move notes up and down diatonically or so that they remain in a specific scale?

For example, I would like to move a melody of D, E, F# up a 3rd but stay in D major (F#, G, A).

Thanks!

2

Hi,

You can use MIDI > Transpose function, where you can set up the transposition.

3

Thanks, Martin!

One question though, is there a way to preset the scale/mode beforehand so that when moving the notes up/down with the arrow keys, they would conform to the desired scale?

It’d be nice to make quick adjustments without having to bring up the Transposition dialog every single time, counting semitones, adjusting rounding errors, etc. I don’t know from experience, but someone said DP had this feature.

4

Check out Moving Notes in Piano Roll (key editor) by scale - Cubase - Steinberg Forums

5

Ah, thanks Steve! I guess this is closer but I assume there’s no way to do it in the piano roll? C’est la vie…

6

Not exactly what you want, but if you put a scale event on the Chord Track & set the Key Editor to color notes based on the Chord Track (instead of the default Velocity) the note color will indicate if it is or isn’t in the scale. Now when you arrow the notes up or down they will still move through non-scale pitches but you can easily see by the color on the keyboard when you are on a scale step. Also if you add Chord events you’ll get 4 colors indicating if it is in the scale, chord, both or nothing.