For those of us who like and use the Pitch coloring features of Cubase, this subtle refinement would provide users with the ability to visualize music in musically useful and meaningful ways – custom scales, melodic phrases and so on.
Thank you.
— Original Post and discussion —
I would like to be able to have a “Two Colors” choice for notes in the Key Editor
Black Keys = Color 1
White Keys = Color 2
This would be added as a choice to the drop-down menu.
As a Work Around, I’m able to change the values for “Pitch” so that I have a two color system, but this means I’ve had to give up the 12 color set-up and I sometimes find that display option helpful.
Just simplicity and clarity. Since the program has the lack of flat keys and flat notes, the two colors system lets me quickly see, for example, accidentals, passing tones and chord structures. I’ve been working with a two color system, as pictured, and find it clearer than 12 different colors. I’d still like to have both, so one additional slot for two colors would be helpful for me. Make sense?
First, thanks for the mention about the chord track tonic, I’ll try that and wasn’t aware of it.
I like the two colors for all keys and modes. If I’m in, say, Bb Major, the notes Bb and Eb show up in all octaves as the same color, same for the C, D, F, G, A and so on; and, as I’m sure you know, this is true for all keys, modes, scales or phrases. Regardless of which Key, Mode, Scale we’re using, we have notes that correspond to either white keys or black keys. Seeing 12 different colors for pitches is terrific, but, at times, I need the simplicity and clarity of seeing notes as they correspond to the piano keyboard and that helps me relate those back to the Keys, Chords and Scales I’m working with. I am often zoomed out so note names are not displayed. Hence the request for one additional slot in the colors menu.
Do you use the option to color by Chord Track? I find it much more musically useful than color by Pitch.
You could even use it to get your 2 color scheme. It has 4 colors. Set the 2 In Scale colors to be the same, and set the 2 Not In Scale colors to be the same with a different color. Now put a C Major scale at the start of the Chord Track (no need for a chord entry) and you’re good to go.
That’s certainly an interesting approach and I may I’ll try it. I use Color by Chord Track and it’s an very helpful feature of the program.
I’d just like one additional color choice on the drop-down menu so I could retain the useful 12 tone/12 colors pitch display and keep the current “match to chord track” settings. That, or, even better, they’d allow us to Save Presets for the “pitch” color settings.
I have a hunch that simply adding one additional choice to the drop down is likely easier to do from a programming point of view and Two Color seems a natural choice to me. No matter which Key – or no Key – the music is in, most of us are we’re working with traditional 12 tone keyboards with five black keys and seven white keys per octave. I find it helpful to have the editor’s colors matching the colors of the keyboard, which, of course, relates to the key, mode, scale we’re working in.
I have a working “two colors” setting but only at the sacrifice of one of the currently available choices.
Ultimately, “save presets” for Color by Pitch would be even more useful; for example, a user could create a custom scale and match the colors to that. I suppose that could be done now with different profiles or preference settings, but that’s a lot of bother for one small convenience.
So, the request stands. One Additional Choice for Colors in the Key and Drum editors, be it two colors or, even better, Pitch “Save Presets.”
The Ministry of Music has determined that all performances and recordings be at 101 BPM.
On Topic:
After thinking more about this, I see that what I’m asking for is that the “Pitch” colors have “Presets” we could save. This way I can have my favored two color setting, but, there could be set-ups for any one octave pattern, including things Cubase does not included as such, for example, Messiaen’s Modes of limited transposition Mode of limited transposition - Wikipedia, or, as has been discussed on other threads, a custom sale of some kind.
This would allow users to save various scales and patterns as pitch colored presets; powerful on its own and works well in conjunction with Colors → Match Cord Track.
Thanks to the development team for all your hard work.
So what yer saying is that if the party thinks the notes look better, then it happens?
Yeah, that pretty much covers a LOT of Cubase’s UX
I would MUCH rather that the grid be made easier to see rather than changing the note colours. For -me- the note colours indicate either a Part or a Velocity. It would be MORE confusing if it then somehow changed colour based on whether the note was an Ab or an A. -That- seems totally arbitrary and not particularly useful.
My point is… and correct me if I’m missing something… if the colour changes based on the pitch, then doesn’t that make it impossible to use the other modes (ie. velocity level or colour by part)? Eg. I would get confused as to whether or not the colour was different because it was a ‘flat’ or because it was in a different Part.
You’re right the Two Color Scheme would have exclusive control over the coloring, so you couldn’t also see for example Velocity at the same time. But that is what the OP was requesting, a new color mode. It’s not substantially different from the current behavior. Right now colors can’t be set by Velocity AND Part, only Velocity OR Part works. The OP just wants another mode added that matches black & white keys on a keyboard.
But as been noted above, allowing color sets to be saved & loaded would allow the OP to get what they want. To me this seems like a better solution since it adds general flexibility.
I’d really like to have some way to define our own color coding schemes. But have no idea how something like that would work - a Color Logical Editor perhaps? For example I’d find it useful to have colors based on note range, so you could easily see when you are getting close or gone beyond an instrument’s range.
Not to be an elitist grouser, again, I would not want this because intuitively, I think it violates some basic UI rule of best practice. I want note colours to change based on something -I- control, not on the fact that they just -are- a given pitch. IOW: I don’t need a colour to tell me that a note is Ab. That’s why one learns to read notes.
That said, I think it would be FANTASTIC if your idea could be applied to the virtual keyboard @ left… I often open Kontakt or VSL and look at the virtual keyboard to see the range of notes available in a given sample lib. I would -love- to be able to colour code the Key Editor Virtual Keyboard in the same manner for each Part or Instrument. (Even better if the track could automagically read that in from the sample lib!)
Come to think of it… if one could apply -colours- to that keyboard it would look like my kid’s toy. Which indeed, might be useful.
Say I configure it to color every note from C2 to G3 (typical tenor’s range) to green and all the note outside that range red. How exactly is that not based on something that -I- do not control? I can understand that you might not find it personally useful. But to declare that it is something which no one should or could find useful is rather presumptuous.
Also under no circumstances should you ever select the Pitch option from the color menu. It could cause you a heart attack because even now it colors every Ab exactly the same - and there’s a different color for the other 11 pitches too.
