Set Loop Locators to Just Before The Beat?

Been scrathcing my head with this one for a few days now.

I need to be able to set my loop locators in the Project Window Timeline to just before the bar start (somewhere between a few ticks and a 16th depending on the project), so that early notes get picked up on playback and loopback. Pre-roll only works on playback not loopback, and I can find no way of constraining snap, in order to set locator positions which aren’t strictly to the beat or bar. I don’t want to change my entire grid to match quantize, because it will make copying/dragging parts unworkable.

Steve in Chicago suggested it can be done with a combination of nudge and macros, but as a relative Cubase newbie I’m struggling to figure out how. Doe anyone have any suggestions? What are others doing in order to make sure that looped playback picks up those stray notes that are just before the beat?

Many thanks for any help.

Jules

constraining snap is at the top of the window… it looks somewhat like this : >¦<

Like many things in Cubase there are a few ways to do this depending on precisely what it is you want to do.

You can just turn snap off to move the locator, as ggc suggests, since the suspend snap function doesn’t apply to locators. (Default key “j”)

For the use you describe here, I would guess “Locators to Selection” (“p”) would be useful though you would have to open a midi editor to select notes.

My earlier suggestion assumed you wanted to move the left locator back by an amount you would eyeball each time, but this way you get the loop precisely enclosing the selected midi events. (and then you could go back to the Project view.)

Many thanks Steve and ggc

Ggc’s option of simply turning off snap and back on again after I’ve tweaked the locators will work fine for me. Not sure how I missed this before. Will try and assign a key command to that function if I can, as this would be even quicker.

Locators to selection is also good if my selection is a full loop length (ie. not some non-whole bar length).

Thanks again - slowly I am starting to feel like I can work quickly and productively in Cubase, which gives me a nice warm reassuring glow! :wink:

Jules