Hi all!
~I’m using Cubase 14 Pro on a Windows PC~
I’m editing piano MIDI recordings and need to be able to quantize the full recording to the grid; however manually aligning it along a very long and detailed performance is very tedious and time-consuming.
In essence I know that we can use an example of two notes. A pickup note and the corresponding downbeat. I want to be able to select all the notes, quantize just the downbeat so that it shifts to align with the grid, but then transform the pickup note so that it moves the same distance as the quantized note. So IF the selected MIDI note is over X length THEN it will be quantized and IF a note is within X distance AND is LESS than the X Length, THEN it will be Transformed positionally the same distance as the Quantized note.
I need this sort of ability because of these roadblocks:
-If I select everything and then quantize, the Downbeats are moved to the correct position, but the pickup notes are also placed in the same position. Doing things this way would force me to manually go in an edit every human inflection, not only manually putting in the entire piano piece, but I’d also have to magically recall the inflections that I’m not having to manually put in and that’s just not only impractical, but impossible to do without losing the original feel. This simply would not work.
-I could select only the downbeats and then quantize those, shifting the rest of the notes over along with it. This wouldn’t work because again, I would have to manually select the pickup notes and manually drag them over to hopefully align in the same place as before, but now in relation to the quantized Downbeat note. This is extremely manual as well and isn’t the best route.
-I could “Soft Quantize”, but again, this would only partially shift the notes over to the desired placement on the grid. So the Downbeat notes would partially move over slightly closer to the downbeat, and the pickup notes would move at a separate distance over closer to the grid-position, but not only would this interfere with the relative distance between the pickup note and the following downbeat, but it wouldn’t align the downbeat note onto the downbeat on the grid. This is insufficient for what I need.
Currently the only way to do what I need to do is to manually go down the line, select a cluster of notes, make sure my grid is set appropriately to the correct subdivisions and then drag the Downbeat note (Still having everything selected mind you) over to it’s correct place. This moves the pickup note over the same amount, maintaining it’s relative position to the downbeat, while still letting the downbeat be quantized to the grid. The only problem is that this is extremely manual and tedious, for a intricate piano piece this is very time-consuming and takes so much time to do, it’s the problem that I’m trying to solve.
Recap: I’m looking for a way to select two notes (In practice a lot more) with the ability to quantize one and then transform a different note over proportionate to the shift of the quantized note. Quantize, then take ΔPosition and apply it to another MIDI note.
Any other suggestions would be appreciated, I think this is a very big workflow problem and maybe there’s a better way to go about things. I record with a click track and try to line things up with my grid and I want to align with the grid so I can easily implement other instruments too so I think figuring out the hurdle to this will be the best and most comprehensive fix. Thanks y’all 
but I guess I’ll just need to get some custom key commands down and get good at repetitive tasks. I was hoping there’d be a Logical Editor solution, but it looks like Cubase hasn’t thought of or implememented this yet. A little more practice on my end too wouldn’t hurt, but I can’t master 20 different instruments unfortunately, so the skills will need to be learned eventually either way