More Key Editor Woes.....

[Animus]

I've posted this years ago on the way Cubendo now handles the key editor and midi parts. For those of you that remember the way Cubase VST 3.xxxx handles it, I much prefer it that way. So now you can have several midi events on a midi track and when you select and open them all up in the Key Editor you get all the them displayed but the focus is only on one of them. To activate the next or previous midi event you either click on that part or use the next/previous key commands. This is a pain in the ass for many reasons.

Cubase VST treated multiple midi parts in the piano roll as all active and "monolithic" on a per track basis. Imagine if you have a drum midi track and you have it all sliced up into loops and want to keep all the loop events intact and not glue them. If you want to select all the snare notes and edit them you can't because only one part can be active. In Cubase VST this was easy. Imagine if you have multiple midi tracks open in the editor with multiple parts on each track (when editing multi-part harmony for example). It gets really difficult and confusing to find the track and the part you need to edit when you can have so many parts not in focus. The part list display drop down menu is kind of useless depending on the names of each track and part. So you have a drum track with 10 parts on that track. The parts are usually named the same as the parent midi track unless you have manually rename them all something distinctive. It becomes hard to navigate to the part you want. In Cubase VST you just selected the midi track you wanted in the editor and all the parts are readily editable in the key editor without worrying about part focus. I would like at least a preference to set this to the old behavior.

Hopefully, all that made sense.

[messianic]

Yes Animus it makes perfect sense and is a common source of complaint.

I learnt to simplify things somewhat by sticking together whatever parts I could without taking my attention away from the visual arrangement of a song.

I agree it would be nice to get the old behaviour back via a preference of some sort it would be very handy.

About the new way, it would be good if the program could automatically establish the order of notes so say you've got some chords happening that when selecting the topmost note and deleting successive notes downwards that it moves logically through the note data taking into account the current part.

Of course when you select a note in a given part and there are other parts on the same track as the part you have selected (by virtue of context) it should allow you to select all notes etc., naturally this should be applied to the drum map as well.

I've not tried but do you know if any of this is possible via a macro?

[Captain Caveman]

You just untoggle the "e" - Edit Active Part Only button on the Toolbar in the Key Editor. Unclicking Show Part Borders continues the grid throughout too.

This does exactly what you guys want.

:)

[messianic]

I have seen that "preference" working but wouldn't you know, that just doesn't work for me, it does nothing on my system would you believe.

It would be understandable if there was a difference in behaviour between parts on the same track or parts on different tracks but alas, all is treated one and the same.

[Captain Caveman]

It only doesn't work over here if only one part is selected for editing in the Key Editor.

eg If there are 16 consecutive Hi Hat, Snare and Kick parts on 3 different tracks, you select them all open a Key Editor for them, you'll be able to edit all parts at the same time with Edit Selected Part Only untoggled.

If you select only the first part for editing then you wont be able to select any notes in the unselected parts.

Select All on Track is a good way to select things for editing this way, I have Ctrl+Enter for this.

Does it not work when you do it this way?

[Animus]

You just untoggle the "e" - Edit Active Part Only button on the Toolbar in the Key Editor. Unclicking Show Part Borders continues the grid throughout too.

This does exactly what you guys want.

:)

That's not what we are talking about.

[Captain Caveman]

That's not what we are talking about.

What are you talking about then, if it isn't the words you used in your first post?

[Captain Caveman]

It's cool, I don't mind if you want to take your moderator hat off for a bit of a tete-a-tete! :)

One assumption that I make these days is that the tool will never change so I just adapt my workflow to it. Having gone around the merry-go-round of sequencers I know that none of them operate in the exact way my mind works so short of creating my own I try to learn every nook and cranny of Cubase that is relative to me.

So I am not disagreeing with you for the sake of it, just pointing out other ways of working. For the drum thing, the Edit Active Part toggle works perfectly. For multiple harmony parts, they shouldn't (IMO) be in linearly consecutive parts anyway if they are "part of the one part".

FWIW, I used the Arranger track to have lovely bright coloured "markers" for sections of tracks which, when used with the Split Project screen divider means I always know where I am, even with big, glued parts. Double clicking on a part in the Project Window to activate the part in the Editor also means you don't have to rely on the drop-down part list. Using the Range Tool instead of scissors n drag means that this isn't a problem.

So yes, I am all for every request that you or probably anyone else suggests, but all anyone is going to get from me are pragmatic, practical answers and solutions.

:)

[Thonex]

You just untoggle the "e" - Edit Active Part Only button on the Toolbar in the Key Editor. Unclicking Show Part Borders continues the grid throughout too.

This does exactly what you guys want.

:)

correct

["correct" was all I was going to say... but you have to write more than a 10 character answers on this forum.... now that is a little loser :cool:... any way to change that?]

T

[Animus]

It's cool, I don't mind if you want to take your moderator hat off for a bit of a tete-a-tete! :)

One assumption that I make these days is that the tool will never change so I just adapt my workflow to it. Having gone around the merry-go-round of sequencers I know that none of them operate in the exact way my mind works so short of creating my own I try to learn every nook and cranny of Cubase that is relative to me.

So I am not disagreeing with you for the sake of it, just pointing out other ways of working. For the drum thing, the Edit Active Part toggle works perfectly. For multiple harmony parts, they shouldn't (IMO) be in linearly consecutive parts anyway if they are "part of the one part".

FWIW, I used the Arranger track to have lovely bright coloured "markers" for sections of tracks which, when used with the Split Project screen divider means I always know where I am, even with big, glued parts. Double clicking on a part in the Project Window to activate the part in the Editor also means you don't have to rely on the drop-down part list. Using the Range Tool instead of scissors n drag means that this isn't a problem.

So yes, I am all for every request that you or probably anyone else suggests, but all anyone is going to get from me are pragmatic, practical answers and solutions.

:)

Hey Cavemen,

I meant no offense by my short seemingly gruff reply. I was really tired last night and didn't have time to get in depth before I crashed out.

Try this. Get a drumloop and repeat it several times on the same midi track. Open them all up in the editor. Uncheck Edit Active part and Show Part borders. Now go to the first part and shift double click the first snare which will select each consecutive note.. It will only select the snares in the first part but not in consecutive parts and all the other parts are still "greyed out". In Cubase VST it would select all consecutive note regardless of what part they were on as long as they were on the same midi track. That's just one example. It's not just a question of navigation but also edibility. Edit Active Part basically just masks all other parts besides the one selected and Show Part borders only shows the borders on the currently selected part. THe workaround for me is to just glue parts together but a lot of times I like keeping midi parts separate and modular (chorus, verse, etc, melody line, etc) and that means I have to do a lot of repeated glueing and re-glueing. In the case of drum loops and parts I always want to keep them separate so I can edit each one individually or edit all of them at the same time. Cubase VST was great in the way it handled this and I can appreciate the new way but I only wish there was some kind of preference, like an extra button at the top that when lit treated all parts on a midi track as one part.

[Animus]

correct

["correct" was all I was going to say... but you have to write more than a 10 character answers on this forum.... now that is a little loser :cool:... any way to change that?]

T

I have been trying to find that minimal character preference. I will look a little harder.


thanks

[Captain Caveman]

....... some kind of preference, like an extra button at the top that when lit treated all parts on a midi track as one part.

No problemo. :)

I'm all for this and the Link Editor button from the other thread.

:cool:

[Animus]

correct

["correct" was all I was going to say... but you have to write more than a 10 character answers on this forum.... now that is a little loser :cool:... any way to change that?]

T


Found the parameter and fixed. Now you have to at least do one character.

[Animus]

No problemo. :)

I'm all for this and the Link Editor button from the other thread.

:cool:

Do you have a better idea of what we were talking about? It's a hard thing to explain. I probably should do some screenshots to help in describing this workflow issue.

[Thonex]

Found the parameter and fixed. Now you have to at least do one character.

:)