Cakewalk creates multiple clips and lanes for no (apparent) reason

[Starship Krupa]

The screenshot below is the result of a few minutes work in the Piano Roll. I'm writing something that starts with an ostinato (pattern of notes repeated), then adds other notes atop the ostinato. Kind of a Steve Reich Brian Eno minimalist thing.

So I entered the notes of my ostinato, drag copied them a couple of times to get 4 measures, and then started entering the other notes. There's some editing in there to get the timing right, etc., but not anything really fancy. Why do I now have a total of 3 lanes with 4 clips? What logic is Cakewalk following to interpret my manual entry, copying, and addition of notes to split it up this way? Is it that I had the transport running in a loop?

This is one of the prime examples of "things that I don't want it to do" when I say that I have spent more time trying to get Cakewalk not to do things (and cleaning up after it) than I have figuring out how to do things. All I can do with this flotsam is select everything (heaven knows how many clips and lanes it will create before I'm done) and Bounce to Clips and hope that goes smoothly.

Do I have some setting set up in the wrong way? Is there a "knock yourself out with the lanes and clips" box that I need to uncheck to have the program put my entered notes into one single clip unless I say otherwise? I will probably wind up cutting this into smaller clips at some point, but I want to be the one that decides that. How does it decide when to make a new clip, add a new lane, etc? Why does it do it at all? How do I make it stop?

[Terry Kelley]

So it's like it's in Comp mode while you are just editing/appending one lane (the main lane.) Do you know when it creates a new lane?

Edited August 22, 2021 by Terry Kelley

[tecknot]

Hi Erik,

I would check your Recording Mode (by right clicking on the Record button) and see if you have Comping checked.  You probably prefer to set it to Sound on Sound.

Kind regards,

tecknot

[David Baay]

I cannot repro this. Since you're not recording, record options should not have a bearing. I thought the status of Non-Destructive MIDI Editing might, so i changed that, but still could not reproduce the problem.

If you can reproduce it a second time, you might need to share exact steps. When you did the 3x drag-copy of the 'base' pattern was that also done in the PRV with looping already encompassing the 4 x 4 bars (if I'm reading the PRV interpreting correctly with the timeline out of view), or did you do that part in the Track View? 

And what's in the apparently empty clips?

[Starship Krupa]

Okay, I think I've figured this out. I can't call it "pilot error" because I don't think it's an "error" as such. It's probably as designed, and now that I know that, at least the bafflement is done. Call it as designed, but the default behavior is confusing.

It happens when you use copying both in the Track View and Piano Roll View. Of course, the copying in the TV will create a new clip each time it's copied. That is as it should be, and I had forgotten that I had done that and this is where things start to get messed up.

If the user then enters new notes in PRV in the original clip's location, they will, properly, be a part of the original clip. However, if those new notes are copied from the original clip and pasted to the newer clip's location in the PRV, they'll be seen as part of the original clip (which will get extended) and the newer clip will be bumped down into a new lane. Then you'll wind up with a double-length original clip that overlaps with the newer clip.

Any subsequent notes entered manually or pasted into that overlapping region will go into the original clip. Earlier clips take priority when they overlap.

I thought that because I had "Blend Old and New" selected in Preferences/Editing that it would work the other way, that events pasted into the newer clip (in PRV) would become part of the newer clip.

There are a couple of ways around this. First, obviously, confine your copying and pasting in the PRV if you want to have everything go into a single clip. Duh. Second, if you do somehow have overlapping clips and want newly-entered notes to go into the new clip, make sure Hide Muted Clips is turned on in PRV and mute the older, overlapping clip.

All this is definitely not to say that I agree with the default behavior. I think that there should at least be a selectable mode where copying and pasting notes from one clip to another in PRV puts the notes in the target clip rather than extending the source clip to overlap it.

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

I seem to end up with lots of tiny clips of odd notes all over the place !  😆

I think part of the reason is some of the settings are set at Project Level - when to my way of thinking they should be global

For example -

Recording Mode.. I would think once you have it set your preferred way whether that's Comping or Sound On Sound etc.  you would like it to remain so on all projects?

I prefer to set and forget but instead I have to make my own Template and use that. Seems backwards to me.

[Starship Krupa]

Hey, don't get me going right now on the chutney that results from recording MIDI in Comp mode while looping. Start and stop a couple of times and you'll be lost in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.

[Xoo]

8 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

Hey, don't get me going right now on the chutney that results from recording MIDI in Comp mode while looping. Start and stop a couple of times and you'll be lost in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.

I have an axe that will help with that.

[Terry Kelley]

Just leave the magazine at Witt's End

[bitflipper]

Yup, that's how it's supposed to work. Any time I plop notes into the PRV by hand, copy-and-paste bits or append an existing MIDI clip, I end up with many clips. It's really not a problem; the last thing I do on such a MIDI track is select the entire track, right-click on any clip and select "Bounce to Clip(s)". That combines all the little clips into one big one.