odd/irritating snapping when drawing short notes in PRV

[John Bradley]

See the video below. I've got snap enabled, and the grid set to 16th notes. I'm drawing notes that are roughly a 32nd in duration.

If you do a clean click, you get a note of the desired duration aligned with the grid. But if you move the cursor slightly to the right while clicking – because you're entering a bunch of notes and you're in a hurry – the note snaps to a tiny line (duration = 2 ticks). Once you've released the mouse (again, because you're quickly entering notes) it's not possible to stretch it because you can't grab the right edge. Pretty much all you can do (mouse-wise, without involving the Quantize command, etc.) is lasso them to select, delete, click one of the good notes to reset the default duration, and get back to note-drawing..

I can't imagine a case where having the note snap to a well-nigh uneditable 'zero duration' blob would ever be desirable.

In any event, it's odd that the note does this snapping when the cursor moves into the rightmost 1/3rd (or 1/4th) of the blob, but if you keep dragging right it unsnaps to where the cursor is, before snapping to the next grid line as you keep going.

Hardly fatal, but it's annoying and it happens frequently enough. At least for me.

 

[scook]

6 minutes ago, John Bradley said:

lasso them to select

then set their duration in the Event Inspector module.

[Byron Dickens]

Learn some basic keyboard playing skills. You can slow the tempo down as much as you need and clean up what you played if you have to or you can step record everything.

God! I can't even imagine entering that many notes in the piano roll mouse click by mouse click! Just thinking about doing that gives me carpal tunnel.

Edited July 6, 2022 by bdickens

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

On 7/6/2022 at 4:42 AM, John Bradley said:

I can't imagine a case where having the note snap to a well-nigh uneditable 'zero duration' blob would ever be desirable

Yep

This a common occurence when midi editing, it shouldn't really happen and is a pain 

On 7/6/2022 at 4:51 AM, scook said:

then set their duration in the Event Inspector module.

I think the point is the PRV shouldn't allow crazy tiny midi notes to be created that then can't be edited properly, I've got in the habit of deleting them and re-drawing when it happens.

On 7/6/2022 at 4:56 AM, bdickens said:

Learn some basic keyboard playing skills.

Got zero to do with playing skills , if you do any extensive amount of midi editing this is a regular occurence. 

[Starship Krupa]

On 7/5/2022 at 8:42 PM, John Bradley said:

I've got snap enabled, and the grid set to 16th notes. I'm drawing notes that are roughly a 32nd in duration.

If you do a clean click, you get a note of the desired duration aligned with the grid. But if you move the cursor slightly to the right while clicking – because you're entering a bunch of notes and you're in a hurry – the note snaps to a tiny line (duration = 2 ticks).

I'm going to have to try this to see if I can get it to do it.

It seems like maybe one of those things that happen more or less often depending on individual mouse technique. The one that plagues me is trying and failing to grab the lower edge of a track so that I can resize it. I'll swing and miss 3 or 4 times in a row because apparently I click it "just right" with a moving mouse. Part of it is because the hot spot/cursor change ain't quite right in that area, but still, I seem to have a special talent for it. 🤨 The appropriate authorities have been notified in detail but have yet to comment.

[murat k.]

I'm having the same issue for all size of notes in Inline PRV.

But I'm not having the same issue in PRV which OP had in the video.

[John Bradley]

I’ll note that I misspoke in my explanation above. A “clean click” with zero movement of the mouse doesn’t draw a note at all. You have to drag to the right slightly to get a note to appear (with the current default length). If you drag right a little further, you get the wierdness where the note snaps to near-zero length. If you haven’t released the mouse already and keep dragging right, the note length snaps to where the cursor is, and eventually snaps to the next grid position if you keep going.

This is all dependent in various ways on the snap magnetism setting, and how far apart the grid lines are in pixels.

I’m often editing/creating drum parts, and as such want 16th note snap (if not higher) and want to see at least 4 bars at a time in the PRV, so my grid lines are fairly tight, and I run into this issue all the freakin’ time.

Your mileage may vary. But preventing the notes from ever snapping to “to short to edit” would be most appreciated.

 

[Starship Krupa]

13 hours ago, John Bradley said:

You have to drag to the right slightly to get a note to appear

With the Smart Tool, yes. You can also double-click, which is also fraught with possibilities to mess it up. 😄

However, I discovered that if I switch to the Draw Tool (F9), all it takes is a single click with no dragging.

I'm not saying that it shouldn't work better with the Smart Tool, but you might like the Draw Tool for drawing notes in the PRV. It has fewer options than the Smart Tool, but it does let you right click to delete notes. You can't drag to make notes longer, what you get instead is a series of notes of the selected duration. But that makes it great for drum programming, where you usually want a 1/16 duration for every hit.

Speaking of which, let's say you're bashing in a 1/8 note hi hat pattern, doing the usual copy and paste dance. Instead you can use the Pattern Tool. Ctrl-swipe across whatever set of notes you want to copy, then left click and drag and it will paint those notes in. Draw Tool (only Freehand and Pattern modes work) is very handy for drum programming. 

Since the Smart Tool works well for so many things, I can sometimes forget about the other, dedicated tools, which come with fewer quirks since they don't have to "guess" what operation I'm trying to do. And in the case of the Pattern Tool, you can do some fancy things that you can't do with the Smart Tool.

[sjoens]

Since switching tools is a drag, I always use Smart Tool.

I dislike Freehand Draw tool because all it does is draw, glue & erase, with one (1) right-click option (holding ctrl or alt) to open note properties - I found this by accident as documentation says nothing about it. Documentation does say you can change velocity with ctrl & shift, but this does nothing in my CbB.

EDIT: I do use the Line Tool for Controllers tho.

Edited September 6, 2022 by sjoens

[Will.]

I can't think of ever not using the Smart Tool.

The only time I do change tools - is when I would paint automation. Other than that, The smart tool is the best feature ever created in Cakewalk to this date. 

If im right: The issue is a simple one everyone encounters daily, but subconsciously fix the problem. You can actually see it happen in as you draw in those notes.

You're crossing in to another clip. So this happens because of the two individual clips. If you bounce the two together and make them one clip - the problem will disappear. You can see this when your snap to grid gets disabled in the PRV on the third note you're drawing in - as the note is currently laying underneath the other one that overlapping. Somehow that clip got split.

Bouncing that clip should fix your issue. 

Edited September 6, 2022 by Will.

[sjoens]

On 7/5/2022 at 7:51 PM, scook said:

On 7/5/2022 at 7:42 PM, John Bradley said:

lasso them to select

then set their duration in the Event Inspector module.

I do this all the time. If notes are of differing lengths, tho, the Events Duration value has to be zeroed before entering the desired length.

Edited September 6, 2022 by sjoens

[scook]

10 hours ago, sjoens said:

If notes are of differing lengths, tho, the Events Duration value has to be zeroed before entering the desired length.

Not in my experience. Here is an example of a clip containing notes of different durations all set to two beats by directly entering the value in the Event Inspector

[jackson white]

On 7/7/2022 at 10:55 PM, John Bradley said:

editing/creating drum parts, and as such want 16th note snap (if not higher shorter?) and want to see at least 4 bars at a time in the PRV

 

On 7/8/2022 at 1:31 PM, Starship Krupa said:

the Draw Tool for drawing notes in the PRV

and deselecting the option "Notes | Show Durations in Drum Grid" in the PRV for drum map editing.

fwiw, never run across a use case for entering/hand editing super short midi notes. 

 

[sjoens]

3 hours ago, scook said:

Not in my experience. Here is an example of a clip containing notes of different durations all set to two beats by directly entering the value in the Event Inspector

Ooops. I was thinking of Velocity cc's. I used to have issues with that one, but now even it's calling me out and defying my statement. So I recant & repent.