David Rubenstein

scook, yes I have tried all of those things. (The problem does not show up when stepping whole notes or half notes--only quarter, eighth, etc.) But, since you mention that you cannot duplicate the problem, I tried it on my second computer--with no problem. Step record works correctly on my second computer. So, perhaps it is an issue of a setting? I cannot figure it out.

There is definitely a bug in the Step Record function. It is as if randomization is always turned on, and cannot be turned off.

Thanks for all the discussions and potential answers! After some experimentation, I am finding the following workflow to be the easiest for me. Again, this approach is appropriate when the instrument does not include keyswitches. I like to have all of the notes for a particular instrument in a single track, so that it is easy to adjust note durations, start times, velocities, CC's etc. I assign that track to a single synth (either PLAY or KONTAKT, for example). Into that synth, I load many instrument presets, each with a different articulation, and each with a different MIDI channel. Then, I assign a MIDI channel to each note in the track. I found two ways to do this; either by selecting individual notes and using the "Edit Tool", or by selecting a group of notes, and entering a channel number in the "Event Inspector". Each channel will correspond to a different articulation preset.

Some VST instruments include keyswitches to change articulations (staccato, pizzicato, sustained, legato, etc.). But many VST instrument libraries do not have keyswitches; each articulation is contained within a separate preset. So, one approach would be to load all the articulations you think you will need into an instantiation of the sampler (for example, Play or Kontakt). Then, you sort individual MIDI notes into the various presets. Is there an easy way to do this? In Cubase, I am told that you use "Expression Maps". For Cakewalk, I read somewhere that "Drum Maps" can be used for this purpose, but I don't understand how to do this. And, how do you easily sort the MIDI notes into the various presets/articulations?

I am having an issue with Step Record. I choose "Follow Step Size", The parameters "% of note value" is set to 100 and "Randomize by" is set to 0, although they are grayed out. Nevertheless, I am getting randomization; sometimes the notes advance a bit more than the step size, and sometimes a bit less. Any ideas how to turn off this randomization of the step size?