Staff View

[Jerry Gerber]

Hello,  (I posted this onthe Q&A Forum but I think this is the better place to ask this question)

I am still running the final version of Sonar Platinum because, in the staff view, I can select a passage and right click to get the menu which allows me to make changes to the MIDI data (velocity, transpose, slide, etc.).  In the newest version of Cakewalk I have to press CTRL-right click to do the same thing.  I work almost exclusively in the staff view and event list and this one extra step will add a lot of time to my workflow. 

Any chance you can have the program revert back to the right-click only to call up the menu?

Thanks!

Jerry Gerber

www.jerrygerber.com

[jieva]

Please please please can we also have snap back in the staff view it drives me crazy without it

[Jerry Gerber]

7 hours ago, jieva said:

Please please please can we also have snap back in the staff view it drives me crazy without it

That would be the best thing that could happen for the staff view.

[msmcleod]

12 hours ago, jieva said:

Please please please can we also have snap back in the staff view it drives me crazy without it

Isn't this just a matter of making sure "Fill Durations" and "Trim Durations" are checked within the View options on the staff view?

In SONAR X3 / Platinum these were checked by default, but not in CbB.

[jieva]

No - The notes don't snap at all.  They seem set at 32nd positions.  The notation looks fine but the timing is hit and miss.

 

[Jerry Gerber]

6 hours ago, jieva said:

No - The notes don't snap at all.  They seem set at 32nd positions.  The notation looks fine but the timing is hit and miss.

 

Yes, this is correct.  No matter what note value is chosen, the snap function is always hit or miss.  I find the workaround is to make the staves bigger, this helps.  It used to be that when you choose, say, an eighth note, the snap would follow the eighth note and snap into place at the place where you want it to.    Does Bandlab read these comments?  

This issue and the issue where we have to press CTRL-right click to call up the context menu for MIDI editing should be repaired.  We should be able to call up the menu just by a right-click, which requires only one hand rather than two...

Jerry

[jieva]

Not many people seem to care about staff view but for me it is really important, especially for writing orchestral stuff for games and films etc.  Cakewalk can do almost anything except place a note where you want it.  After years and years of it being fine someone decided to remove the snap (and indeed the note values at one point).  I have decided to migrate to reaper.  It has been a bit of a struggle but once you get the hang of it then I can do most things there now.  I would come back to cakewalk if staff view had snap.  I also work withing a group of people and that means that we will all switch.

I appreciate the tremendous effort that goes into some of the latest features but in reality I would not use the arranger view and while being able to visually see changes to a wave in a clip when you apply envelopes is tremendous bit of engineering it does not change the fact that I can't enter the notes on time.  I could use the piano roll for maybe 2 instruments at a time but that is so hard compared to looking at a full score of instruments and moving individual notes around or seeing  where instruments are in conflict etc.  

I really don't know why Bandlab don't say anything at all about it or seem to grasp that it is important for some of us.

I am thinking of doing some youtube vids of my experience of converting over to reaper and how to do some of the things in reaper that are difficult to find in reaper but easy in cakewalk.  Such things as assigning a midi channel to a track or working out how to do the routing of a track so that it resembles the synth rack, bouncing audio, splitting and joining clips (Items in Reaper) etc

 

 

 

[InstrEd]

35 minutes ago, jieva said:

really don't know why Bandlab don't say anything at all about it or seem to grasp that it is important for some of us.

I think they do grasp that it is important for some but unfortunately there is not enough of us as evidence when Cakewalk did a survey last year.
To bad, as I think the staff view could need the improvement especially since Bandlab is keen on the educational market.

I thought it might get some needed attention now that Reaper has a staff view, but alas NO!  Maybe if Studio One Version 5 gets one Cakewalk will update the staff view.

 

[msmcleod]

In the next release, the staff view will respect the global snap setting for note positioning. The note duration settings will remain unchanged.

In other words,  you'll be able to independently set the note duration and the snap positioning. 

[Jerry Gerber]

2 hours ago, msmcleod said:

In the next release, the staff view will respect the global snap setting for note positioning. The note duration settings will remain unchanged.

In other words,  you'll be able to independently set the note duration and the snap positioning. 

Hi msmcleod,

that would be really great, thanks.  I also hope the other staff view issue, which is being able to right-click to get the editing menu is restored so that CTRL doesn't have to be held down at the same time...

Jerry

www.jerrygerber.com

 

[Jerry Gerber]

19 hours ago, jieva said:

Not many people seem to care about staff view but for me it is really important, especially for writing orchestral stuff for games and films etc.  Cakewalk can do almost anything except place a note where you want it.  After years and years of it being fine someone decided to remove the snap (and indeed the note values at one point).  I have decided to migrate to reaper.  It has been a bit of a struggle but once you get the hang of it then I can do most things there now.  I would come back to cakewalk if staff view had snap.  I also work withing a group of people and that means that we will all switch.

I appreciate the tremendous effort that goes into some of the latest features but in reality I would not use the arranger view and while being able to visually see changes to a wave in a clip when you apply envelopes is tremendous bit of engineering it does not change the fact that I can't enter the notes on time.  I could use the piano roll for maybe 2 instruments at a time but that is so hard compared to looking at a full score of instruments and moving individual notes around or seeing  where instruments are in conflict etc.  

I really don't know why Bandlab don't say anything at all about it or seem to grasp that it is important for some of us.

I am thinking of doing some youtube vids of my experience of converting over to reaper and how to do some of the things in reaper that are difficult to find in reaper but easy in cakewalk.  Such things as assigning a midi channel to a track or working out how to do the routing of a track so that it resembles the synth rack, bouncing audio, splitting and joining clips (Items in Reaper) etc

 

 

 

I bet if the staff view were given as much attention as other aspects of the program, many musicians who abandoned Cakewalk would come right back.  I did after spending 18 months with Digital Performer.  Cakewalk is the most underrated DAW on the market, it is as powerful as any other DAW, ergonomically superior to the other DAWs I've worked with (Cubase, Reaper, DP, and a demo of Pro Tools)  and makes complex operations easy and simply, but not so simple that precision and detail are sacrificed.  Being in the education market, I would think the notation editor would be of supreme importance--regardless of how many musical styles don't depend upon or use notation, the fact is that it's going to be around for a  long time and scoring to picture, classical music, complex arrangements and other styles of music are going to employ notation in one way or another.  Sonar is also beautiful to look at; I've worked in Cakewalk since 1991 and still am excited to be looking at and working in the program.  It's solid as a rock on Windows 10. 

I left Sonar because of the staff view, but after using DP, the staff view in Sonar has much that is more to my liking.  I often write for lots of instruments and I write complex, long pieces.    DP's editor is set up to imitate an 8.5x11 piece of music paper, which is fine for short works with few instruments.  But Cakewalk's notation is more like an arranger's pad, it's much easier to scroll through pieces with hundreds of measures and I can see much more music in one screenful, horizontally speaking, and vertically, the number of staves I can see at once is larger than DPs (23 vs 18).  And the event list--just having color coded MIDI events as Cakewalk does makes it so much easier to see what's going on.  Tiny text and no color coding is really hard on the eyes... 

Jerry

 

 

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by jsg

[InstrEd]

My needs are not as deep as Jerry's needs but I agree on the staff view using as an arranger's pad.   It just needs a little tender loving care to shore it up.

@jsg nice to have you back where you belong 

 

 

[jieva]

That is such good news.

Thank you

 

[Tobias]

Another vote for staff improvements here!  I do realize a DAW and full fledged scoring apps like Finale/Sibelius are somewhat different and it might not be possible or feasible to get to that level at a reasonable amount of work based on the interest for such a thing from the CW community. I have said before that notation is really the only missing link in CW for me. I can manage to work around it either writing by hand or in other programs like mentioned above, but I would obviously prefer to be able to do it all within CW. But I do realize the implications of including scoring to that level, most likely mega effort involved. 

I hope maybe there could be some updates with  more notation options like different tuplets and polyrythms etc.  But hey,  I am very happy with the  product as is, but one can dream, right ?

[Jerry Gerber]

I've written this before, but keep in mind that the notation editor in a DAW is primarily about MIDI sequencing and editing.  It's not a scoring program, which is essentially a graphics program.  To prepare a score with parts for performance is not a recording function, it's a publishing tool.  I do all my scores in Sibelius, but I do all my MIDI work in Sonar.  I wouldn't expect, or even want, a DAW to be a publishing tool, better in my opinion to have the DAW for the creation and production of music and the full-fledged graphics program like Sibelius for publishing and final score creation. 

 

 

53 minutes ago, Tobias said:

Another vote for staff improvements here!  I do realize a DAW and full fledged scoring apps like Finale/Sibelius are somewhat different and it might not be possible or feasible to get to that level at a reasonable amount of work based on the interest for such a thing from the CW community. I have said before that notation is really the only missing link in CW for me. I can manage to work around it either writing by hand or in other programs like mentioned above, but I would obviously prefer to be able to do it all within CW. But I do realize the implications of including scoring to that level, most likely mega effort involved. 

I hope maybe there could be some updates with  more notation options like different tuplets and polyrythms etc.  But hey,  I am very happy with the  product as is, but one can dream, right ?

 

[Tobias]

26 minutes ago, jsg said:

I've written this before, but keep in mind that the notation editor in a DAW is primarily about MIDI sequencing and editing.  It's not a scoring program, which is essentially a graphics program.  To prepare a score with parts for performance is not a recording function, it's a publishing tool.  I do all my scores in Sibelius, but I do all my MIDI work in Sonar.  I wouldn't expect, or even want, a DAW to be a publishing tool, better in my opinion to have the DAW for the creation and production of music and the full-fledged graphics program like Sibelius for publishing and final score creation. 

 

 

 

Fair point, but there are some simple (maybe?) tweaks only that I am really asking for, not the full on Finale/Sibelius feature set.  To me at this point, the staff implantation is a bit like having a word processor that does not contain all the letters of the alphabet, like 5-6 are missing for some reason.  The musical alphabet contains different note values that can be displayed visually, and it does in CW but only to a point. I guess I dont understand the cutoff point of what is include and what is not. whole notes up to 32nd notes and triplets is included in staff. There are no other tuplets like quintuplets of sixtuplets or polys etc, which I guess is as easy/or hard to process as an eight note for a computer as they are just different number of "ticks".  You can step record these things using ticks and tuplets but they are not able to be displayed correctly which makes editing hard(er). A 16th note quintuplet for example ends up being a group of 4 16th notes with an extra 16th mashed in between.  My question here is if it harder to display those than triplets or eights, or is it just that CW decided to stop where they did for some reason?  

I am ignorant about how difficult and/or time consuming it would be to expand the visual vocabulary a bit to be more complete. Could be it is a real pain. 

 

[Jerry Gerber]

2 hours ago, Tobias said:

Fair point, but there are some simple (maybe?) tweaks only that I am really asking for, not the full on Finale/Sibelius feature set.  To me at this point, the staff implantation is a bit like having a word processor that does not contain all the letters of the alphabet, like 5-6 are missing for some reason.  The musical alphabet contains different note values that can be displayed visually, and it does in CW but only to a point. I guess I dont understand the cutoff point of what is include and what is not. whole notes up to 32nd notes and triplets is included in staff. There are no other tuplets like quintuplets of sixtuplets or polys etc, which I guess is as easy/or hard to process as an eight note for a computer as they are just different number of "ticks".  You can step record these things using ticks and tuplets but they are not able to be displayed correctly which makes editing hard(er). A 16th note quintuplet for example ends up being a group of 4 16th notes with an extra 16th mashed in between.  My question here is if it harder to display those than triplets or eights, or is it just that CW decided to stop where they did for some reason?  

I am ignorant about how difficult and/or time consuming it would be to expand the visual vocabulary a bit to be more complete. Could be it is a real pain. 

 

 

I have no idea whether programming the staff view to include 32note triplets, tied triplets, dotted triplets, etc.  is quite doable and the will just isn't there, or whether it's a very difficult programming problem.  I do know that the original code for the staff view is quite old so I suspect it's probably quite  a complex job.  But there's good news:  The display of these events has no impact on MIIDI precision upon playback.  If you program tied 32nd notes or dotted 16th note triplets, you'll get exactly that on playback.   When I export a .mid file into Sibelius it's not a big problem to edit and clarify the notation.

The other good news is that even though Cakewalk doesn't display 64th or 128th notes, the fact is they are not often used, at least not nearly as often and 32nd and 16th notes.  So, the workaround is this:  if you're working on a piece that suddenly requires 64th notes, simply double the tempo and write them as 32nd notes.  Or, leave the tempo as it is, and when you export the file to a program like Sibelius, correct the notation there.  I know it's not perfect, but I'll take the limitations and imperfections of Sonar over every other DAW on the market because of all the things that Sonar is that other DAWS are not.

Jerry

 

 

[Tobias]

You are correct, there are ways around this and I do use them. Like you said you can enter them and the ability to spilt a quarternote into 920 or so ticks ( don't have it infront of me know ) means you can enter pretty much what you want and have it sound right.  It just makes the editing harder than it otherwise would be and obviously less intuitive since the notation is wrong for someone who likes to work with notation. Its probably old code like you say and might be a "if it aint broke" kind of a thing.   I will experiment a bit with importing those things into other software and see if I get them to display correctly there like you say. 

And to be clear, I too will take those imperfections any day of the week, I am not going anywhere anytime soon. Been using CW forever so its not a dealbreaker its just something on my wish list   

First daw-like software I used was back in 92-93 or something and it was called musicator, and it handled any kind of notation, whatever tuplets or polyrythms you could think of. maybe that set my expectations for later in life  

 

[aleo]

Great discussion with many good points brought up and suggestions for improvements.  I'm still using staff view along with PRV when composing in MIDI and hope that BandLab stays with it and continues to improve it.  It matters to a lot of us and it is a great music education tool.

[Starship Krupa]

I seldom use Staff View, but when I do, I don't want to have to fight it, if you get me. I'm not the most comfortable working with notation as it is.

I don't know why an oddity creeping in like suddenly having to hold Ctrl down to get a fully populated context menu has taken so long to correct. I believe that I wrote that up as a bug and submitted it to the developers a few months ago. It may have been one of the people in this thread called my attention to it.