Staff View

[Jerry Gerber]

I agree.  When the snap function is fixed, the staff view will be on par with every other DAW that I've used or tried.  The newest DAW to notation, Studio One looks promising due to the dynamic symbols being linked to MIDI cc data, but the dealbreaker is that Studio One doesn't seem to have an Event List.  Every DAW has an event list, it's one of the most useful tools for working with cc data,  and copying and pasting notes, program changes and cc data all at the same time. 

Even without the snap function working, I still have gotten pretty fast at entering notes.  Enlarging the staff helps. 

I've been using Cakewalk since 1992 and have never even once used the piano-roll view.  As you pointed out,  for polyphonic music with a lot of counterpoint, nothing beats notation.

Jerry

 

 

 

[Jerry Gerber]

On 7/7/2020 at 11:33 PM, Trensharo said:

The Staff View has lots of issues, and I could never use it for composition.  It's one of the main reasons why I started looking into other DAWs.  It's barely usable, AFAIC.

The issue is not people misunderstanding what the Staff View is for. It's the fact that it's actually quite bad.  Issues with the Staff View, and people asking for improvements, date back a decade or more.

The fact that someone was able to trudge along in it to produce a lot of music doesn't alter the reality of the situation.  That's great to hear, but it's not going to make me want to use it.  I've already been there, and I'm not revisiting any time soon.

Cakewalk's Staff View makes REAPER's Notation Editor look like Sibelius | Ultimate.  It's that bad in comparison, and the gulf was that wide the second REAPER added this feature, when SONAR had it for like 10+ years.

It needs improvement, IMHO.

Literally no one is asking for this.  People are seeing what's in other DAWs and comparing to that.

1. Cubase
2. Digital Performer
3. Logic Pro X
4. Pro Tools
5. Samplitude Pro
6. REAPER

etc. all have better Staff View/Notation Editors than Cakewalk.  Even MixCraft has better notation editing than Cakewalk.

This isn't a situation of misguided expectations.  This component is just not that good, and it's been this way for a long time.

I am not sure what they're going to do to improve it, or if they even care to improve it, because that market is already dominated by Cubase Pro and Logic Pro X, anyways.  How much do they stand to gain from investing in improving Staff View?

 

 

Edited July 11, 2020 by jsg

[msmcleod]

1 hour ago, jieva said:

.... I will be quite happy when the snap function returns and the ctrl+right click is restored back to just right click...

@jieva - the snap issue is fixed for the next release, but I'm struggling to find a situation where CTRL + right click is any different from right click... can you give an example?

[User 905133]

1 hour ago, msmcleod said:

@jieva - the snap issue is fixed for the next release, but I'm struggling to find a situation where CTRL + right click is any different from right click... can you give an example?

Are you talking about the awkwardness issue discussed in the thread that includes this?

On 2/24/2020 at 1:05 PM, David Baay said:

Note that I said you have to release Ctrl while continuing to hold the click before you start dragging. This is what makes it awkward. If you don' release Ctrl, you get a copy.

 

Edited July 11, 2020 by User 905133
to add a link the thread that discusses awkward finger manipulations to move a set of notes

[Jerry Gerber]

Pressing CTRL and right--click requires 2 hands.  Right-clicking alone requires only one hand.  When you're doing a lot of editing moving both hands to call up a menu takes more time.  The workaround is to keybind the context menu operations you use and then just press one key to call them up. 

[jieva]

21 hours ago, msmcleod said:

@jieva - the snap issue is fixed for the next release, but I'm struggling to find a situation where CTRL + right click is any different from right click... can you give an example?

I do believe that if you select say a whole bar and want to bring up the menu that has slide, deglitch etc then you need CTRL+Right Click.  I think that it used to be Right Click only.  Very minor for me really.  Just very grateful that you have fixed snap.

 

[msmcleod]

I'll need to discuss this with the team.

It sounds to me like the only change that is needed (on the surface anyhow) is to stop right click from clearing the selection and selecting just the one note.

This is in effect what pressing CTRL is doing: it's keeping the selection.  This is why releasing CTRL half way turns it into a move operation. CTRL allows you to start moving the whole selection - if CTRL is still pressed at the time you drop, then its a copy, otherwise its a move.

@jieva - this is also why holding CTRL changes the context menu, because it isn't clearing the selection... allowing the "selection" based context menu to show.

The question is, how the majority of staff users will view such a change?  If users have been used to knowing that right click & move will always move the one note, it might be very annoying if it starts moving the whole selection.

I'll talk with the team and see what they say.

[Starship Krupa]

20 hours ago, msmcleod said:

@jieva - the snap issue is fixed for the next release, but I'm struggling to find a situation where CTRL + right click is any different from right click... can you give an example?

I've bugged it up, actually, but Jon might not have entered it in the database. He had an objection to it:

Quote

Hi Erik,

By default if you don't hold CTRL, when you click in the Staff View it clears the selection (unless you're right-clicking on a note head itself). With the selection cleared, the menu items are supposed to be grayed out because there's nothing for them to be applied to. CTRL retains the selection so those options are valid.

On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 9:18 PM Erik Miller wrote:

In the Staff View, when a group of notes are selected and then the user right clicks on the selection, most menu items are greyed out. If the user holds Ctrl while right clicking, the menu appears as normal, with the menu items active.

Steps:

1. Open a project that has MIDI notes
2. Call up Staff View
3. Select some notes
4. Right click to invoke the context menu
5. Observe that the Quantize, Groove Quantize, Deglitch, Slide, Interpolate, etc. commands are greyed out and inaccessible
6. Try the same operation, but this time hold the Ctrl key while right clicking
7. Observe that all menu commands are accessible

Actual behavior: user must hold Ctrl key to access all of the context menu commands

Expected behavior: a simple right click should do it, as described in the Reference Guide, and to conform with how it works elsewhere in the program

 

[User 905133]

2 hours ago, msmcleod said:

The question is, how the majority of staff users will view such a change?  If users have been used to knowing that right click & move will always move the one note, it might be very annoying if it starts moving the whole selection.

I'll talk with the team and see what they say.

On 2/24/2020 at 8:50 AM, User 905133 said:

Until it gets fixed, you might want to use an older version.  Sonar 3 and Sonar X3 both work properly.  I just tested them as they are both on my Win 10 PC (along with CbB).  Not sure if earlier versions of CbB aren't broken . . . 

 As I understand it, Move in Staff View worked properly from Sonar 3 through Sonar X3.  After that it seems to have gotten changed and the new behavior got passed on to Cakewalk by Bandlab. 

 

 

[Jerry Gerber]

On 7/10/2020 at 6:54 PM, msmcleod said:

@jieva - the snap issue is fixed for the next release, but I'm struggling to find a situation where CTRL + right click is any different from right click... can you give an example?

Yes.  In the staff view, if you lasso and select a group of notes to edit, say you want to increase their velocity.  Sonar always worked by right-clicking to bring up the context menu from which you can choose velocity and perform the edit.  But now, if you do that, the selection disappears, so you have to press CTRL AND right-click in order to keep that from happening.  It's a shorter step to not have to press CTRL and have it work the way it did in Sonar.  Adding time or having to move your other hand to press CTRL might seem like no big deal, but over time, these extra steps really add up.  I hope you change it back.  I don't understand how anybody could object to making an operation quicker to perform by removing one additional keystroke...

Thanks!

Jerry

[Starship Krupa]

Not a Staff View user, just a sympathetic bystander, but what I am curious about, and alluded to in my bug report: why does the Right Click vs. Ctrl-Right Click work differently  in Piano Roll View?

It seems to me that the same note selection issues would apply there, wouldn't they? But when I select a bunch of notes in PRV, then Right Click, I have access to all of the MIDI Process commands that we're talking about. I don't have to hold Ctrl to get them.

(matter of fact, I am endlessly plagued by performing operations in PRV where I hadn't realized an entire clip was still selected from when I was in Track View)

[mgustavo]

Hi, I'd like to comment Ctrl + Right Click will also copy and paste notes if one tries to move them, but Shift + Right click will do the trick (just move).

Also there is one issue about exporting sheet music to XML, that is Musescore won't read tied notes correctly. But there's a workaround that one could import XML file on Finale NotePad and export to XML again (but also FNP won't read tempo value when importing it).
But maybe this issue could be a bug from these softwares!

Best regards,

Edited July 13, 2020 by mgustavo

[Roma Red]

would love to have snapback in the staff view pls

Bluestacks Omegle Canlimacizle

 

Edited July 22, 2020 by Roma Red

[Jerry Gerber]

On 7/10/2020 at 6:54 PM, msmcleod said:

@jieva - the snap issue is fixed for the next release, but I'm struggling to find a situation where CTRL + right click is any different from right click... can you give an example?

Hi msmcleod,

Any idea when the next update with the staff view snap function repair will be released?

Thanks,

Jerry

[msmcleod]

On 7/15/2020 at 11:22 PM, jsg said:

Hi msmcleod,

Any idea when the next update with the staff view snap function repair will be released?

Thanks,

Jerry

No definite date yet I'm afraid, as we've got a major amount of documentation and localisation to complete.

I anticipate an early access release to be announced within the next couple of weeks though ( no promises tho, as it's not my decision ! )

I can confirm that fixes for both the snap & the right click issues will be in that release (i.e. you no longer need to hold CTRL to multiple drag or get the full context menu).

The downside of the right click change is that right clicking will no longer clear the selection (this was in fact the original cause of the issue). So you'll either need to left click somewhere where the no-entry sign appears, or use CTRL+SHIFT+A to clear the selection.

[Jerry Gerber]

21 hours ago, msmcleod said:

No definite date yet I'm afraid, as we've got a major amount of documentation and localisation to complete.

I anticipate an early access release to be announced within the next couple of weeks though ( no promises tho, as it's not my decision ! )

I can confirm that fixes for both the snap & the right click issues will be in that release (i.e. you no longer need to hold CTRL to multiple drag or get the full context menu).

The downside of the right click change is that right clicking will no longer clear the selection (this was in fact the original cause of the issue). So you'll either need to left click somewhere where the no-entry sign appears, or use CTRL+SHIFT+A to clear the selection.

 

Well, that is really good news, and God knows we can use some good news these days.  I look forward to installing the new release when it becomes available!

Thanks,

Jerry

 

 

[mgustavo]

Hi, I'd like to comment about another issue on Staff View. It happens that Note draw duration buttons won't change if one clicks on a note on the Staff Pane with last touched note enabled.

The expected result would be like in Piano Roll View, where note draw duration buttons will change if one clicks notes on Notes Pane, with last touched note enabled.

Best regards,

Edited July 18, 2020 by mgustavo

[Jerry Gerber]

It works on my system as expected.  When I click on any note already on the staff the duration changes to that note's duration when I enter a new note.

Maybe try a reinstall?

But wait!  I am still using the very last version of Sonar.  I hope they didn't mess that one up, it's extremely useful...

Edited July 18, 2020 by jsg

[User 905133]

Just did a very quick test as follows (v. 2020.05 build 39).

1. Verified "Last Touched" was checked in the Control Bar's Tool Module.
2. On a single staff from a project in progress from a few months ago:
   1. Selected 1/2 note from the note-value tool in the Staff View Pane,
   2.  Placed a 1/2 note on the staff,
   3. Checked the duration by right clicking on note head.
   4. Repeated the steps for a whole note, a quarter note, and a 16th note.

For all 4 tests, the duration was as expected--2 beats for 1/2 note, 4 beats for whole note, 1 beat for quarter note, 480 ticks for 16th note.

-----------------------------------------

oops--part 2 got put into a new post instead of going here.

 

 

Edited July 18, 2020 by User 905133

[User 905133]

1 hour ago, mgustavo said:

. . . Note draw duration buttons won't change if one clicks on a note on the Staff Pane with last touched note enabled.

working on testing this.

So far as I can tell, clicking on an existing note on the staff with either the smart tool or the edit tool does not change the note-value button in the Staff View Pane. 

Edited July 18, 2020 by User 905133