Simple annoying issues you think can be fixed with the least amount of work

[Ewoof]

I don't know whether it is just me or are there some issues in Cakewalk you think it will just take an update with the least work possible. I'm really interested in peoples response to this question. Maybe Cakewalk will see this and fix them. I honestly do not know how hard they are working but I seriously appreciate every update they do on Cakewalk.

For example, I have noticed that there are some important functions which are not given keyboard shortcuts:

CTRL + B should be Bounce to Clips by default since no function in Cakewalk uses this command

A  command to transpose the keys to another key and also transpose the keys to another octave. (A Cakewalk user already made a Cal function for them but I would like Cakewalk to add this function by default) - CTRL + up to move key to another key and CTRL + Shift + Up to move to another octave. 

A command to add gridlines to the tracks when people open Cakewalk for the first time ( This might be a subjective thing but I feel that the gridlines are super helpful)

A Command Command to duplicate tracks in the piano roll

Also, enabling Bounce to Clip during playback

Single clicking instead of double clicking when trying to draw keys. ( I know you can press alt but single clicking is is more efficient)

 

 

 

 

Edited August 3, 2020 by E-Woof Music

[Josh Wolfer]

Quote

CTRL + B should be Bounce to Clips by default since no function in Cakewalk uses this command

Bind it. I have a ton of custom key binds. Setting it by default would be fine too, but nothing wrong with customizing your setup. 

A  command to transpose the keys to another key and also transpose the keys to another octave. (A Cakewalk user already made a Cal function for them but I would like Cakewalk to add this function by default) - CTRL + up to move key to another key and CTRL + Shift + Up to move to another octave. 

No need for me, I never change keys, but more functionality the better IMO.

A command to add gridlines to the tracks when people open Cakewalk for the first time ( This might be a subjective thing but I feel that the gridlines are super helpful)

It's an option in key binds. Bind it. 

A Command Command to duplicate tracks in the piano roll

Seems unnecessary, but like I said, more functionality the merrier. I have no problem working out of Track view. I'm constantly switching back and forth.

Also, enabling Bounce to Clip during playback

Most of my crashes / corruption problems have always been around doing things during playback. In general, I never do anything during playback. Currently, there are serious issues with futzing with the arranger track during playback. Causes things to go haywire. Arming tracks, setting input monitoring. All have sporadic results.  If they enabled this feature, I'd turn it off or never use it. Had way too many problems of this natures. 

Single clicking instead of double clicking when trying to draw keys. ( I know you can press alt but single clicking is is more efficient)

As long as it's a toggle, sure. I use single click to navigate around the time in PRV and it'd piss me off if that changed. On a side note, this is already a thing if you switch to the draw tool instead of the multi-tool. Single click to create notes.

 

[chris.r]

On 8/3/2020 at 1:24 PM, E-Woof Music said:

A  command to transpose the keys to another key and also transpose the keys to another octave. (A Cakewalk user already made a Cal function for them but I would like Cakewalk to add this function by default) - CTRL + up to move key to another key and CTRL + Shift + Up to move to another octave.

Num 2/Num 8 to transpose half step up and down, ctrl+num 2/8 for octave transpose. But agree that Ctrl+up down are more intuitive. Perhaps there's a possibility to change that in keyboard shortcuts.

On 8/3/2020 at 1:24 PM, E-Woof Music said:

Single clicking instead of double clicking when trying to draw keys. ( I know you can press alt but single clicking is is more efficient)

don't have to double click, if that would be the case I would have already left Cakewalk for something else , just click-and-drag to create a note. Agree it's still one move away from single click but well, that's how it is (could be worse). And there's what Josh Wolfer said about juggling with the tools.

On 8/3/2020 at 1:24 PM, E-Woof Music said:

A Command Command to duplicate tracks in the piano roll

If you mean events or notes than it works fine for me just need to be careful with how the selection works before duplicating. If you mean tracks then I think that's not what PRV is meant for. Your workflow may be way different though.

On 8/3/2020 at 1:24 PM, E-Woof Music said:

Also, enabling Bounce to Clip during playback

Tend to agree with Josh, need to be careful when doing certain operations during playback, may cause the engine to go unstable or crash. Would love to have the engine more realtime playback-proof but that's not an 'least amount of work fix'

OTOH:

On 8/3/2020 at 1:24 PM, E-Woof Music said:

CTRL + B should be Bounce to Clips by default since no function in Cakewalk uses this command

could be useful.

Personally I'm missing Ctrl+Alt+Spacebar binding in keyboard shortcuts. I use it to step events one-by-one in Event View. I'd love to change the combination but it's missing in the Preferences. Also there's a small inconsistency when using it: if I press the combination and release it the way Ctrl key is released as last one then Play bar jumps back one event as it should, but if I release Alt as the last key, Play bar stays in place. Maybe it's deliberate, idk.

Another one: clicking on the menu in any view, like the track view menu or console menu, opens the drop down menu but you can't click the second time to close it. You have to click somewhere else. That I believe should be a simple fix.

In some views like the prv, staff or event view, picking previous/next track should appear as direct buttons on the menu bar.

 

EDIT: I'm not a programmer so I assume that what we think an easy job could be much more work in fact (or maybe less) .

Edited August 4, 2020 by chris.r

[chris.r]

Another one, although not so sure it's an easy tweak. There's a checkbox in preferences "Split MIDI notes" in Editing. I wish it could work this way:

• if OFF, when cropping a clip (slip-edit), the overlapping notes will be canceled i.e. if you shift the clip end over a note it will disappear, not change the length (same way as they are vanishing now when cropping the front of a clip)
• if ON, the start and/or end of the notes will be moved along with the start/end of the clip (the same way notes are shortened now at the end of the clip if you're overlapping them with the clip end, but they are not with the clip start)

Edited August 3, 2020 by chris.r

[CHCollins]

Request: I would like an *easy* way, after selecting a GROUP of notes in Piano Roll View (PRV), to change the velocity of all of the selected notes to a specific value.  Currently, if you right-click on one of the selected notes, you get a dialog  box for note value, velocity etc,  that applies only to the note that was clicked on, even though multiple notes are selected.  Consequently, if you type in a new velocity, only the velocity of the clicked-on note changes.

In the forum, other ideas have been suggested to accomplish velocity change of selected notes only, such as adjusting the size of the velocity bars in PRV -- difficult to pick the right tool for this -- or mass-editing them in Event View, but that's not easy either, as the Event View shows all notes, not just the selected notes and, even if you could isolate the selected notes, there is no way to mass edit the velocity values.

My thought is, that if multiple notes are selected in PRV, and one right clicks on *any* of the selected notes, then the note-editing dialog box should appear, except with blank default values for the properties.  If the user types a value into one or more of those boxes, then all the selected notes would receive the user-entered value for that property.   That seems to be the most intuitive way to extends the current single-note editing capability.

[CHCollins]

I would also like to recommend adding track sort buttons (i.e., up/down/move to top) to the track list dialog box, so that one can select a track and move it up/down in the list.  I realize that one can drag a track up and down in the track view but it would require much less real estate and it would be clearer what one was doing, if one could easily move tracks to arbitrary positions via the track list dialog.  Thanks.

[chris.r]

@CHCollins How do you get the note properties pop-up by right-clicking? I get note deleted here. Or did you mean double-click on the note (left click)?

There are several ways to change velocity of a group of selected notes. The easiest would be typing in the Event Inspector module in the control bar. You can type a fixed value for all selected notes, place '+' or '-' before a number to add/subtract by the amount, even place a percentage there. Another great option is the Transform tool. But really, for an instant change just drag at the top of velocity tail to change only the selected notes, you can also shift+drag to scale the tails or ctrl+drag for anchored scale. There's even a setting in PRV view menu to show velocity tails for selected notes only (under Notes).

On one thing I agree though that right-click on one of selected notes to show a pop-up where you can change properties of the whole group would be the most intuitive way .

[chris.r]

And another one that is theoretically simple to implement:

wish I could Ctrl+click (or any other key, doesn't matter) on an effect's on/off button in the console and instantly turn on and off, preferably gap-less, all effects that sit in the same slot on other channels. Simply said - the whole row of effects.

Imagine someone likes to start with the same channel fx on every track, or filter. That could be a great way to compare the sound.

[CHCollins]

@chris.r  "How do you get the note properties pop-up by right-clicking? I get note deleted here."

I get the Note Properties dialog box by (a) using the wrench (Edit) tool, (b) hovering over one of the selected noted until the "pencil plus up-and-down bars" cursor appears, and then (c) right-clicking.

And thank you for pointing out how to do what I wanted to do (mass-assignment of note velocity) via the Event Inspector in the Control Bar.  I so often forget about those docked-away modules.

[chris.r]

@CHCollins ah the edit tool, of course... I almost never leave smart tool  /palmface/ 

[chris.r]

Here's a simple one, theoretically:

Double-click in the controller pane to select all events in that pane. If there are multiple controllers in a track this will allow for selecting all controllers of only one type with just a double-click.

And a more advanced:

If I have notes and multiple controllers in a track and only one type of controllers is selected then when I adjust the selection range I'd like the selection to stay focused on just that one type of controllers. For now it adds all other events in that track as well into selection, have to manually include/exclude them (or use filter) which is tedious.

More of a feature request rather than a fix, I know.

Edited December 5, 2020 by chris.r

[Ewoof]

I just remembered. Why doesn't Cakewalk allow us to save the record count in of the metronome? I noticed that when it starts recording when it is zero, my first note never plays. Therefore I always have to set it to one to solve this issue. It is annoying and can be fixed by just allowing the metronome timing to be saved it in our workspace. 

[User 905133]

18 minutes ago, E-Woof Music said:

I just remembered. Why doesn't Cakewalk allow us to save the record count in of the metronome? I noticed that when it starts recording when it is zero, my first note never plays. Therefore I always have to set it to one to solve this issue. It is annoying and can be fixed by just allowing the metronome timing to be saved it in our workspace. 

I am confused by this--as long as I can remember, it was saved with the project. So, I opened a project that had 0, changed it to 2 measures, saved it, closed Cakewalk, re-opened Cakewalk, re-opened the project, and the 2 measure count-in was there.

Addendum: But Wait!  Maybe you meant templates?  So, I opened "MyBlankTemplate" (which I have set as the New default), changed the 0 to 2 measures, saved it as a template, closed Cakewalk, re-opened it, selected New, and the 0 was indeed 2 measures.

Edited August 6, 2020 by User 905133
to add an addendum about templates

[Ewoof]

5 hours ago, User 905133 said:

I am confused by this--as long as I can remember, it was saved with the project. So, I opened a project that had 0, changed it to 2 measures, saved it, closed Cakewalk, re-opened Cakewalk, re-opened the project, and the 2 measure count-in was there.

Addendum: But Wait!  Maybe you meant templates?  So, I opened "MyBlankTemplate" (which I have set as the New default), changed the 0 to 2 measures, saved it as a template, closed Cakewalk, re-opened it, selected New, and the 0 was indeed 2 measures.

Oh sorry about that. I was just frustrated why you cannot save the record count in for workspaces. It just made more sense to do that. Also I didn't know I could save it with a template. Thanks for the tip. But I am still firm on allowing the record time to be saved in the workspace.

[User 905133]

I have seen this mentioned many times in the forum: Workspaces is about preserving/restoring the UI (and the functionality related to that), not about all customizable settings. So, for example, having the Event List functionality (including related keybindings) missing from the Basic Workspace is related to the UI. The count-in timer setting isn't.

At one point I suggested in the forum having a "Preferences" section among options in Wokspaces [formerly Lenses], but what I mentioned was not a UI feature parameter.  

[Starship Krupa]

Some very good ideas here....however, oy, it's seldom possible to tell as a layperson from the outside how simple or how much work something is going to be with a huge venerable beast like Cakewalk.

Having worked in software development, the only changes I ever present as being likely trivial are text strings. ?And sometimes even those can break something.

In that spirit, I'll throw out a couple: how about we give the poor "Track" menu in the Console View an "s" so that it can be the "Tracks" menu like every other view that has a Tracks menu? And while we're at it, can we put the Track Manager in that menu so that I don't have to go searching for it every time I want to use it? I couldn't even tell you which menu it's under right now. Strips?

[Bill Campbell]

I wish the 'Record Count In' had an ON/OFF check box and that on off functionality could be bound to a key in key bindings.  For now you have to go into 'Edit/Preferences/Metronome' set it to "2" then go back in set it to "0" etc...  Seems like a small ask...

[Max Arwood]

On 8/3/2020 at 5:33 PM, CHCollins said:

Request: I would like an *easy* way, after selecting a GROUP of notes in Piano Roll View (PRV), to change the velocity of all of the selected notes to a specific value.  Currently, if you right-click on one of the selected notes, you get a dialog  box for note value, velocity etc,  that applies only to the note that was clicked on, even though multiple notes are selected.  Consequently, if you type in a new velocity, only the velocity of the clicked-on note changes.

In the forum, other ideas have been suggested to accomplish velocity change of selected notes only, such as adjusting the size of the velocity bars in PRV -- difficult to pick the right tool for this -- or mass-editing them in Event View, but that's not easy either, as the Event View shows all notes, not just the selected notes and, even if you could isolate the selected notes, there is no way to mass edit the velocity values.

My thought is, that if multiple notes are selected in PRV, and one right clicks on *any* of the selected notes, then the note-editing dialog box should appear, except with blank default values for the properties.  If the user types a value into one or more of those boxes, then all the selected notes would receive the user-entered value for that property.   That seems to be the most intuitive way to extends the current single-note editing capability.

I don't think most people would not want to set to many notes the same volume.  It is more natural to have variations in the velocities. 

I change multiple notes volume by ->

Marquise the notes to changed  (Smart tool right click and drag)

Move cursor to any note in the group

As you move near the top-center of that note the cursor will change to a 5 bars upside down "V" shaped cursor.  

Click and hold down the mouse - while holding down move up for louder and down for softer - You will see the velocity bars change as you move.

or

Select notes (Smart tool right click and - Marquise select them)  - look on menu for Process \ Scale Velocity. You can do %'s or fixed amounts.

[JohnK]

I dont know how easy, but I started this feature request thread.

I am also just typing up a bug/feature request regarding the "Gain" knob on MIDI tracks.

[Max Arwood]

1 minute ago, John Kalabric said:

I dont know how easy, but I started this feature request thread.

I am also just typing up a bug/feature request regarding the "Gain" knob on MIDI tracks.

I watched the video.  Good catch.