Placing notes on pianoroll

[Odys]

Can somebody explain to me why cakelab puts notes next to the grid I'm selecting ?

 

Edited November 30, 2019 by Odys

[RobertWS]

You have snap to grid on.

If you click in the left side/half of a cell, the closest line is the left one and the note is placed starting on that line.

If you click in the right side/half of a cell, the closest line is the right one and the note is placed starting on that line.

(I hope I understood your question correctly).

Edited December 1, 2019 by RobertWS
Fix typo

[Odys]

4 minutes ago, RobertWS said:

If you click in the right side/half of a cell, the closest line is the right one and the note is place starting on that line.

Is there a way to make it care which grids I'm selecting, like every other DAW on earth?

[David Baay]

Hard to say exactly since your screenshot is showing the timeline or the snap setting. In general, Cakewalk does work like every other DAW on the planet in this respect.

[RobertWS]

14 hours ago, Odys said:

Is there a way to make it care which grids I'm selecting, like every other DAW on earth?

It not only cares which cell you are clicking in, it cares where in the cell you are clicking!

[David Baay]

No sure what you mean by 'cells'; that term applies to the Matrix and Step Sequencer views, but not the PRV. Depending on settings, you can have gridlines displayed at a higher resolution that you're current snap setting. A full-size screenshot showing the whole UI linked from a photo-sharing site would help.

Edit: One thing I would recommend  to help make sense of the nap behavior is to enable PRV-specific snap at the desired interval, and enable Grid Resolution > Follow snap settings from the View dropdown in the PRV menu bar. As it stands, I suspect you have the grid set to 8ths, and snap set to a 1/4 or higher.

Edited December 1, 2019 by David Baay

[Odys]

To me that's ridiculous.

[chuckebaby]

I personally have never had a problem with adding notes in piano roll view and if you browse this forum, you'll probably find less than 1% have a problem with it either. Then again, Im not careless with mouse placement when adding notes. This is no insult to your workflow, but it should be a calling card to how you approach adding notes. your clicking in the middle of gridlines, this is bound to cause erratic results.

My advise is to change the snap value to one step higher, this will avoid the problem your having in the GIF video you posted.

when im working in high zoom, high low snap values, I try to take caution where my mouse is being placed.

FWIW, I also use the smart tool for everything in PRV. Holding down ALT key and mouse click will add notes/ so will click and drag.

hope this helps.

7 hours ago, David Baay said:

I suspect you have the grid set to 8ths, and snap set to a 1/4 or higher.

I also have the same suspicion.

[Odys]

Quote

I suspect you have the grid set to 8ths, and snap set to a 1/4 or higher.

If that would be the case notes wouldn't fit grid and be placed next to each other.

[DeBro]

If I understand your opening post correctly, it is because you  have Snap To Grid enabled in the Control Module. Press N to disable/enable snap to grid. When disabled, anywhere you place the cursor is where a note will be added without snapping to the grid.

 

Enabled

Disabled

Edited December 1, 2019 by DeBro

[chuckebaby]

1 hour ago, Odys said:

If that would be the case notes wouldn't fit grid and be placed next to each other.

I know this video is a bit old but it still apply's today.

Try synchronizing the snap in PRV and global. This will lead to less confusion and possibly help you out a little bit.

If follow snap settings in prv are on, they will follow rules set by the global snap settings. Set grid resolution to follow snap settings.

 

[chuckebaby]

24 minutes ago, DeBro said:

If I understand your opening post correctly, it is because you  have Snap To Grid enabled in the Control Module. Press N to disable/enable snap to grid. When disabled, anywhere you place the cursor is where a note will be added without snapping to the grid.

At first I also thought this might be what the OP wants to achieve, but I believe he wants snap on, but notes are not placed where he wants. Sounds confusing I know. but its not.

[Odys]

Right now to put note in a specific grid I have to click on left half of it. Clicking on right half puts note on grid next to it. I would love to disable this feature. Giving me half the space means that i have to be zoomed in twice as much horizontally to get same precision. 

[user 905133]

1 hour ago, Odys said:

Right now to put note in a specific grid I have to click on left half of it. Clicking on right half puts note on grid next to it. I would love to disable this feature. Giving me half the space means that i have to be zoomed in twice as much horizontally to get same precision. 

First of all, thanks for raising this question and for all the responses.  Though I have used Cakewalk for ages, I do not use PRV and so my experience with snap-to-grid is with the Staff View.  So, I decided to use the Q&As here to teach myself about PRV--to add to my Cakewalk skills one small step at a time.

To me it looks like there is sort of a quantizing effect built into the PRV's implementation of snap-to-grid.  That is, if I place a note event in the left hand side of the "cell" [the space between two grid lines for a specific note], it "snaps" to line up with the left grid line. If I place a note event in the right hand side of the cell, it snaps to line up with the right grid line.

As I understand the snap-to-grid feature, this is what it is designed to do. And as such the alignment to me seems to be a starting-point quantizing effect with the duration being constant (i.e., the duration I have pre-selected/chose).

Is it possible you can get the behavior you want by customizing the snap-to-grid tool?

 

OK.  I think I got it.  Let me know if you want to know the settings I used to get this:

Addendum: With my method, I still get a quantizing effect--approx 25% of the cell before and after "snaps" to the nearest grid (based on my duration and resolution. See the following post for what seems to be a better solution.   

Edited December 1, 2019 by User 905133
(3) to add a caveat and an internal link; (2) to add a possible solution; (1) to fix typo

[chuckebaby]

This is typically how I place notes in PRV and as you can see, as long as the mouse click is within range (close to the grid line) that's where the note will be placed.

[Odys]

1 hour ago, chuckebaby said:

This is typically how I place notes in PRV and as you can see, as long as the mouse click is within range (close to the grid line) that's where the note will be placed.

Look how precise You have to be, its super slow.

[chuckebaby]

12 minutes ago, Odys said:

Look how precise You have to be, its super slow.

I was trying to go slow as an example. If I was doing it as fast as I normally do, you wouldn't have seen where my mouse clicks were.

This will be last post. I've spent 4 comments trying to help you and you always seem to have some negative reply. It seems more like you are interested in complaining about the software than solving your issue. which is fine. I just don't feel like wasting time on someone not looking for solutions.

I wish you the best. Good luck no matter which software you use.

[Odys]

I'm thankful for Your help, its seems I just got to git gud.

Edited December 1, 2019 by Odys

[user 905133]

On 11/30/2019 at 10:04 AM, Odys said:

Can somebody explain to me why cakelab [sic] puts notes next to the grid I'm selecting ?

After reading through the thread, I went back to your original question. It seems like there are several explanations for why snap-to-grid does what it does.  In addition, it seems like several possible solutions were offered. I think the one you really want is to turn off snap-to-grid (just guessing here). That way you can place notes anywhere within a cell or even overlapping cell boundaries. Plus, it's super fast!!!

[DeBro]

I think I now understand the opening post.  He wants the note to snap to the desired grid line even though he may place the cursor way behind that desired grid line and closer in front the following grid line. In other words, no matter where the cursor is placed behind the desired snap to grid line the note should always snap to that line. Unfortunately, Cakewalk doesn't function in that manner, it will snap the note to the nearest grid line whether the cursor is behind or in front that grid line. I do extensive midi work in the PRV just the way chuckebaby illustrated and have no problem with the workflow slowing me down. Maybe send in a feature request.