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Comments
I was just about to suggest asking the user in that case
Apart from that, I have never seen a sequencer that allows for notes in a clip extending over the clip's end, but tbh, I wonder why that is? Is it only for the eye candy?
In most cases I'll want to split clips to copy or drag them around, or to loop around a clip, and from the purely musical aspect, there is no reason for cutting a long note just because I have decided to cut a clip at the beat line.
The note-on's do matter inside the clip, but not necessarily the note-offs.
In other words: Allow for long notes to "stick outside the clip frame", even though this may sound very unusual or strange at first. It would be a more natural way of handling notes.
It would also give us the advantage of being able to split and re-attach clips the way we want without note length information being corrupted, and when opening a clip for editing in the piano roll, a sustaining note from the previous clip could be shown as a "ghost" note.
Both current options (either cut notes to fit the clip or lengthen the clip to match the longest note) don't allow for this kind of flexible editing.
I'm curious what other musicians think about it.
@rs2000 yes, it's actually the way Xequence handled this at the beginning, i.e. notes that started inside the clip, but ended outside the clip still did sound their entire length. Note that even today, notes do not actually get cut or split when you split through them or shorten the part -- they only get modified ON PLAYBACK to end at the part boundary. i.e., what you're describing (splitting parts and then joining them back later) still works as expected even today.
That's good!
What do you think about the visuals representing this?
I suppose you mean this:
Certainly desirable, yes... probably best to do this as part of a larger "ghosting framework" that would also be able to show notes and, more importantly, controllers, from other clips on other tracks that point to the same instrument.
Yes! Very good point.
Love the "Ghosting framework" concept
Sorry for the delayed response. I think this issue comes up more in some styles of music than in others. A lot of the music that I do features sections that dovetail with the previous section in terms of having either a pickup note (or notes) or a trailing note that extends beyond the section. A lot of time, at least one instrument will play a chord change on the 'and' of four. As an fyi, a friend of mine that does a lot of funk and jazz inspired music wrote his own personal midi sequencer because he couldn't find any sequencers that had 'chunks' that allowed for pickup notes.
Anyway, my personal preference would be that Xeq would ask when splitting what to do about notes that overlap the boundary. Perhaps there could also be a clip info properties box that could have checkboxes for pickups and trailers that would define whether they get played "normally" or get truncated in playback.
IMO, if you cut a clip that has a note extending past the end of the cut, a note-off should be sent at the “new” end of the note, which is the end of the clip. This is simpler and is analogous to cutting an audio clip. If I want the clip to extend longer then I should keep it longer and remove any other notes I don’t want to sound.
I can’t say any other behavior makes sense to me. But It doesn’t matter since I wouldn’t rely on something like that normally anyway.
I heartily disagree. In an audio app if you cut an audio clip in two and don't move the clips away from each other, the audio plays just as it did pre-slice. Currently, in Xequence in that same situation, you don't hear the same thing.
Some people might like that but for others it makes it harder to take advantage of the clips.
@espiegel123 yes, I have something like that on the roadmap. When a split goes through notes, the app would offer a choice to either keep the length of the original notes, or split them in half. Also, each part would then somehow get an option "Do not cut off notes which begin inside the part and end outside of it", though I have to come up with a sane UI for that.
Are you able to split a section on a particular beat, or can it only be done at the beginning of a measure. I haven't been able to figure out how to make a clip 5 beats long, for instance. Is this possible?
@suspish, sorry, splitting can only be done on measure boundaries at the moment, but an adjustable grid for the arranger is planned.
@SevenSystems : Sounds great!
Xequence - Unlimited Tracks IAP on sale for $3.99
I think the other IAPs are still regular price.
-also price drop for the app itself $3.99
Well yes, if you didn’t move them away from each other, for sure. But I wouldn’t split them in the first place. OK, to each his/her own.
Having events be structurally meaningful is super helpful. If one composes in such a way that there are held notes that overlap between such sections or if you have to nudge a note a hair before the beat to sound right, it is nice to be able to have your chunks make musical sense...also super helpful when in the piano roll editor to be able to work on a 16 or 32 measure chunk rather than a piano roll that encompasses the entirety of the composition.
Btw, I am not intending to be argumentative but clarifying why it can be useful. A lot of folks probably don't encounter situations like this with any frequency and might not realize that some folks encounter them regularly.
In my case, it was the reason that I couldn't complete the piece in Gadget. Too many sections that violated the 16-beat per section limit.
Yes, it’s interesting to understand different people’s ways of conceptualizing things. I dont think of it that way at all, and never would. I like to think of the clips as more literal information, and would rather overlap them if I wanted something to carry over. But that’s cool, I get why you see it differently and work differently.
Fortunately, I’m adaptable and really don’t care how it all gets worked out.
-cheers
@wim Overlapping chunks on the same track would be great (but I'd guess not an option).
You can overlap clips in the same track in the timeline no problem.
On the same track? Wow, I didn't realize that. Good to know.
@espiegel123 yes of course, you can have overlapping parts and the overlapping bits will both play normally. Maybe that solves part of your problem for now
thanks @wim for pointing it out!
Yeah it's a good feature. You can create a double track without having to go through resetting again everything for the same instrument.
@Norbert said:
What would need to be reset for the same instrument?
If not overlapping, you could just hit the + symbol in sequencer and have a 2nd lane with the same settings?
Genuinely interested if i’ve missed something?
I did it by accident actually. When I recorded midi from an external instrument, in MIDI-in, I allowed both the normal midi channel from the instrument (gestrument pro) and the xequence destination. It recorded it twice on the same channel which made the actual sound being more powerful, just like if it had been played in two separate tracks.
But I guess you can copy paste the existing channel onto itself. Haven't tried though.
The overlapping is helpful, and I hope that you will implement the option to let notes play across borders.
Something that would be super-helpful is a Copy/Paste option that allows Xequence to remember the time from which notes were copied and can paste them at the same time into another track or chunk.
Also, now that I understand that overlapping is allowed. It would be nice to be able to extend the beginning of a chunk just like you can make a chunk longer. This would be useful for cases where you divide a chunk into two chunks and want to overlap them to add a pickup note. You would slice. Select the second chunk and then extend the left edge of the second chunk to overlap without moving the existing notes.
Just for the record, I wasn’t advocating for any change to the quantize default being on or off, only suggesting it as a possible cause of perceived midi timing issues. I’m a pretty firm believer in engaging my brain to check settings rather than expecting software to do all the thinking for for me. I also don’t like feature/option bloat after a certain point.
If I can remember to put the car in reverse before I back out of the driveway, I think I can remember to check if quantize is on or off before recording.
A similar feature is already available -- open the pianoroll editor for a part, select your notes, then from the clipboard menu ("+" in the bottom toolbar), select "Copy". In a different part, select "+" -> "Paste". Xequence will paste the notes starting from the song position pointer, but maintain the relative offset from the bar.
Yes absolutely, that's on my wishlist as well. It's not as easy as extending the end of a part, because the offsets of the events would change and the app would have to check how to deal with clones, etc... but yeah, it will be done some day!
@SevenSystems: paste isn't working for me in the way you describe. Here is something that I just tried:
create two three-measure long parts on two different tracks
both parts start at measure one and extend to measure 4
in one of the parts, I select a note that occurs in measure 3 beat 3
I open the piano roll for the other part without moving the song pointer (which happened to be at time 2.0). Select paste and the note is placed in measure 2 on Beat 3 rather than in measure 3
I created a part on one of the tracks that extended from measure 4 to 7. Song position pointer at measure 4. Copied a note at 3.3 on part 1. Opened piano roll for the part that goes from measure 4 to 7 and the note appears at 4.3.
with song position pointer at 1.1, copying a note from 3.3 results in a note at 1.3 in the other part.
I can see some potential edge cases and hope you won't mind a suggestion.
if one tries to paste and the appropriate time position is not contained in the part, ask the user if they want the part extended (which could be earlier or later) to contain the pasted notes.
if copy/paste occur when song position pointer is outside of the parts, ask if paste should happen relative to part beginning
would be great to additionally have "paste at absolute time" so that one can paste at the original time in target track even if the pointer has moved (or is in a nonsensical place)
@espiegel123 yes, maybe there has been a misunderstanding... the behavior you describe is the one that I intended to describe
i.e. it always pastes to the current bar, maintaining the relative offset from the "source bar".
More options for copying and pasting could be added, but the app already has so many features which are starting to overwhelm the user interface, so I'm a bit hesitant to add more.
Moving the pasted events after pasting isn't too bad most of the time. If you want to move them by a fixed amount of time (eg. 1/4 or 1/2 notes etc.) regardless of the grid, you can also set the grid to relative Mode (the "Rel" toggle in the grid menu at the bottom), which may help in a lot of cases.
@SevenSystems : I don't understand. In one of the cases, the parts are lined up. I copy from one part and paste into the other part without moving the pointer or making a selection but pastes to a completely different bar. So I don't understand what it considers the "selected" bar.
Can you explain?
Yes, the selected bar is the one nearest to the song pointer. If that's currently at bar 2, it will paste to bar 2 no matter where the original notes occurred.
EDIT: The current behavior is a compromise between "paste exactly at original position" and "paste exactly at song position”, both of which would be opposite extremes. I intended this behavior to give “roughly useful results in the majority of cases with the least amount of tinkering required on average”. I didn’t want to add the overhead of additional options or dialogs. Now, if you can think of a default behavior that would be more useful on average, I’m all ears