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Polyphonic Velocity

Posted

Is there anyway to know which velocity is associated with which note?

I can see the numbers change in the (119 120 117) set and I can push one over the other, but its an impossible way to monitor the values, especially when the velocity list easily spills outside the text field area.

I find it extremely difficult to edit polyphonic velocities. Using ctrl+pencil selects the velocity I want about 1/2 the time... doubling the amount of work. Allowing the velocity dots to be clicked and dragged directly would help greatly with this.

This is obviously a huge issue for drums, but I encounter it with melodic material just as often.

How are you all managing this? Does everyone here just ignore it?


Tue, 2010-05-04 - 14:26 Permalink

tokyorose,

Don't know if this helps much, but I've found I do the major composing in Synfire and then this type of fine editing in Cubase.

Everything from Synfire runs through Cubase (synced via MTC). When I'm satisfied with a composition I simply put Cubase in ready/record and playback Synfire. This lays everything out for me broken into tracks where it's much easier to do what you're talking about.

(I think I actually playback Synfire by hitting overdub/record without actually recording anything. This way Cubase does a preroll and I don't miss the first few notes when I lay it off.)

BTW, I appreciate your posts and questions. They are teaching me a lot about this program.

Brian

Tue, 2010-05-04 - 16:16 Permalink

Figure and velocity coexist independently, so you never know in advance which velocity meets which figure symbol. Polyphonic velocity clusters may hit a single symbol, or a single velocity value may hit a chord segment.

The velocities in a cluster are used in sequence of their order inside the cluster and wrap around if necessary (if there are more symbols than velocities).

You probably have the hyper edit mode in mind. In that mode the association of velocities and symbols is fixed and should not change. It is still tricky to do the editing, though. If you want to change the velocity of individual symbols, it is much easier to do that in the figure vector using the ctrl-key.

Being able to grab and drag velocity dots seems like a cool idea.

Thu, 2010-05-06 - 00:32 Permalink

On my system the ctrl key + dragging the velocity of a symbol causes the velocity to reset -- im am always dragging up from zero instead of relative to the current velocity. This has been the case in Synfire on both of the computers I've used it on.

Ctrl+dragging the segment works pretty well, but there is no graphic display and it is very easy to permanently erase the data, by clipping the velocities at 127 or 0.

Mostly, its editing percussion that becomes nightmarish. Cubase has a mode the allow you to only edit the velocities of the selected notes -- so you could select the high hats and swipe with the mouse without effecting the other drums... Something like that would be very useful, and perhaps not too difficult.