New MIDI Note Clobbering

[Acoustica Greg]

I get that but it seems holding the mouse button to not cobber and releasing to clobber is a simple task, just stay away from using the arrow up/down keys unless clobbering is intended.

In Mixcraft 8 you don't need to worry about that.

[Mark Bliss]

OK, here's a first/partial example of my confusion and misunderstanding on this.

Its my understanding that note clobbering should delete notes, or parts of notes if you place a note "over" it.
This doesn't always seem to work as expected, and sometimes isn't intuitive IMO.

I created a video that has two parts.
*I used the mouse more than shortcuts to make it visually clearer what I was doing.
In MX7 I can do this type of editing pretty rapidly. If clobbering worked more as expected in the first part, it would enable me to edit notes this way even far faster. Maybe I am missing the point?

In part one, I have a virtual instrument track set up with a multi out instrument set to multiple channels.
In track/channel one I have created a 12 bar melody solo instrument voice.
In track two, I am working on a similar second instrument voice, more as accompaniment to the melody, and started with a copy of the MIDI from track one, but want to edit it slightly, but show where efforts to "clobber" notes doesn't work as expected.

In the second part of the video, I show a simplified example of my attempt too quickly add a few notes, and how the unintentional "clobber" of a potion of a note might cause trouble.
(Note that the example is simplified, on grid, and doesn't really show the issue as clearly as desired, but should make the point combined with the explanation.)

I find, especially with strings, that note endings are important for getting the desired sound, and sometimes I carefully set them at random endings to both get the desired note sound and create a "human" result.
Some instruments work well with the notes slightly overlapping, others can be right on grid, and sometimes a little gapping gets the desired result.
Anyway- having it accidentally "clobbered" as I work and having to go back and fix it can be a bit annoying.

*Note: I am an admitted MIDI dummy. and furthermore, have no experience with MIDI in other DAW's beyond what I see in a few tut's here and there. My experience on other software is limited to audio recording and mixing.
If its just me, I am not surprised in the slightest, but I am here always seeking knowledge.....
https://youtu.be/AGKFKNs4NkQ

[Manfred]

I watched your video, tested it myself on Mixcraft 8, and I can see your point, Mark.
Mixcraft behaves inconsequent, either it should clobber all notes which are under the new note or none.
At the moment it clobbers only the last note in line when another note gets in its boundaries.
To be frank, I never had an issue with clobbering because in the case of your video-example I would have deleted the unwanted notes anyway before lengthen the first one. Maybe I'm used to do so because the DAW I used before Mixcraft didn't clobber? Don't know.
But you are right, Mixcraft is a bit confusing here.
What about a clobber on/off button in the context-menue of the midi-editor?

[Tranceprod Dan]

Mark, that's the kind of issue I come across the most, I'm always elongating smaller notes into longer notes when messing around in MIDI and this new clobbering seriously hampers my ability to do this in a rapid capacity that will allow me to keep the creative juices in motion. The main problem is that longer notes that you lay on top of several smaller notes pretty much does not clobber at all. Almost nothing useful happens

For part 2, I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at. Those notes are getting clobbered the same way as they would in mixcraft 7 and predecessors as far as I can tell. You said in your previous post you didn't quite get the example you were aiming for, can you explain a little further on this issue?

[Mark Bliss]

Your right Dan, the second part isn't really a new function issue, just one example of where the functions could perhaps be improved.

And to be clear, I am not complaining about this little minor thing. I just want to:
A: Make sure I understand and if necessary, learn if I could be using the feature better.
B: Help find ways to make the features better for most or all users.

[Acoustica Chris]

Have any of you had a chance to check out our updated clobbering logic in build 375? We changed it so that any notes that are completely obscured under the currently selected note(s) will be not just clobbered, but OBLITERATED!!

So, if you are trying to extend a note while taking out any other notes in its path, this will now work. In cases where overlapping notes are both showing, we continue to preserve the note-on events.

[Acoustica Greg]

Have any of you had a chance to check out our updated clobbering logic in build 375? We changed it so that any notes that are completely obscured under the currently selected note(s) will be not just clobbered, but OBLITERATED!!

So, if you are trying to extend a note while taking out any other notes in its path, this will now work. In cases where overlapping notes are both showing, we continue to preserve the note-on events.

It's the best of both worlds!

[Tranceprod Dan]

Hi,

Yeah, I noticed the difference but didn't know if it was intentional and i liked it so i didn't speak up hoping it would just go under the radar if it wasn't. It's great though, I really appreciate it

In MX7 if you drag a smaller note over a larger note then the larger note is subdivided but the length remains unchanged. In MX8 it truncates the length. Is this change intentional/desired by many? I don't really come across it unless I'm turning say a dotted quarter note into 3 eighth notes which I don't do often so It doesn't bother me hugely. I sent it into Eric as a report but now i'm thinking it is not a bug. whoops.

[Acoustica Chris]

In MX7 if you drag a smaller note over a larger note then the larger note is subdivided but the length remains unchanged. In MX8 it truncates the length. Is this change intentional/desired by many?

Our goal with the changes in Mixcraft 8 was to preserve the starting point of all notes that are in the clip. The Mixcraft 7 way of dividing the notes created a new note starting in most cases where there never was intended to be one. The previous behavior was particularly undesirable when adjusting the length of a group of selected notes. An entire section with adjusted note lengths in Mixcraft 7 could end up losing the start point of many notes, with the remaining pieces of the clobbered notes starting at odd times. In Mixcraft 8, you can adjust the length of a group of notes at the same time without worrying about losing a note's proper start time in case of an overlap.

I hope this makes sense to everyone, and hey, if you feel this is the wrong approach, we're all ears

[Mark Bliss]

I think between the tweaks made to its function and getting used to it, I am more comfortable with it than I was initially.

I do still at moments feel like it would be nice to have the option of turning it off entirely, combined with some method of visual indication of overlapping or covered notes.
But this is such a small thing. I'll adapt to whatever we have I think.........