Pickup Notes and bar offset

[conticreative]

In March of 2023 I offered a suggestion to the "Mixcraft Suggestions" thread. Promptly I forgot to check any responses and I even forgot I made the suggestion.
I am working on a song that needs a pickup up note (two actually) but inserting the pickup notes at bar 1 shifts the entire timeline by a bar, as surely plenty of you are aware. That made me research the topic in general and in Mixcraft specifically, and I found my own "suggestion" from last march.

This was my original post:

I would love to see "Negative Bar Offset" or whatever it is called. Essentially, I would like to be able to set up [BAR 1] anywhere on the timeline. Specifically, I'd like to see [BAR -2 | BAR -1 | BAR+1 | BAR+2] and so on.
It would be useful not only for starting a song, but also for building truly separated parts of a song. I know some DAWs can do this, it would be nice if Mixcraft did as well.

The one response I got reminded me, quite naturally, of metronome countdown, but while I use that feature all the time, my request was different. At the time I couldn't think of the musical term "pickup notes".

In actuality, I discovered that the correct terms is "Anacrusis". This is how Wikipedia defines it:

"Anacrusis" It is a musical term for a note or notes that come before the first full bar of a piece of music. An anacrusis usually starts on a weak beat and leads to the downbeat of the first bar

I wish I had asked for that because it would have made me sound a lot smarter than I am.

So far I found out that 3 DAWs have this as a built in feature. I even found out Band in a Box can be made to feature it (not easily, to be fair).

The main advantage would be for those of us that are obviously very bad at counting bars. Take a 12 or 16 bar blues. If I want to start it with an Anacrusis or two bars of intro music that never repeats, I have to count not in 12, 24 or 48, but in 14, 26 or 50 bars (and I am not even sure my example is correct, that's how confusing I find it to be).

Additional Suggestion: It would be nice to have a dedicated forum for MX10 suggestions. I know it can be a double edged sword, but it would make it easier to manage good suggestions from the bad one or the ones already implemented.

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

Why don't you want to shift the timeline by 1 bar? You know about the "insert time" option, right?

Greg

[conticreative]

Actually not completely. I saw a screenshot regarding the "insert time" option (after I posted) but it looked like the timeline was in Seconds rather than bars and I wasn't clear about its use.
I was going to look into it today. I had a busy weekend with relatives visiting from out of state and my central heat broke on the weekend as usual.

Does "insert time" maintain bar numbering? That would do the trick. I'll go read the manual as soon as I have a minute to spare.
In case someone else stumble upon my post with the same question, I'll make sure to report back.

Thank you.

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

There's no option to have negative time in the timeline. Why do you need to maintain the numbering?

Insert time just moves all the clips and automation and track markers over, but it doesn't move time zero.

Greg

[conticreative]

I see. Thank you.

As per why I'd love to have "negative bars" is because I suck at counting bars. I also suck at playing, singing and composing, so I am trying to limit the number of things I suck at. Being able to have the numbers at the top correspond to the bars on my charts (or in my mind) would be a minor advantage. Not such a one that I would switch to Pro Tools or Studio One, but it would be nice and it's a feature that seems to be popular in those DAWs (with the usual percentage that poo poos wimps like me for being unable to count bars and add 2). Ce La Vie!

However, being able to shift markers over can be very useful and I'll keep that in mind.

Thanks again.

[cactus-head]

Hmmm. Maybe it could be helpful if you used markers that labeled specific things to keep your counting and playing on track.

For example, I often use markers to indicate the first few words of the next lyric or phrase that is going to come up. I also use them to tell me the change of an instrument or something. "Bass part playing um pa pa"

Or if you are using sheet music that has rehearsal marks (A, B, C etc ) , create markers in MC that correspond to the sheet music markers.

[Rolling Estonian]

As per why I'd love to have "negative bars" is because I suck at counting bars. I also suck at playing, singing and composing.

I'll add recording, engineering, mixing and mastering to my list! lol

M

[conticreative]

As per why I'd love to have "negative bars" is because I suck at counting bars. I also suck at playing, singing and composing.

I'll add recording, engineering, mixing and mastering to my list! lol

M

At least you get to that stage of the process. Maybe that's my hidden talent, but I doubt it.