How is Reapers midi functionality compared to Logic?

[LawrenceF]

I don't get that, it is easy easy in reaper, just place the cursor and click S. Am I missing something that makes that hard? .

Easy's got nothin to do with it.

You're missing that splitting midi clips in arrange always also split notes, even when you don't want that, if notes happen to be crossing where you split. Might not be bad for quantized to the grid dance music but it's not so good for arranging midii by chopping up clips in arrange in any other genre where music doesn't stop and start right on the bar line.

[braj]

I don't get that, it is easy easy in reaper, just place the cursor and click S. Am I missing something that makes that hard? .

Easy's got nothin to do with it.

You're missing that splitting midi clips in arrange always also split notes, even when you don't want that, if notes happen to be crossing where you split. Might not be bad for quantized to the grid dance music but it's not so good for arranging midii by chopping up clips in arrange in any other genre where m,usic doesn't stop and start right on the bar line,

Ah yeah, I remember that Actually I don't go around splitting clips that much, how is this handled in S1?

[LawrenceF]

It keeps the performance intact by not spitting notes and by optionally playing notes beyond the end of the clip. You still hear the same thing. I'd be surprised if Logic didn't do the same. That was all kinda settled about 15 years ago.

What do you think happens when midi gets split when you drag a region marker around as you arrange your song, same thing. Again, dance music producers may not notice it if chords and bass notes and similar are right on the grid. Cubase does that also, always has, allows auto region splits and moves by dragging if's region markers, but midi notes don't get all chopped up when you do that.

It was a major issue for me in Reaper.

[hibidy]

It was a major issue for me in Reaper.

hun un, reaper is perfect!

[Funk Dracula]

OP, can I ask why your interested in switching from Logic to Reaper if your primarily a MIDI player?

When it comes to MIDI editing, no other DAW really comes close to Logic. Maybe it's fault is it hasn't been "compacted" into one thing the average user can interface with easily... but every last little thing you want to do is right at your fingertips.

I can see a reason why people like having everything in one window, but one thing I think a lot of Logic users don't utilize is the "screensets". You can have the Piano Roll, and the Hyper Editor set up together instead of using "Hyper Draw" in the same window. All you have to do is set that screenset and it's one button away, content linked and all. I've got my first 9 screensets set in my template. #1 is Arrange, #2 is full screen Piano Roll, #3 is screen split Piano Roll/Hyper Editor, #4-6 are Environment Layers I designed with lot's of routing switchers, apreggiators, and other macros, #7-99 are open for options, like leaving different plug-ins open and in focus. Usually I have the Mixer window open in these, just different plug-ins opened in each screenset.

The only time I ever use the little viewer tabs at the bottom of the arrange window is for the Mixer. The channel view linking in the Inspector comes in really, really handy with this.

The other thing I would say is the AU format was/is a horrible match/decision for Logics crazy powerful MIDI environment. I can certainly see the benefit of using VST's in the internal/software MIDI world if your interested in third party MIDI plug-ins, but there isn't a whole lot of those.

@braj You can do what you describe in Logic. Certainly that's not the only reason you switched?

[braj]

@braj You can do what you describe in Logic. Certainly that's not the only reason you switched?

I didn't switch from Logic but from Reaper to Studio One. I'm on a PC so Logic wasn't an option. And yeah, it wasn't the only reason I switched, but it was a big part of it. The groove system in Reaper leaves a lot to be desired, and Studio One's Melodyne integration etc was a big draw (actually I haven't been using it much though). But the bottom line is I really like many things about Reaper still, and wish Studio One had some of them, like the ability to create and arrange regions, but S1 is simple and right now that helps me a lot.

[LawrenceF]

Here's the Logic 9 options for what I was talking about, how it handles splitting midi regions in arrange. Pretty much the same as Cubase (a bit less automatic though) and the one option for KEEP "unaltered" in Logic is identical to what S1 does by default along with a preference to cut midi at clip end or not the same way.

No offense, and not bashing Reaper at all, just saying it was a regular issue for me personally.

If you can't actually "arrange" midi in arrange by chopping it up without changing the musical performance that's not really good is it? It - the fundamental problem - came up quite early in midi sequencer development once they were not just using static linear midi clips, and various solutions were arrived at well before audio daws even were being used. These are generally the options everyone arrived at. Sonar and Samp likely do the same.

"Overlapping Notes" below means "notes that cross the intended split point".

Handling Overlapping Notes in Divided MIDI Regions

If any notes in a divided MIDI region overlap other notes by more than a 1/16 note, you are asked if you want to keep, shorten, or split the notes.

Click Keep to leave all notes unaltered. The MIDI region is cut as expected, but you can end up with notes in the left half (earlier region) that are much longer than the MIDI region containing them. Such notes play normally, unless Clip Length is activated. (See Adjusting the Start or End Point of MIDI Regions.)

Click Shorten to truncate all overlapping notes, so that they end at the point where the original MIDI region was divided.

Click Split to divide overlapping notes across the two MIDI regions; two notes are created, with the same pitch and velocity as the original, and with the same total length as the original note.

The last Logic option above is what Reaper always does. Splits and always makes new notes.

[braj]

How do you access these sorts of options in S1?

[LawrenceF]

How do you access these sorts of options in S1?

The option to continue to play musical notes past the midi clip / part end? In Options / Midi. It's "Cut Long Notes at Part End", the equivalent of the Logic "Clip Length" option and Cubase's same option for that. Leaving that off lets notes play their full length regardless of the length of the clip. So you can have a two bar midi clip "block" for arranging with notes longer than two bars, or notes that play well past the clip end, playing from it.

The other part re: not splitting is assumed, that you don't actually want to split / double up notes when splitting clips. There is no option to make it do that in S1 (split notes when splitting clips) and nobody has asked for one yet, not that I know of anyway. It's likely something pretty rare, to actually want that to happen. If you do want that, to split a chord into two chords or something on purpose, you have to do it in the ME with the knife tool.

I only bring this up for Reaper because it's not anything subjective at all, unlike some of the other stuff. It's something that physically changes what you recorded and (afaik) there's no way to option out of it yet.

Likely because midi in Reaper is clip based.

[Funk Dracula]

@ braj, sorry I don't know why I thought you switched from Logic...

It should also be worth mentioning the Transform function in Logic, a really powerful device that can process individual or multiple regions in the Arrange, or individual notes or multiple notes in the Piano Roll.

I keep hearing wonderful things about Reaper, but all on the audio aspect of things. One appealing thing about it for sure is the developer and community seem very focused and dedicated on updating it/adding features. Everything BUT MIDI though...

Every DAW has it's problems tho.. I have very few with Logic, but for instance, I would be pretty nervous using Logic in a live situation. Logic does crash quite often when you push it; so save save save.. I hear Reaper is almost crash-proof.

Like the OP, 95% of my sessions are 100% MIDI; that being said I couldn't think of a reason to switch other than sharing sessions with someone on a different platform (PC).

[LawrenceF]

..and wish Studio One had some of them, like the ability to create and arrange regions,

I'm not sure how or why S1 appeared in a thread where a guy was asking people to compare Reaper to Logic for midi production. But yeah, I agree with that.

I tend to personally favor Cubase in this area. They use 3 distinct sets of timeline markers, ordinary song markers, ranged loop markers and arranger block markers. All 3 can exist on the timeline together at the same time so the coverage for navigating around and re-arranging vertical ranges manually or automatically out of order is pretty darn complete.

Steiny did a lot of stuff "maybe not so good compared to better methods that were worked out later" but they also got a heck of a lot of stuff right.

Markers was one of the things they got dead right, imo.

[braj]

Try presonus studio one.

There it is

[kbaccki]

The last Logic option above is what Reaper always does. Splits and always makes new notes.

I don't think it makes "new notes", per se, but it creates a new MIDI clip whose contents is the same underlying MIDI data... the end effect is new notes starting at the the beggining of the new MIDI clip. On reaper 4.something here.

Interestingly, if you delete the right-most clip from the split, then slip edit the right edge of the original clip -- the MIDI data is still there! See what I mean? It doesn't create new MIDI data, just a new clip region utilzing the same underlying MIDI data. Now Reaper's question is: what to do with the overlap? By default, it needs to truncate at clip bounds. Certainly, more options would be ideal!

However, it is possible to split a single MIDI clip into two overlapping MIDI clips if you absolutely had to... like this (one clip split into two, slip edited, overlapping notes manually removed):



Source MIDI clip:


Same clip in PRV... pick an arbitrary location w/ lots of overlaps for split:


Split clip at cursor... "truncated" MIDI notes... drag clips into separate lanes:


Double-click left clip to get back to PRV, select "Content" menu, select second clip to activate in same PRV:


Second clip activated... note first clip ghosted (you can activate inactive clips in PRV by double-clicking in inactive areas)... select overlapping notes from clip1:


Delete overlapping notes from clip1:


Activate clip1, and slip edit to "expose" the overlapping MIDI notes from clip2... note: the underlying MIDI notes are still there! In fact, the same underlying data can exist in clip1, clip2, or both at the same time. Highlight the overlap from clip2 and delete in clip1 (leaving the underlying notes in clip2 only):


After all slip editing and manual overlap removal, we have two clips equivalent to original:





Phew! If you have a need to do a lot of that type of splitting, then Reaper doesn't make it easy... if you need to do it here and there, as I do, then it's livable. Rather than split the clips, it'd probably be much easier to just create a brand new overlapping MIDI item and selectively copy whatever you need to copy, and remove the copied data from the source, etc.

The other thing to point out is the ability to display more than one MIDI clip at the same time in the same PRV, though only one can be "active" for editing. You can also display MIDI clips across tracks, not just the same track.

All in all, Reaper's MIDI is lacking perhaps compared to the competition, depening on the tools you depend on. That being said, it's more than capable for many many basic MIDI recording and editing operations, certainly compared to earlier versions. Myself, I do a lot of manual MIDI editing, and not a heckuvalotta humanization and procedural stuff... for humanization, I will literally alter timing and velocity by hand for every note, manually add notes here and there, etc... I'm that anal about it. Especially when it comes to realistic drum programming, to the extent possible.

[fandango]

I mostly a midi musician (I write all my progressive rock music starting in midi & also do full orchestral mockups) and I'm thinking of switching to either Reaper or Cubase. I would love to get some honest feedback as to how well Reaper handles advanced midi sequencing.

For orchestral mockups do you use the channel lane (CC editing) much? In Reaper it's still a pretty miserable affair. Have a look at this feature request from 2008 to see what's still missing in this regard (and will still be missing in another 4 years).

http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=978

A real shame, I switched to Cubase and just learnt to put up with the dongle. Lost faith in Cockos ever improving the MIDI in any meaningful way that didn't involve just tweaking nipples on the MIDI editor and moving menu items around.

I do however use Reaper for purely the audio side of things (take rendered tracks from Cubase) and it's superb in that regard.

[Funk Dracula]

The last Logic option above is what Reaper always does. Splits and always makes new notes.

I don't think it makes "new notes", per se, but it creates a new MIDI clip whose contents is the same underlying MIDI data... the end effect is new notes starting at the the beggining of the new MIDI clip. On reaper 4.something here.

Interestingly, if you delete the right-most clip from the split, then slip edit the right edge of the original clip -- the MIDI data is still there! See what I mean? It doesn't create new MIDI data, just a new clip region utilzing the same underlying MIDI data. Now Reaper's question is: what to do with the overlap? By default, it needs to truncate at clip bounds. Certainly, more options would be ideal!

However, it is possible to split a single MIDI clip into two overlapping MIDI clips if you absolutely had to... like this (one clip split into two, slip edited, overlapping notes manually removed):



Source MIDI clip:


Same clip in PRV... pick an arbitrary location w/ lots of overlaps for split:


Split clip at cursor... "truncated" MIDI notes... drag clips into separate lanes:


Double-click left clip to get back to PRV, select "Content" menu, select second clip to activate in same PRV:


Second clip activated... note first clip ghosted (you can activate inactive clips in PRV by double-clicking in inactive areas)... select overlapping notes from clip1:


Delete overlapping notes from clip1:


Activate clip1, and slip edit to "expose" the overlapping MIDI notes from clip2... note: the underlying MIDI notes are still there! In fact, the same underlying data can exist in clip1, clip2, or both at the same time. Highlight the overlap from clip2 and delete in clip1 (leaving the underlying notes in clip2 only):


After all slip editing and manual overlap removal, we have two clips equivalent to original:





Phew! If you have a need to do a lot of that type of splitting, then Reaper doesn't make it easy... if you need to do it here and there, as I do, then it's livable. Rather than split the clips, it'd probably be much easier to just create a brand new overlapping MIDI item and selectively copy whatever you need to copy, and remove the copied data from the source, etc.

The other thing to point out is the ability to display more than one MIDI clip at the same time in the same PRV, though only one can be "active" for editing. You can also display MIDI clips across tracks, not just the same track.

All in all, Reaper's MIDI is lacking perhaps compared to the competition, depening on the tools you depend on. That being said, it's more than capable for many many basic MIDI recording and editing operations, certainly compared to earlier versions. Myself, I do a lot of manual MIDI editing, and not a heckuvalotta humanization and procedural stuff... for humanization, I will literally alter timing and velocity by hand for every note, manually add notes here and there, etc... I'm that anal about it. Especially when it comes to realistic drum programming, to the extent possible.

Good grief, that is horrible. I read it was bad, but dude, that is embarrassingly bad.