Stupid newbie audio/MIDI editing questions

[rlindsey0]

Hi, first post here. I'm a relative newbie to Tracktion and not a tremendously skilled DAW person (I've had Logic for a while but I don't use it much because it intimidates and frustrates me). I've been playing for a long time and am comfortable in recording studios, but a lot of the DAW stuff confuses me. Tracktion seems like the perfect program for someone like me.

Anyway, a couple of questions. Here's the MIDI one. Last night, I loaded the DR-008 VST drum machine into a track, then did a little "boom-chick" recording with kick (C1) and snare (E1). I misplaced one of the snares, though, and wanted to edit the MIDI clip to fix the bad hit. However, when I opened up the clip, I could only see the kick, even though when I played the clip, I could hear that the snare had been recorded too. So I couldn't move the snare, because there was nothing there to move! I would have thought that when you opened up the clip, you would be able to see all of the MIDI events spread out in front of you, and you could then tweak any of them you wanted. Anybody have an idea why I couldn't see my snare? Is there some setting I'm missing? Basically, what I want is to be able to build a drum track by merging things in in successive passes, then see the whole part spread out in front of me, then be able to move any of the notes I want to move. Is this doable?

Now the audio question. I recorded a little more than two bars of a percussion loop into an audio track, then tried to trim it so it felt right when looped. I used the hollow triangles to get the start and endpoints right, then used the loop command to check that the loop felt seamless (or seamless enough). The first time I tried this, I could tell that my end point was a bit off. So I disabled looping--only to find that the end point I'd set had vanished, and instead of tweaking the one I had, I had to do the whole thing over. Isn't there some way of having the start and end points stay where they are until explicitly moved? This happened to me several times and made me spend a lot of time. And is there an option, once you have the start and end points right, to trim the clip permanently, or at least save the trimmed loop to a new audio file? I don't want to keep having to trim this clip every time I do something; I want it to stay trimmed once I get it right. Logic, surprisingly, has a fairly easy way of handling this--the trim command in the audio window. I'd have thought Tracktion could do this at least as easily. Again, am I missing something completely obvious (wouldn't surprise me)?

Thanks for any help.

[AlanB]

Hi

Midi - The problem might be that you have two clips, one on top of the other. Try selecting the clip and moving it. Is there another clip underneath?

Is this is the problem, then go to the Settings page, click on the entry for your Midi input, and look at the options under "action", e.g. "merge newly recorded midi into any existing clips" is the one that I think you'll need.

[rlindsey0]

Hi

Midi - The problem might be that you have two clips, one on top of the other. Try selecting the clip and moving it. Is there another clip underneath?

Is this is the problem, then go to the Settings page, click on the entry for your Midi input, and look at the options under "action", e.g. "merge newly recorded midi into any existing clips" is the one that I think you'll need.

Hi AgentX20,

Thanks for the suggestion. On rereading my post, I see I didn't say that this happened to me on the first take. In other words, I was playing the kick and snare with two fingers on the same (first) recording pass--I didn't do the kick first, then go through a second pass and layer the snare. Conceptually, it would have been no different from a piano player playing a C for two beats, then an E, in the same take. So I'm mystified as to how two superimposed clips could have been generated when I only did one pass. But I'll check that tonight--maybe it's just one of the many, many things I don't understand about computer MIDI. (BTW, the same thing happened when I deleted the MIDI clip entirely and tried to record a new one--the snare played back, but it didn't appear on the piano roll.)

I thought I had the "merge newly recorded" option enabled, but maybe I didn't. I'll check it again tonight when I go home. Again, thanks.

[AlanB]

You could also try creating a blank midi clip, and adding some drum beats in with the pencil tool, just top make absolutely sure that you can see them.

Also, check which part of the keyboard appears in the midi editor screen. This can be changed as well, either by clicking and dragging, or by displaying (for example) four octaves instead of two.

Tracktion is a GREAT program, so don't despair.

[rlindsey0]

Well, I found the answer to the MIDI problem, and of course it's simple enough to make me feel reeeeeaaaally stupid. Turns out I was just seeing the snare and not the kick (as opposed to the other way around), and the reason was just that I needed to drag the bottom of the little keyboard on the left down a little. The lower note (the kick) was just off the lower edge of the keyboard. Once I made this adjustment, I could see both parts just fine.

Duh.


Still not sure about the answer to the audio question (trimming) ....

[AlanB]

Could it be that you need to turn off snapping while you drag to shorten the clip? You can do this by holding down the Control key.