Did you ever think about...

[Sascha Franck]

how bad computer based hosts handle certain musical situations?
OK, I allready noticed this years ago and wonder why people aren't constantly complaning:
Are you aware of how bad all hosts I know of handle things such as pickups, breathe ins, small slurs into beat one - whatever, just about anything NOT directly starting on beat 1 of a bar or later?

IMO this has even led to quite some change regarding the musical content of quite some styles that are not composed or recorded in a linear way (such as a live recording).
In fact, working on anything which would be worked out part by part seems to be affected, and things are even getting worse once you're using the cycle functionality of your host to add things cycle by cycle, try things out or whatever.

I'll try to give you an example:
Let's suppose you have VERY basic chord progression, 4 bars of A minor, 4 bars of C minor and you're trying to work out the 4 bars for each chord separately.
Let's further assume that your original intention was to shift beat 1 of each part one 16th note earlier (last 16th note of previous bar that is).
And let's finally assume you even would want some note held over all those 4 bars, also starting 1 16th note earlier.

Now, you're setting your cycle to the first 4 bars of your A minor minor part. What will happen when you press play? Right, you won't hear the shifted beat 1 because it's out of your cycle range, even if it actually belongs to that 4 bar cycle (musically that is). Best thing to happen would be that you'd at least hear the held note - in case your host has some "chase events" (following previous events) functionality. But even with that, once the cycle jumps back to bar 1, chasing events won't work anymore (in all hosts I know of at least), so it'll allways only work on the first start.

Further, if you did the same for your second 4 bars, this time C minor, still a shifted beat 1 along with your held note, what will happen? Now you will hear that C bass note (or chord, or whatever) playing eacht time when you cycle the A minor part.
In a worst case scenario (some sequencers still don't send proper note offs on cycle endings) you would even hear the held note, belongig to your second 4 bars over the cycled first 4.

OK, you may see the problem allready.
Compare to a band context. Whenever you're practising with a band, you may practice individual parts.
Assuming you'd be practising the above given example part, what would each player do automatically? Right on, EVERY halfway reasonable player I know of would play the shifted beat 1 properly on "cycle jump". Nobody would even think about playing the shifted beat 1 of the part following, let alone any ringing notes not belonging to our A minor.

Next step: When you would try to "describe" the band rehearsing scenario, you would say "OK, let's practice the first 4 bars". Still, the band would play any required shifted notes or pickups properly.
You would NEVER say "OK, let's practice from previous bar, beat *4 and e* to bar 4, beat *4 and e*"! NEVER EVER!
But (!!!) - That's what sequencers want!
In order to have your host playing back above given cycle as properly as a band would do, you will need to tell it to actually start cycling at the previous bar, beat *4 and e* and end the cycle at bar 4, beat *4 and e*.

This might even work in some hosts, especially in all sorts of linear sequencers (Cubase, Logic, Sonar and the likes) but it's defenitely NOT as easy as setting your cycle ranges bar wise.
It's defenitely getting worse in pattern based hosts (Fruity, Orion, Reason and the likes) when you usually work a lot on sort of isolated patterns which most likely start at *full* bar values.

Things start to get REALLY worse as soon as you start to arrange parts.
We all know that this is best done with full bar values - no prolem with that, music is organized more or less in bars, so are sequencers.
But (as should be clear from above given example), musicians DO know whenever a part is supposed to start earlier than on beat one.
Example: If I tell a musician, to play some "sequence" of parts A, B, C and B, all 8 bars long, B being our above mentioned part with the shifted beat 1, he/she will just play those notes.
Again, I don't need to tell him/her to remind that beat 1.
I DO need to tell this to my host!
Still, hosts are organized in bars - as are musicians, so that's not a bad thing per se.
Well, Logic does at least allow cutting things more or less freely while moving/copying then by a given grid/snap (so, that makes bars, most of the time), but it still doesn't change anything with the fact that everything else (visual grids and stuff) are organized in bars - which even is a good thing, as music just IS organized that way.

So, why do I post all that?
Because I DO think that it actually has a more or less strong impact on music we're listening to these days.
Just do yourself a favour and listen to some tunes posted in the Café, I would almost take a bet that 99% of them have their "big bars" (bars 1, 3, 5, 9, whatever, anything starting some new part or a repetition of a previous part) to start at *full bar values*.
I also do know it certainly has an impact on my music. I do like shifted beats and I also do like pickups for melodies and the likes. Still, in order to get an idea layed out easily I just don't use any of such, just because I'm lazy. And because I'm even more lazy I don't change this layout style later on either.

Yeah, some hosts (Logic, Cubase, for instance) allow to shorten parts to a full bar value, arrange them and then lengthen the full bar parts to get your pickups and whatever back once you're done arranging - still, quite a lot more work.

Resume:
What I personally would love to see is some host treating all these things easier.
I would love arranging full bar parts while all pickups and the likes would still play back, sort of automatically. That might require two "part view" (or part information boxes, whatever), one actually dealing with the "true" part, including pickups and stuff, the other one actually only dealing with the "arrange" or "musical" value.
That would seriously relieve a lot of the pain I have arranging music with computers.

Sorry for all the lengthy details, but I really DO think this has an impact on how music is done these days, even a rather strong impact (as said, just listen to tunes being recorded "non-linear" on computers...).

Anybody else?

[Sicklecell666]

heh..without getting encyclopedic about it I was really frustrated today trying to do what I considered to be a simple drum roll..It was bugging me so bad I almost did as you mentioned & considered doing something else..

But the point is I worked it out

Another point is I had to 'work it out' at all..

You have a valid argument.

[Lunch Money]

I'm not sure I understand what the problem is.

I press 'record'... and I can record pick-ups and all. Now, let's say I have a pickup recorded in an audio part... ie. I don't have a straight-forward bar. I non-destructively resize my clip so that it IS a bar length (which sequencers like!) and then move it to its new location, allowing snap, and then re-expand my clip so that the pick-up is exactly where it should be.

I want to cycle record an area that's not an even bar length.. I set my 'in' and 'out' markers to wherever I want them. They don't need to be a bar in length.

Arranging a pause that's humanly felt rather than locked to a measure/note value is a bit trickier, requiring the musician to fudge around with changing tempo. There are some fairly easy workarounds, but we shouldn't have to use a 'workaround'.

Don't take anything I say as contradiction-- I strongly suspect you have a point and I've just missed it because I didn't read carefully enough.

Greg

[Sascha Franck]

I press 'record'... and I can record pick-ups and all. Now, let's say I have a pickup recorded in an audio part... ie. I don't have a straight-forward bar. I non-destructively resize my clip so that it IS a bar length (which sequencers like!) and then move it to its new location, allowing snap, and then re-expand my clip so that the pick-up is exactly where it should be.

Exactly what I do.
But I just don't want to do all this resizing business.
I mean, it is *meant* as an XYZ numbers of bars part and I just want to treat it like that (as said, every musician does so as well - without "resizing" ;o)).

I want to cycle record an area that's not an even bar length.. I set my 'in' and 'out' markers to wherever I want them. They don't need to be a bar in length.

Sure, just the same here, in case it's required.

Things get more tricky as soon as you play "non full bar" MIDI parts in a cycle though (see my sustained note example).

Don't take anything I say as contradiction

I don't.
All I'm saying is, you need to allways tell your sequencer "no, this is no full bar start part" - and even worse, you can't exactly tell it, but you'll have to fool around with smaller grid/snap settings and the likes.

As said, I do think all this has an impact on music composed these days. There's a LOT of "full bar start" music (and I'm not even talking about tarnce yet).

[Lunch Money]

Cool, then we're in agreement.

Where the menu for snapping options is, a simple "snap relative" function would work. It picks out a reference point in your audio that's at the beginning of a bar (or whatever, I guess you could have the 'resolution' adjustable) and then snaps based on that point rather than on the beginning of the clip. Set it as default snap treatment, and forget it until you need different snapping options.

I have to admit, the MIDI cycling thing isn't easy to get around. Once I get more into MIDI (ie. IF I get more into MIDI) I'll probably notice it more.

Greg

[Sascha Franck]

Where the menu for snapping options is, a simple "snap relative" function would work. It picks out a reference point in your audio that's at the beginning of a bar (or whatever, I guess you could have the 'resolution' adjustable) and then snaps based on that point rather than on the beginning of the clip. Set it as default snap treatment, and forget it until you need different snapping options.

Logic does it like that since ages.
Still, it's not the same.
You still can't treat pickups as if they were "full bar values", you need to cut them differently, also, they're looking differently.
As said, in music, when being practised by human beings, or even when being written down, those pickups somewhat are treated like "full bar items" though.
A four bar cycle will allways be played correctly by human beings, a computer would just add the pickup to the next part at the end, even if you want to cycle and thus don't want this pickup to happen.