Time to update the piano roll

[DCPImages]

Being able to edit midi efficiently is a fundamental aspect of working with most DAWS. It would be great to see the piano roll updated to make the piano roll a better companion to the other excellent Waveform composition tools. In particular, better selection tools would make things a whole lot easier, namely:

1. Being able to select all notes after a certain point so that you can shift them and create space to lengthen notes or insert new ones. Alternatively being able to toggle on/off ripple edit, so that you can insert notes and everything after that point shifts to the right to accomodate the addition. The problem is that the composition tools and step input create all notes the same length and they often need a lot of adjustment afterwards.
2. Being able to ‘select all top notes’ in a piece / chord series to use these notes as the basis for a melody line.
3. Being able to ‘select all bottom notes’ of a piece / chord series to use these notes as the basis for a bass line.
4. Being able to ‘invert’ selections of notes.
5. Being able to ‘select all notes in the same position’. This would allow, for example, adjustment of velocities on every down-beat / up-beat etc.
6. Being able to select chords and ‘promote’ them to the chord track or drag and drop them from plugins to any track including the chord track.

These changes would streamline the writing process enormously and would save me from having to transfer my midi into Logic Pro for further editing.

Thanks for considering
Claude

[Watchful]

I've previously asked for "select all notes on the same MIDI channel." Sometimes, when importing MIDI (especially from hardware), all MIDI events are dumped onto a single track. To pull out just channel 1 or channel 2 notes is effectively impossible right now.

So with your suggestion, I could "select all notes on channel 1," then "invert selection," then hit delete and I'm good to go.

I also like your item 2, which would be great--as you say--from converting a treble track to a vocal line for either referencing or exporting to sheet music. These are really good suggestions, Claude.

[Stuttaton]

Good suggestions.

[PierreG]

Great suggestions, cheers!

[FigBug]

5. Being able to ‘select all notes in the same position’. This would allow, for example, adjustment of velocities on every down-beat / up-beat etc.

Note quite sure what you mean by this one, do you mean if you selected a note on beat 3, it would select all notes that start on beat 3 in every bar?

[FigBug]

I've previously asked for "select all notes on the same MIDI channel." Sometimes, when importing MIDI (especially from hardware), all MIDI events are dumped onto a single track. To pull out just channel 1 or channel 2 notes is effectively impossible right now.

I'm not sure this can be done, midi notes in Waveform don't have a channel, it's the clip that has the channel. I'm not exactly sure how your midi data gets imported, but can't you just delete the clips on different channels? Or do all the notes get merged into one clip and then merged into the same channel?

[spoontechnique]

1. Ripple editing for MIDI
2/3. ‘Select all top/bottom notes’

+1 on these changes.

4. Being able to ‘invert’ selections of notes.

If I'm not mistaken, this can already be done with chords? Having it apply to any selection could be useful.

5. Being able to ‘select all notes in the same position’. (every down-beat / up-beat etc.)

The primary use case for this would seem to be drum programming, so I'd rather see this in step clips (where it would be an excellent change). Editing per-channel velocity in step clips might already achieve this in many cases, though.

6. Being able to select chords and ‘promote’ them to the chord track or drag and drop them from plugins to any track including the chord track

I've stopped using the chord track because it requires a somewhat "top-down" approach to composition. You start from the chord track, because if you change the chord all edits downstream are replaced. If I could jump back and forth between chord track and MIDI clips more fluidly, that would be interesting.

Also, the idea of promoting a chord is endearing.

[Watchful]

I've previously asked for "select all notes on the same MIDI channel." Sometimes, when importing MIDI (especially from hardware), all MIDI events are dumped onto a single track. To pull out just channel 1 or channel 2 notes is effectively impossible right now.

I'm not sure this can be done, midi notes in Waveform don't have a channel, it's the clip that has the channel. I'm not exactly sure how your midi data gets imported, but can't you just delete the clips on different channels? Or do all the notes get merged into one clip and then merged into the same channel?

Yes, it's easy to import a MIDI file Type 0 that has multiple tracks dumped into a single track. The channel data is recorded with the event in question. When you pull this into an existing track, there's no easy way (that I know of) to split the clip into separate clips into different channels.

Specific example: I can import MIDI clips in from a Yamaha Montage's sequencer, which create a Type 0 file. Pulling this into a track from the Montage Connect plugin produces a single clip with channels merged together.

It plays fine--each note goes out to its respective channel. But it's effectively impossible to edit in Waveform's MIDI editor because its thousands of notes all smacked together, often overlapping. If it were possible to select all notes in a given clip based on their channel number, then invert the selection, I could delete everything that wasn't needed on a given channel to isolate one part.

If there's a better way to do it, I'm happy to give that a shot. But right now, I can't see a way to do it on the fly. I'd have to find a way to export the file then reimport it as a Type 1 so that Waveform can split the file into separate tracks/channels.

Hope that help clarifies. If not, let me know and I can share more information.

[Watchful]

4. Being able to ‘invert’ selections of notes.

If I'm not mistaken, this can already be done with chords? Having it apply to any selection could be useful.

That's what I previously proposed. In the piano roll editor, I should be able to select a stack of MIDI events and run it up or down a couple of inversions. The way I do it today: I have PgUp and PgDn programmed to raise or lower a note by one octave. I select the note(s) on a chord and hit the appropriate key to flip them With one inversion, it's no big deal. But for take a major 7th and flipping it two or more inversions, it's a bit cumbersome. Waveform of course would need to be able to identify a chord in the piano roll, so it's incumbent on the user to make a careful selection... arpeggiated chords, for example, look like chords to you and me, but appear as very separate MIDI events to a sequencer.

5. Being able to ‘select all notes in the same position’. (every down-beat / up-beat etc.)

The primary use case for this would seem to be drum programming, so I'd rather see this in step clips (where it would be an excellent change). Editing per-channel velocity in step clips might already achieve this in many cases, though.

Not necessarily: I don't use step-clips, but encounter this when isolating bass lines from more complex passages, or changing an existing part's chord structure. Sometimes I just need to take every second-from-the-bottom note to transpose up a semitone or so.

Not sure how the logic of this would work in programming, but FigBug has done amazing work with less to go on, many many times.

[DCPImages]

By being able to ‘select notes in same position’, I was meaning you could select all notes on a downbeat or beat 3 of every bar etc. Of course, you would need to be quantised for this to work.

Also, when I used the term invert here, I was not referring to chord inversions, I was meaning, for example, if all lower notes were selected, then the selection could be swapped so that all notes except the lower ones were selected etc

[DCPImages]

Being able to ‘select notes in same position’ is also useful for arpeggios and ostinatos (not just drums & percussion) where the rhythm needs to be able to ‘breathe’ through emphasis placed on particular positions in the sequence (eg downbeat or 1st & 3rd note of a 4 note grouping).

[FigBug]

I've previously asked for "select all notes on the same MIDI channel." Sometimes, when importing MIDI (especially from hardware), all MIDI events are dumped onto a single track. To pull out just channel 1 or channel 2 notes is effectively impossible right now.

I'm not sure this can be done, midi notes in Waveform don't have a channel, it's the clip that has the channel. I'm not exactly sure how your midi data gets imported, but can't you just delete the clips on different channels? Or do all the notes get merged into one clip and then merged into the same channel?

Yes, it's easy to import a MIDI file Type 0 that has multiple tracks dumped into a single track. The channel data is recorded with the event in question. When you pull this into an existing track, there's no easy way (that I know of) to split the clip into separate clips into different channels.

Specific example: I can import MIDI clips in from a Yamaha Montage's sequencer, which create a Type 0 file. Pulling this into a track from the Montage Connect plugin produces a single clip with channels merged together.

Can you send me one of these Type 0 files to roland@tracktion.com?

[Watchful]

Certainly will! I'll send two examples: one pulled from the arpeggiator/sequencer, and one pulled from a multi-part performance where the notes all overlap.

[Watchful]

Sent.

[fde101]

4. Being able to ‘invert’ selections of notes.

If I'm not mistaken, this can already be done with chords? Having it apply to any selection could be useful.

Interesting... there are a few ways to interpret #4. When I see "invert selection" I think of selecting everything that is not selected and deselecting what already was selected.