Go Back   Cockos Incorporated Forums > REAPER Forums > MIDI Hardware, Control Surfaces, and OSC

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 03-17-2012, 04:10 PM   #1
dea-man
Human being with feelings
 
dea-man's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 6,290
Default Reapers Midi is sometimes frustratingly baffling!!!

I can get Reapers midi to do whatever I need, usually by taking a few extra steps to get things dialed in just right.

Every now and then, I run across peculiarities, which I believe should be so basic and simple, that I am just baffled as to what I am doing wrong.

I can't help but think I must have some setting checked or not, that affects these things.

For instance, I was just laying down a simple snare part through midi. I wanted to quantize to 128th notes in the ME. I simply hit quantize. There was movement as some note adjusted, but other notes, whether they moved or not, simply do align with the grid. I try to make adjustments to get them to fall in with the grid, but nothing changes. As usual I go through by hand to fix the discrepancy. I have snap to grid "on", but no midi notes are snapping to grid. WTF?

I've read about this behavior on the Reaper Forum every now and then.

Is this just a bug or, as I suspect, is there some box or item somewhere that needs checking or un-checking? Did something change from reaper 3.XX to 4.XX, as far as midi lining up with the grid goes?

Inquiring mind wants to know!
__________________
"F" off.
dea-man is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-17-2012, 04:21 PM   #2
pbk
Human being with feelings
 
pbk's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Afford Slaughterhouse, FL
Posts: 624
Default

Hi dea-man.

When I get that kind of behavior and settings are all correct, it is usually a glitch. What happens if you close the MIDI editor, move the MIDI item, then restore it to the original position and apply quantize again? For whatever reason, sometimes moving a bit or cutting the notes and pasting them into a new MIDI item helps too.

I don't know if this is really a 'bug', but it I'm convinced it has to do with the internal representation Reaper uses for its MIDI implementation. I think MIDI note positioning is not "precise" in a sense, so its small imperfections can accumulate after editing and cause these troubles.
__________________
It takes an ordered complex system to recognize another ordered complex system.
pbk is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-17-2012, 04:46 PM   #3
dea-man
Human being with feelings
 
dea-man's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 6,290
Default I've discovered something.

It may have to do with Reapers resolution and graphic representation at higher quantization.

In the instance I was describing, I again did a quantize a 128th notes and got the same results, but the notes I was playing were really 16ths. I saw the usual discrepancy displayed at 128 with no changes after multiple attempts to quantize. Some notes definitely did not aligned with the grid. When I changed the grid setting to 16ths and hit quantize, voila, everything jump into line!
__________________
"F" off.
dea-man is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-17-2012, 07:13 PM   #4
benmrx
Human being with feelings
 
benmrx's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 396
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by dea-man View Post
It may have to do with Reapers resolution and graphic representation at higher quantization.

In the instance I was describing, I again did a quantize a 128th notes and got the same results, but the notes I was playing were really 16ths. I saw the usual discrepancy displayed at 128 with no changes after multiple attempts to quantize. Some notes definitely did not aligned with the grid. When I changed the grid setting to 16ths and hit quantize, voila, everything jump into line!
IME Reapers MIDI is simply unreliable when the grid is set to anything higher than a 16th note. Sometimes things all work as you would expect..., however it seems to be the exception and not the rule.
benmrx is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-17-2012, 07:42 PM   #5
pbk
Human being with feelings
 
pbk's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Afford Slaughterhouse, FL
Posts: 624
Default

I guess the higher the grid setting, the coarser the snap/quantization effect is, so if there is a wrong offset or a shift of the internal note position, it gets buried and the action works appropriately.
__________________
It takes an ordered complex system to recognize another ordered complex system.
pbk is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-17-2012, 08:25 PM   #6
kgarello
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 310
Default

I'm with you - I have trouble with alignment all the time.

I think it has to do with flaky feeling timeline. I can never tell if I'm on the one or not (whoops that describes my guitar playing,also )

I used to use a different program and didn't have the same problem.


uh, I just remembered what does it. When I have "clip" that wasn't cut on measure boundarys, I can't keep the measure straight.
There are other things ... like with swing to grid, sometimes I just can't get it to align notes with the grid...I know its an option somewhere...shit lost the cool groove I was working on...

Thanks for the opportunity .....
kgarello is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-17-2012, 08:36 PM   #7
chrisharbin
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 16,031
Default

If the grid stuff isn't set up right, it's a mess. Somewhere in all the modifiers/preferences/project settings there is a key to getting things right but I'm not able to figure it.
chrisharbin is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-18-2012, 02:18 AM   #8
ivansc
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Near Cambridge UK and Near Questembert, France
Posts: 22,754
Default

DEA - Come and join us in the MIDI and Other Unimportant Things Forum.

Misery loves company....(grin)

P.S. I was editing in a grid that handled 64th notes and even 128th notes effortlessly in 1990. Currently STILL using BPP' pending Reapers MIDI finally catching up with the rest of the stuff it does
ivansc is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-18-2012, 04:26 AM   #9
never_mind
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 221
Default

This seems to be an odd (in terms of buggy) behavior, but Reapers MIDI implementation also needs some more features. Especially editing of CC values is a pain in the ass.
never_mind is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-18-2012, 05:06 AM   #10
ivansc
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Near Cambridge UK and Near Questembert, France
Posts: 22,754
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by never_mind View Post
This seems to be an odd (in terms of buggy) behavior, but Reapers MIDI implementation also needs some more features. Especially editing of CC values is a pain in the ass.
If you (and the devs) dont mind me saying so, most of what I find arduous in Reaper MIDI is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of natural flow to it, especially in terms of coherence between similar operations in different sections of midi editing.
Now this may be down to my having used the same sequencer since I first started doing MIDI back in the eighties, but I do seem to find myself going to the manual to check out how to do stuff that I dont do often enough to have it ingrained, yet I never recall having this much trouble with other sequencers, which seem to adopt a fairly common way of doing certain tasks.

A classic example is of course the totally unintuitive way of a creating MIDI part, where in order to hand edit you have to first insert MIDI item, rather than just mousing in your notes immediately.

And as for actually moving stuff around on the timeline!
ivansc is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-18-2012, 06:17 AM   #11
Unikorn
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Feb 2010
Posts: 163
Default

Have you tried zooming out horizontally a little more ? I have noticed that when the grid is set to say , 32nds, and I am zoomed in too close horizontally, the grid will show a lesser value, like 16ths. If I zoom out a little more, then she grid shows the 32nds.
Unikorn is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-18-2012, 06:37 AM   #12
Xasman
Human being with feelings
 
Xasman's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 673
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by dea-man View Post
...I wanted to quantize to 128th notes in the ME. I simply hit quantize. There was movement as some note adjusted, but other notes, whether they moved or not, simply do (not?) align with the grid...
Hmm, it seems to work reliably here. When you hit quantise make sure that, in the Quantise dialog box, "Use Grid", "Selected Notes" (or "All Notes") and "Position" are selected in the drop down boxes (If "Selected Notes", then make sure you really have selected all the notes you want to quantise). You shouldn't need to zoom in to see the 1/128th gridlines for it to work properly (although you will do in order to check it visually, of course ).
Xasman is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-18-2012, 10:11 AM   #13
gofer
-blänk-
 
gofer's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 11,359
Default

Thanks for bringing it back on topic, gents.

I can't reproduce the quantize issue as well. Using 1/128 it quantizes all notes (or all selected, depending on the settings) right on spot of the 1/128 grid for me, no matter how much I zoom in or out.
For giggles I also tried quantizing to a 1/256 and a 1/512 grid which worked spot-on without any visual offset as well.

There must be some setting or something else get in your way. Is that MIDI item stretched (play rate change), or are there time signatures/tempo changes involved?

dea-man, or anyone that can reproduce, could you please upload a project that shows the issue and maybe helps tracing it?
gofer is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-18-2012, 10:59 AM   #14
KevinW
Human being with feelings
 
KevinW's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Dayton, Ohio USA
Posts: 1,714
Default

When the quantize dialog is set to "Use grid", I can't reproduce this either.

When I set it to "Manual", with a grid of 1/128 and the "Do not quantize events that are: Nearly quantized" set at 100%, then - appropriately- the notes that are close to the grid are not quantized.

Also, regarding the notes not seeming to snap to the grid even when manually moving, by chance is the setting "Options/Snap note ends to grid when snap enabled" checked? That throws me off sometimes. (I generally leave that option off.)
KevinW is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-18-2012, 01:23 PM   #15
bilsner
Human being with feelings
 
bilsner's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: croydon UK
Posts: 253
Default

I had a similar thing once and then I noticed the small bypass check box in the quantize events box was ticked.
bilsner is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-18-2012, 03:12 PM   #16
ivansc
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Near Cambridge UK and Near Questembert, France
Posts: 22,754
Default

Aha! Do we have a winner?

I have been playing with this and cant make reaper misbehave at all in the way the OP outlined.

Either I am lucky or too dumb to change anything that matters, I guess.
ivansc is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-18-2012, 03:16 PM   #17
dea-man
Human being with feelings
 
dea-man's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 6,290
Default Are you referencing.....

Quote:
Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
Aha! Do we have a winner?

I have been playing with this and cant make reaper misbehave at all in the way the OP outlined.

Either I am lucky or too dumb to change anything that matters, I guess.
...the small bypass check box that bilsner writes about in his post?
__________________
"F" off.
dea-man is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-18-2012, 03:31 PM   #18
dea-man
Human being with feelings
 
dea-man's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 6,290
Default Yes!

I think the small bypass check box, may in fact, have been the culprit, for me, at least. Thanks Bilsner!
__________________
"F" off.
dea-man is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 03-18-2012, 08:42 PM   #19
benmrx
Human being with feelings
 
benmrx's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 396
Default

Will definitely give that a look (small checkbox) when I get home!
benmrx is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 05:53 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.