Group notes in the Piano roll

[kevinmcnasty]

I don't see a huge need for this but other DAWs have it so what the heck. It would be cool to be able to group piano roll notes just like you group tracks so that they all move as a unit.

[EvilDragon]

You can select any number of notes to move together already?

[kevinmcnasty]

You're right, but you can also move groups of midi items together as a unit too (or group them.) It's not something I can't live without but sometimes I find myself with a basic melody structure that I'd like to group together to kinda separate from the other notes in the melody that aren't as necessary. I'm just nitpicking at this point honestly but these are the types of things that add up to make reaper as awesome as it is.

By the way man... When I have to google a question about something musical, more often than not I end up on a page of a forum with you answering it. lol nice

[juliansader]

REAPER's multi-channel editing features may be useful in this case:

If track routing or a JSFX is used to force all MIDI playback into a single channel (or if your VSTi does not care about MIDI channels), then the MIDI inside the track can freely be assigned to any channel, and channels can be employed as 16 all-purpose groups that can be independently edited, similar to FL Studio's "color groups".

EDIT: The notation "voices" can be used similarly. Even though they were originally intended for the notation editor, you can use voices in the piano roll view too. Note display can be colored by voice, and the voice groups can be set and selected using the actions:
* Notation: Set default [/high/low] voice
* Notation: Select all notes in default [/high/low] voice

[nofish]

There's also note selection slots via SWS.

[Masi]

Originally Posted by kevinmcnasty

By the way man... When I have to google a question about something musical, more often than not I end up on a page of a forum with you answering it. lol nice

That's because he has so much time to spend. Reason being a dragon never sleeps

Masi

[kevinmcnasty]

It takes a certain type of person to spend time and energy helping other people with their problems when they could just as easily focus on their own so I definitely appreciate what he does.

[EcBaPr]

yes grouping notes in piano roll would be very useful.. for instance programming drums with a kick on every beat (including snare) I often want the main kick pattern to have bit more velocity than those under the snare.. if you have long midi clips it seems you have to manually select every required note under snares to adjust velocities and then when you (inevitably) need to change it again its the same slow process.. am I missing something ?

it would be nice to group all primary kick pattern notes and all accent notes separately with the same method as used on the timeline and use one click for follow up changes..

[juliansader]

There are a few ways to quickly re-select notes:

1) Once you have selected the notes, you can group them into a separate channel (maximum 16 groups) or voice (max 3 groups), and then you can at any time re-select them with one or two clicks.

2) Since the kick notes under the snares have different velocities than the rest of the kick notes, you can select them by velocity, either in the piano roll or via the Event Filter.

3) If these notes are spaced in a regular pattern or in a regular position in their measures, you can select them via the Event Filter or the "Pattern Selector" script.

[vanhaze]

Maybe this will come in handy too for OP:

I use these 2 made custom actions to select all notes at Pitch cursor, bound to arrow-up and arrow-down keys:

Move Pitch Cursor up 1 semitone and then select all Notes at Pitch Cursor:

EDIT: Unselect all
EDIT: Increase pitch cursor one semitone
EDIT: Select all notes at pitch cursor

Move Pitch Cursor down 1 semitone and then select all Notes at Pitch Cursor:

EDIT: Unselect all
EDIT: Decrease pitch cursor one semitone
EDIT: Select all notes at pitch cursor

[EcBaPr]

grouping notes in piano roll would be really helpful feature to add... At the moment I'm in the middle of a large amount of editing and this would really speed things up..

Originally Posted by juliansader

There are a few ways to quickly re-select notes:

1) Once you have selected the notes, you can group them into a separate channel (maximum 16 groups) or voice (max 3 groups), and then you can at any time re-select them with one or two clicks.

That is useful to some degree but changing the channel for certain notes restricts you with using VSTi's. also its a lot slower than having groups would be.

The way grouping works on the timeline is really fast and easy to identify with the link icons.. it would be good if this was the same in Piano Roll (just use a smaller icon)...