View Poll Results: Does Reaper need more MIDI love?
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Yes, and I use MIDI a lot
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111 |
76.55% |
No, and I use MIDI a lot
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13 |
8.97% |
Yes, and I don't use MIDI much or at all
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11 |
7.59% |
No, and I don't use MIDI much or at all
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10 |
6.90% |
06-27-2010, 10:37 PM
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#1
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 324
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Does Reaper need more Midi Love?
Please poll HONESTLY on the selections.
If you don't use midi much or at all, please select 3 or 4.
If you do use midi a lot, please select 1 or 2.
Voting 1 or 2 if you don't use midi a lot will cause terminal brain cancer.
What does Yes or No mean?
YES --> Reaper needs more love, more features, more attention than it has been getting, and MIDI features need more priority than they've been getting
NO --> Midi in Reaper is getting the appropriate amount of attention relative to other features and doesn't need to be upped on the priority list
DF
Last edited by DarthFader; 06-28-2010 at 03:22 PM.
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06-28-2010, 05:06 AM
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#2
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 254
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it doesn't need more midi features IMO, but solid basic ones.
when i was a cake pro audio and later a sonar user i never had problems using midi for programing and aditing drums, but with reaper i always have ramdom bugs.
ramdom means theys are not easy to reproduce, sometimes they happen, sometimes not, what doesn't mean that they are not there.
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06-28-2010, 05:47 AM
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#3
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 6
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reaper is archaic in midi.
1-treating midi as seperate entities that must be imported/exported instead of integrated like other sequencers is a bad idea. integrate midi seamlessly like in sonar & cubase.
2-midi needs it's own track type instead of hammering it into the audio track type. it's pounding a square peg into a round hole. this must include selection boxes for choosing midi channel, bank, preset, etc for each track.
3-event list, the traditional kind. must have.
The one thing i love about midi in reaper is entering variable length notes with the mouse. Going back to sonar, for example, where each mouse click enters only a preset value (quarter note, for example) is so tedious that i can't stand it.
there's been so much work in all the other areas of reaper, i think it's about time midi got a major face lift, because midi has fallen way behind reaper's audio capabilities.
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06-28-2010, 06:07 AM
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#4
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Super Moderator (no feelings)
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: On or near a dike
Posts: 9,834
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Welcome to the forums!
Quote:
Originally Posted by osranakurwa
1-treating midi as seperate entities that must be imported/exported instead of integrated like other sequencers is a bad idea. integrate midi seamlessly like in sonar & cubase.
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Did you try Reaper already? By default it uses in-project MIDI like all the other sequencers, you have to set it deliberately to save .mid files.
Quote:
Originally Posted by osranakurwa
2-midi needs it's own track type instead of hammering it into the audio track type. it's pounding a square peg into a round hole. this must include selection boxes for choosing midi channel, bank, preset, etc for each track.
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That's what many people coming from other DAWs think first. Few of them think the same way 3 months later (using much hardware synths puts you in the risk group).
Quote:
Originally Posted by osranakurwa
3-event list, the traditional kind. must have.
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Event list, the traditional kind. It has. (Alt+3 in the MIDI Editor or View menu)
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06-28-2010, 06:17 AM
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#5
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Perth, W.A.
Posts: 1,708
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steindork
Welcome to the forums!
Did you try Reaper already? By default it uses in-project MIDI like all the other sequencers, you have to set it deliberately to save .mid files.
That's what many people coming from other DAWs think first. Few of them think the same way 3 months later (using much hardware synths puts you in the risk group).
Event list, the traditional kind. It has. (Alt+3 in the MIDI Editor or View menu)
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The event list is still not there. Its getting a lot better. Did you try Cakewalks event list yet? Not Sonar. Cakewalk Pro audio 9 for instance.
There's an event list ey
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06-28-2010, 11:04 AM
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#6
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 324
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steindork
That's what many people coming from other DAWs think first. Few of them think the same way 3 months later (using much hardware synths puts you in the risk group).
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I disagree. I've been using reaper for more than 3 months and strongly feel that midi needs its own track type.
The ReaControlMIDI is just a bunch of fiddly nonsense.
If you had to use a ReaControlAudio to do basic audio manipulation, (volume, pan, etc) you'd see just how annoying it really is
Having the track be an audio+midi track the way it is ONLY makes sense for some VSTi scenarios; for hardware synths it's a total joke imho
DF
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06-28-2010, 11:11 AM
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#7
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Greece
Posts: 3,553
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DarthFader
That's nonsense in my book. I've been using reaper for more than 3 months and strongly feel that midi needs its own track type.
The ReaControlMIDI is just a bunch of fiddly nonsense.
If you had to use a ReaControlAudio to do basic audio manipulation, (volume, pan, etc) you'd see just how annoying it really is
DF
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Perfectly valid argument (and funny too)
I like one track type. It's awesome. But ReaControlMIDI is also very ReaInconvenient I agree. It *is* possible to have better integration of MIDI features to the one-track-type paradigm. There's no real obstacle to a universal track to also have MIDI controls alongside audio ones, without the need for plugins and complicated layering of windows. It's just not been done yet in Reaper. But it is possible.
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06-28-2010, 11:28 AM
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#8
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-blänk-
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 11,359
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Amazed, that comment wasn't directed at you, don't worry. I meant that guy with the Adolf quote.
Some of the numbers are not 0-127, because they take the LSB message into account (eg: Volume can be transmitted as MSB/LSB pair using CC7 and CC39 in combination). That gives you a resolution of 16384 steps. Pan is set to center (16384/2 -1, because it starts at zero). Of course it's easy to let Reaper show the 0-127 values you are used to (tick "Raw mode" in ReaControlMIDI), but for some reason I happen to like it this way. Don't know what's so funny there, actually.
Screenshot shows a track with ReaControlMIDI plus JS:IX/MIDI_Tool II with the track control knobs I've chosen.
The whole shebang is loaded either as a track template or as FX chain with all track controls ready to go, depends on when I decide to need the controls (which is almost never...). I don't even really notice there are plugins on the track.
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06-28-2010, 11:20 AM
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#9
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Netherlands
Posts: 2,629
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DarthFader
I disagree. I've been using reaper for more than 3 months and strongly feel that midi needs its own track type.
The ReaControlMIDI is just a bunch of fiddly nonsense.
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... but it's available nevertheless. I'm pretty sure (from hanging around this forum and Reaper for a little more then three months, although I count myself a newbie still) that all this stuff will be implemented eventually and will integrate into the current track-paradigm very nicely. I'll even hazard a guess that when we get there, the chances are that Reaper's implementation is going to be the smarter way to do it (I see that with quite a lot of stuff that is implemented already).
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06-28-2010, 11:28 AM
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#10
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: canada
Posts: 3,396
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if reaper starting using specific track types that would suck. midi love shouldn't be turned into "lets make the program less innovative".....
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06-28-2010, 06:13 AM
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#11
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Location
Posts: 5,559
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Quote:
Originally Posted by osranakurwa
reaper is archaic in midi.
1-treating midi as seperate entities that must be imported/exported instead of integrated like other sequencers is a bad idea. integrate midi seamlessly like in sonar & cubase.
2-midi needs it's own track type instead of hammering it into the audio track type. it's pounding a square peg into a round hole. this must include selection boxes for choosing midi channel, bank, preset, etc for each track.
3-event list, the traditional kind. must have.
The one thing i love about midi in reaper is entering variable length notes with the mouse. Going back to sonar, for example, where each mouse click enters only a preset value (quarter note, for example) is so tedious that i can't stand it.
there's been so much work in all the other areas of reaper, i think it's about time midi got a major face lift, because midi has fallen way behind reaper's audio capabilities.
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Hi Osranakurwa and welcome to Reaperland!
You can drag and drop MIDI files like any other file into Reaper or load them, using the media browser. If you have checked "MIDI items (in project, recommended)" in "Options -> Preferences -> Media -> MIDI" MIDI data are included in the project.
I'm not fond of the idea to have dedicated MIDI tracks, because this would result in being bothered all the time with dialogs like "You can't put this here" and "You can't put that there." like e.g. in Cubase. It's just a way of working and keep everything arranged.
-Data
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06-28-2010, 06:19 AM
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#12
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-blänk-
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 11,359
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Quote:
Originally Posted by osranakurwa
reaper is archaic in midi.
1-treating midi as seperate entities that must be imported/exported instead of integrated like other sequencers is a bad idea. integrate midi seamlessly like in sonar & cubase.
2-midi needs it's own track type instead of hammering it into the audio track type. it's pounding a square peg into a round hole. this must include selection boxes for choosing midi channel, bank, preset, etc for each track.
3-event list, the traditional kind. must have.
The one thing i love about midi in reaper is entering variable length notes with the mouse. Going back to sonar, for example, where each mouse click enters only a preset value (quarter note, for example) is so tedious that i can't stand it.
there's been so much work in all the other areas of reaper, i think it's about time midi got a major face lift, because midi has fallen way behind reaper's audio capabilities.
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Sure you're not missing something?
1) MIDI doesn't need to be im- nor exported with Reaper (as long as you don't need ghost-copies, but that's another story)
2) I whole heartedly disagree there. I won't ever want to go back to special MIDI track types. You can have all the selection boxes you asked for right on the tracks using plugs like ReaControlMIDI.
3) There is an event list, just a bit clumsy yet. It's one of the areas that need love, but it exists. One of it's downsides is that it can't be viewed together with the Piano Roll view but is an alternative view to it (view menu of the Piano Roll window).
Of course I voted yes for even more MIDI love, but you can't say they are not doing stuff about it. The last major improvement has been CC editing in the Piano Roll and has been fairly recently.
One thing I don't like about Reaper's MIDI is that it's too item-centric. I'd like to see a more track based editing without having to glue items into one big one (while not losing item based editing, of course). This includes a better seeking-back of events on playback start and loop.
Also I'd like to see much more actions and an easier approach for 3rd party extensions for MIDI editor actions (that seems to be really difficult as of now, so that even the SWS extension guys don't do them).
Plus a much better representation of MIDI routing (visible indication of sends streaming MIDI) in the mixer and the routing matrix.
Ever so often, the Dork has the faster trigger finger .
EDIT: Duh! Everyone is faster than me today. In the time I wrote the last sentence two more people answered. Should not eat icecream while posting .
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06-28-2010, 06:27 AM
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#13
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Super Moderator (no feelings)
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: On or near a dike
Posts: 9,834
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Amazed
There's an event list ey
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Okayokay not saying it's the most brillant event list on earth (I don't care since I never use these things anyway and I kinda grew up with event lists, maybe that's why) but at least there is one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gofer
Should not eat icecream while posting .
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Not if you love your keyboard or use a laptop.
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06-28-2010, 06:52 AM
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#14
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 1,616
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Implementing my deceptively simple Feature Request would get Reaper a lot of the nice MIDI functions of other MIDI sequencers. Logical Editor/.CAL scripting type functions using JS.....
http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=2667
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06-28-2010, 10:46 AM
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#15
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: In perpetual hope
Posts: 265
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Quote:
Originally Posted by captain caveman
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I'd prefer to see MIDI in Reaper develop along the lines of Logic (as I remember it around v 6 or 7 anyway) with very clear selection boxes and tweakable values, such as pitch shift +- a certain number. This clarity leads to better music more quckly in my experence.
Cal scripts and deeply buried plugins do nothing for creativity in my opinion. After a MIDI or audio performance is down, then you can take your time if you like and perfect using these tools - the brain isn't really in that time slows down place anymore, where the best musical ideas happen.
In short, when it comes to MIDI, keep it as simple and intuitive as possible! Please...
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06-28-2010, 12:57 PM
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#16
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 1,030
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Quote:
Originally Posted by osranakurwa
2-midi needs it's own track type instead of hammering it into the audio track type. it's pounding a square peg into a round hole. this must include selection boxes for choosing midi channel, bank, preset, etc for each track.
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I also have to disagree with this one. Having specific tracks for just audio or just MIDI could compromise plugins that use audio to trigger MIDI events or vice versa.
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06-28-2010, 01:03 PM
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#17
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 324
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pcartwright
I also have to disagree with this one. Having specific tracks for just audio or just MIDI could compromise plugins that use audio to trigger MIDI events or vice versa.
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Having a dedicated track type for MIDI would not eliminate the ability to do that.
You could still have the (original as it stands) combo midi audio tracks etc.
What we want is the OPTION to have A NEW track type that is dedicated to midi and especially hardware midi.
One that shows the patch name, where the volume and pan controls send midi, where you have transposition at a click on the TCP.
Constantly, it gets thrown out here, that if they give us apples, they have to take away the oranges.
That isn't true at all. We want apples AND oranges, not apples OR oranges.
We want to streamline the visualization and working with MIDI data.
The fact is, MIDI note data is just plain different than a track that is just an audio recording.
There are different things you want to see and do in each case; unifying them refuses to acknowledge the fact that they are in fact different, at least in terms of how the controls, etc, should be presented.
It's like if you had only a vehicle track and it could be a horse or a car. Well, horses and cars are just different. Same with Midi and audio. Refusing to acknowledge the obvious and having to click into subwindows to feed grass to the horse or stick a hose in the car instead of having those controls on the TCP (based on being able to select car or horse) is really nonsensical.
Sure, it "works" and it "can be done" but it is not productive or convenient.
DF
Last edited by DarthFader; 06-28-2010 at 01:12 PM.
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06-28-2010, 01:11 PM
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#18
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: canada
Posts: 3,396
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DarthFader
We want apples AND oranges, not apples OR oranges.
DF
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i dont disagree with that at all, I just really woudn;t want to see reaper become less flexible, in order to adhere to conventions that are addressed already in a really powerful way.
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06-28-2010, 01:21 PM
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#19
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Kalispell
Posts: 14,745
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EvilDragon
I seem to see the same picture you are. And I agree that if Cockos ever introduces another member of the dev team, he should be deeply tied with MIDI and improve greatly on that part of Reaper. There's so much that needs to be done to, yes you have the correct word, STREAMLINE working with MIDI in Reaper!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Susan G
Hi-
I appreciate the improvements I've seen in REAPER's MIDI handling so far. Definitely a +1 for me that it needs more "love", though!
Setting aside the missing tools and actions (for now ), the way REAPER handles split items in the MIDI editor still feels very awkward to me. I'd like to be able to open all items on a track in one editor without all the blank and disabled areas, so I could just move smoothly through the time line.
It feels very disjointed the way it is, and even though I know I can glue the items together first or click on different items to enable them as I go along, neither solution is ideal, IMO. I like being able to see split items in the arranger, but in the ME I'd like to be able to insert, move, or lengthen notes wherever I want without having to stretch the MIDI item manually or go back to the arrange pane to create a new one.
Coming from SONAR, REAPER's approach to this feels very clunky. MIDI data on a track should be a stream, but sometimes it feels more like I'm jumping from rock to rock!
BTW, I posted an FR that would add "View: Size to fit time selection" to the View options, which would make it a little easier to focus on one area of a longer MIDI item: http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=2630
Thanks-
-Susan
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Yes Midi needs some lovin'...........
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06-28-2010, 08:52 AM
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#20
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 6
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http://www.toofiles.com/en/oip/image...miditrack.html
Here's the sonar midi track view. note all the things i want to know about a track are right there, NOT HIDDEN IN SOME MENU. I know what my I/O, volume, channel, bank, preset instrument name, pitch shift, time, reverb & chorus settings, etc. are at a glance.
It peeves me to no end not to see that info in reaper. WTF, am I just supposed to remember these settings for each of the typical ~20 track in every project? ...each time I load it? Am I supposed to mind-numbingly click on 10 different menus for each track to see this info? The purpose of computers is to eliminate repetitive work, not create it, and reaper creates the tedium of needless clicking by not showing this info. In fact, not only is reapers approach here amateurish, it's hostile. I can not work like this. PERIOD. After I create the basic midi in reaper (thanks to its brilliant variable length mouse click/drag input), I then have to export the midi, and import it into sonar and work with it there because all the rest of the things i want to do with the midi is uber painful in reaper.
If sonar incorporates the var len midi input, then I'm done with reaper and I'll never use it again because I hate programs that hide info from me & make me struggle to see it. On the other hand, if reaper incorporates these basic standard universal paradigms then I'm done with sonar and I'll never use that again. Right now I'm stuck between 2 sequencers and reaper is losing, badly. Sonar's workflow is far far far friendlier because it doesn't treat me like it knows better than I do about what I want to see & how I want to see it. I've used reaper since the start and it started all full of promise, but now years later promise is a joke, let's get some results. And hammering a midi track into an audio track is aggravatingly stupid.
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06-28-2010, 09:04 AM
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#21
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jun 2010
Posts: 6
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One track type for every type of data .... what does that remind me of ... oh yeah, now i remember.......
Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!
[ Adolf Hitler ]
sieg heil!
One law for the lion and the ox is oppression.
[ William Blake ]
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06-28-2010, 09:26 AM
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#22
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jan 2010
Posts: 109
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Quote:
Originally Posted by osranakurwa
One track type for every type of data .... what does that remind me of ... oh yeah, now i remember.......
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Wow, that's your third post ever to this forum?
Welcome to the forum... you obviously know absolutely nothing about the people in the Reaper community. Good luck getting helpful responses here, and enjoy your Sonar I know for myself this will be the last and only time I ever respond to anything you post. Personally, I can't imagine a more offensive post.
Back on topic, I'd love to see some smoother MIDI support, and I'm confident that it will come as the community is able to clearly define the best ways of accomplishing new things through healthy discussions. But Reaper is such a fantastic program that it's very hard to criticize much at all. I usually find out that whatever I don't like is because I wasn't used to Reaper's way of doing something yet, in which case I end up liking the Reaper way better, or I find out there's a setting someplace to make it look/act how I want, or in the extreme case I find the developers to be very responsive to requests from the community of users. Of course, not everyone fits into that community so well, but there are other options for them...
Last edited by BrianW; 06-28-2010 at 10:37 AM.
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06-28-2010, 09:38 AM
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#23
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Administrator
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: NY
Posts: 15,749
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Zero to Godwin in 3 posts. That must be a new record!
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06-28-2010, 10:06 AM
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#24
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: in the middle of the icecube.
Posts: 7,403
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Quote:
Originally Posted by schwa
Zero to Godwin in 3 posts. That must be a new record!
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Good lord. :rolls eyes:
Good call schwa!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
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06-28-2010, 11:39 AM
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#25
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Feb 2009
Posts: 324
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Quote:
Originally Posted by schwa
Zero to Godwin in 3 posts. That must be a new record!
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Well, I certainly don't condone the adolf reference from that poster but....
I think it shows how negatively people react to the way midi is set up in reaper.
Look, when you get in a car, you want a steering wheel and a gas pedal.
People don't want something "innovative and different" compared to what they are used to driving.
People could replace the steering wheel with a joystick, and universally people would be unhappy with it, especially the vast majority of traditional car drivers.
That's exactly what its like using Midi in reaper.
It's completely different, and it's also slower and more tedious to work with than the standard steering wheel.
I'm pretty tired of hearing how Reaper's steering wheel is different and that's somehow an advantage.
There are few if any advantages to it, and tons of downsides, from learning curve, to workflow to real productivity.
I think at a certain point one has to realize that thinking different isn't always helpful and thinking and implementing things traditionally might just really be a good idea in the end.
DF
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06-28-2010, 10:38 AM
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#26
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Perth, W.A.
Posts: 1,708
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Quote:
Originally Posted by osranakurwa
http://www.toofiles.com/en/oip/image...miditrack.html
Here's the sonar midi track view. note all the things i want to know about a track are right there, NOT HIDDEN IN SOME MENU. I know what my I/O, volume, channel, bank, preset instrument name, pitch shift, time, reverb & chorus settings, etc. are at a glance.
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Don't discount this. Cakewalk has this midi track thing nailed for years already. If we improve it, that's cool but until then we have to admit it's the better way to skin a cat!.
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06-28-2010, 12:28 PM
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#27
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 16,031
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Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
In reading this I am mostly confused about what exactly is needed. "midi love" is too subjective. What specifically is it with the midi that is so bad?
I find midi clunky to work with in all hosts. But I haven't noticed anything in reaper yet that is terribly hard to work with.
Finger groove extract/quantize solves that riddle (though it takes a while to understand it.......and I'm still not even close to realizing it's true power)
One particular thing I'd love to see is the tool pallet like cubase
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06-28-2010, 12:55 PM
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#28
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 183
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Having recorded both live performances, and manually tracked things in Reaper's midi editor, for me, there really has only been two things that I, personally have missed / wished it had.
1) Delete duplicate notes.
I was experiencing an oddity where (I believe after quantizing) duplicate notes (same start position, usually same end position)
2) Delete tiny notes.
Recording a midi kick I was noticing a bucketload of these midi notes. In hindsight I probably had my TD3 set to wrong trigger type but, I really wished I could have easily done away with them.
That said, I dunno, I'm a musician, and a programmer (uh oh!) And I find myself being rather proficient in the midi editor. I come from the days of using FastTracker and I have to say it's miles ahead of tracking I can whip up drum beats very quickly, cutting and pasting away, creating glued chunks that I then pick and choose to make my song.
$0.02 thrown in, keep the change
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06-28-2010, 01:05 PM
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#29
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 16,031
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sid Chip
Having recorded both live performances, and manually tracked things in Reaper's midi editor, for me, there really has only been two things that I, personally have missed / wished it had.
1) Delete duplicate notes.
I was experiencing an oddity where (I believe after quantizing) duplicate notes (same start position, usually same end position)
2) Delete tiny notes.
Recording a midi kick I was noticing a bucketload of these midi notes. In hindsight I probably had my TD3 set to wrong trigger type but, I really wished I could have easily done away with them.
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good suggestions
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