Old 01-23-2019, 09:00 AM   #1
djangotsp
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Default MIDI Overdub while in a loop

Say I have two bars on repeat, currently playing, and I try to play a note at 1.1.00 while in "record: MIDI overdub." Chances are I'll play it a fraction early or a fraction late. If I'm early, Reaper records an endless note at the end of bar 2. That's not what I played. It has preserved the timing of my note, but not the length. Bitwig and FL Studio at least cut the note off, but this is still not what I played. I'd like to perform live, so this is a deal breaker for me.

The only DAW I've tested that handles this properly is Ableton, where if the clip is repeating, the note length is preserved, and if you trigger another clip, it cuts the note off. To me that seems like a fair compromise.

I made a video explaining this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtKJ4NM4A40


Last edited by djangotsp; 04-10-2019 at 02:52 AM.
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Old 01-27-2019, 12:03 PM   #2
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Found an example of this happening to someone else: https://youtu.be/ZIXAYhWVr2w?t=176

Side note: I just discovered DrivenByMoss 4 Reaper - incredible script for using Push with Reaper.
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Old 04-10-2019, 02:02 AM   #3
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Bumping this as I added a video to the original post.
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Old 04-12-2019, 04:46 AM   #4
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great video. nice illustration with that bonobo track.

+1, and i would say that this presents itself as a full on bug, even if it was a conscious "this is good enough" decision at time of implementation. "overdub" is the only midi mode i use, so i see this all the time, as well as other issues caused by this.

notes being recorded as infinite-length while recording in overdub mode has caused multiple issues in the past, it's appropriate to fix it so that the note length (while being recorded) chases the overdub/play cursor, rather than appears as an infinite note.

circling back to the thread topic: the mpc1000 did this properly, too. cleverly, it allowed noteoffs to exist outside of the sequence ("item," in REAPER lingo). this way, you could play sequences sequentially, and the note that extended past the first sequence would end sometime DURING the 2nd sequence, even though it didn't appear in that 2nd sequence. like a hangover from last night's party extending into a workday, except a good thing.

the 1k even let you record notes at cursor while the sequence wasn't playing -- and you could watch the note extend by duration of held note while the sequence was stopped. good stuff.

meanwhile, in REAPER, it seems that various limitations are forcing us to create massive, track-long midi items. this is no good for midi zooming. i use item bounds as zoom reference points - i need them and cannot do what Tod and others suggest with track-long midi items. it's ironic that REAPER's "agnostic track" format is leading some of us to create full-on MIDI tracks after all.
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mccrabney scripts: MIDI edits from the Arrange screen ala jjos/MPC sequencer
|sis - - - anacru| isn't what we performed: pls no extra noteons in loop recording
| - - - - - anacru|sis <==this is what we actually performed.

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Old 04-12-2019, 05:03 AM   #5
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https://youtu.be/GtKJ4NM4A40?t=230

you've perfectly demonstrated a major issue here, and shown that you've tried hard to work with the existing functionality to make your workflow effective.

as i see it, REAPER needs to either allow midi noteoffs to exist OUTSIDE of midi items, ala the MPC as described above, or to simply merge these discrete midi items as the overdub play cursor passes each split point.
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mccrabney scripts: MIDI edits from the Arrange screen ala jjos/MPC sequencer
|sis - - - anacru| isn't what we performed: pls no extra noteons in loop recording
| - - - - - anacru|sis <==this is what we actually performed.
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Old 04-12-2019, 06:14 AM   #6
djangotsp
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Thanks for the response @mccrabney! I've been trying to drum up some discussion on multiple platforms for a while now, and starting to think I was crazy.

The way Ableton handles this is pretty ingenious. They handle it with takes, like they do with audio, so if you look inside the MIDI clip, you can see all your previous takes/cycles outside of the loop brace, just like when you pull out the beginning of an audio clip you recorded while cycling in Reaper.

And if a note extends out of the loop brace on the right, you'll see the same note ending in the beginning. As long as that clip is looping, you'll hear the rest of the note. If you jump to another clip, that note gets cut off. It's hard to explain in text, but it "just works" the same way as recording audio "just works."

No DAW is all things to all men - I understand that. Just wanted to put it out there.
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Old 04-12-2019, 08:49 AM   #7
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it becomes very difficult to describe expected workflows that depend on several settings, modes, etc.

have you seen the script "impyc" by snooks? it lets you select/delete recorded notes in realtime, ala lots of hardware/controller-controlled (rather than mouse-driven) sequencers.

give it a look, it doesn't solve your problems here but it looks like something you'd be interested in.
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mccrabney scripts: MIDI edits from the Arrange screen ala jjos/MPC sequencer
|sis - - - anacru| isn't what we performed: pls no extra noteons in loop recording
| - - - - - anacru|sis <==this is what we actually performed.
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