Step Record annoyance

[cleamon]

I use step record a lot and up until lately, I've use my mouse to click the note duration and my piano to enter the notes. Very annoying going back and forth to the mouse. SO, I set up "MIDI commands" to switch between durations (notes in a low, unused octave and/or another controller). This keeps me (eyes and fingers) focused on the (piano) keyboard. Unfortunately these commands work like Shift-click does on the step record palette. In other words:

using the mouse,
1) if you click a duration, it turns off (all) the previous and turns on the new one (mutually exclusive selection)
2) if you shift-click a duration, it merely toggles the new one, leaving all others unchanged.

using the "key commands"
keyboard or MIDI behaves like #2. While handy, this is not the behavior I desire by default. It means that most of the time, I have to press 2 keys to change duration, having to remember the previous one(s) to toggle off, keeping an eye on the step record palette to verify my selection.

Is there a workaround to make the "key commands" (especially via MIDI), work like the unshifted mouse click?

Thanks