bayswater wrote:Shooshie wrote:I'm all for MOTU adding an OPTIONAL grid for beginners and others who might find it useful. But as per my previous post, you can get a "grid-like" workflow out of DP if you just start by shifting your selections to the grid, then using the grid-constraints to keep you there. It just isn't that hard to do!
It strange. I've been wondering what all the fuss is about, and why you'd need so called absolute grid when you can set a selected range of notes to move freely to any position, or use quantize to lock them to a grid position. But your solution made me realize why it would be useful to have this feature.
It's not so much about absolute grids as it is about a snap option. If you want the start of a selected range of notes to snap to a position, the grid is a valid option, as is the relative grid, the end of the previous note, a beat within a soundbite, a marker, an absolute time, etc.
If you have to spend a lot of time dragging the start of phrases to specific grid positions, it will get pretty tedious pretty fast having determine and entering positions for every phrase. Quantize will not alway be what you want if you need to keep the relative positions of the notes in the phrase. What if you want to snap the first note in a range to the 13th 16th note in the grid and the next to the third 16th note, and the next to the 11th 16th note, and so on? To much thinking and too much room for mistakes. Isn't it better to have snap-to-grid and let the application figure out the numbers so you can work visually?
I'd never use it. But snap to grid would be a good option for DP.
After posting that, I decided to go see just how hard it would be to enter a lot of notes exactly on the grid. At first, it was easy, because I was using my old methods where I start with one note, then Option-Drag it to duplicate it in each new location. With the grid turned on, they all remain on the grid. But then I tried it with the pencil tool. That's a whole different ball game. Of course, I've been doing this forever, so every one of my entries was close. But for each one to end with 000, 120, 240, 360, or 480/000, that's a bit harder to do. Input quantize doesn't help, either.
I've always played-in whatever I was doing, but in edits, I dragged and/or option-dragged. The pencil tool is not one of my more often-used tools. Why use it, when I can option-drag any item to get a duplicate of it? But I realize my way of working is NOT for everyone, and that an absolute grid would be very desirable. It would be easy to do.
What bugs me about it is all the people who say it's a deal-breaker for them. THAT, I do not understand. But I fully support their cause in getting MOTU to add an absolute grid that is available by Preference, and that switches on and off the same as the relative grid, with the Command Key.
By the way, in my projects, notes almost never appear exactly on a gridline. If too many notes in a chord are on the beat, exactly, I'll nudge a few this way or that, depending on which notes they are, which fingers I'd have played them with, and whether those fingers tend to be ahead or behind the others. To my ears, quantized stuff sounds amateurish and unnatural. I've heard the greatest pianists on earth, and not one of them plays quantized.
There as a subculture in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, which was an outgrowth of jazz, where machine-like precision was of paramount importance. When I arrived at North Texas, the jazz guys were almost superhuman in their rhythmic accuracy, and I aspired to do the same, and did. (you CAN learn to play in perfect time) There were groups out there which were amazing in their ability to nail subdivisions of the beat. Chicago, BS&T, Earth Wind & Fire, Steely Dan, and at least a dozen others, were outstanding. One of the early CDs in the mid 1980s was Nightfly, by Donald Fagan, and I was always impressed with the precision of the playing. There may have been digital editing involved, but that was before the kind of thing we have now, so I don't know. Probably just good playing.
As inspiring as it was, it soon passed, and you don't hear that kind of playing now so much. Nor does anyone really seem to care. But it left me with the ability to play what I want in time with the music. And often what I want is just a little ahead of the beat, but not a full 16th ahead. Grids don't do that. Also, grids don't swing. Still, grids make it very easy to pen a bunch of notes, quickly, on the beat exactly, if that's what you need and want.
When doing something for a score, where everything has to be exactly on the grid, I sometimes use step record. THERE is a perfect grid-based solution! You can do it almost like playing it in, if you just remember your key-commands and change note values before the note actually plays.
Yeah, I've gone nearly 30 years without it, but I, too, admit that a grid would be a good pref-settings feature. I just don't understand when it becomes a deal-breaker. There are other ways.
But there is one very important thing that MOTU could accomplish with the addition of an absolute grid. It would put a sudden and complete end to all the bickering about grids. We'd never have this discussion again!!! I'm all for it, MOTU. If you're listening, please add a preference that changes our relative grid to an absolute grid with snapping.
Thank you,
Shooshie
