Programming groups in key editor

there’s no way to do that, right? I mean groups of 5, 7 etc

What do you mean by “groups” in this context?

fitting in a group of 7 16th notes in the duration of a quarter note e.g

Well if you turn snap off you can draw in notes of any duration at any position. Then you could turn that into a quantize preset. After that you can just snap to that new preset.

Probably the easiest way to do this even leaves snap on. Make a one bar midi part and open it in the Key Editor. Enter a regular 16th note at the beginning of the measure. The default resolution is 120 ticks per 16th note, or 480 for a quarter note. So to fit 7 notes into a quarter it takes 480 / 7 = 68.57 ticks. Select the note you created and in the info line set its length to 69 ticks. Then hit ctrl-D six times to copy the note. Because of the fractional ticks the last note will be a few ticks too long. Drag its end so it snaps to the quarter note boundary, making it a bit short. Then select all the notes and duplicate them to fill out the measure. Use that midi part to create a quantize preset.

Alternatively you could have made the first note 68 ticks long and lengthened the last note a bit. You could also have distributed the extra or missing ticks between several notes. But that would be more work and your never going to notice that one of the notes is 3 ticks shorter than the rest.

This all sounds more difficult than it is. It took me about a minute to do it (including looking up the resolution in the manual) and about 10 minutes to write the explanation.

You can change the default resolution in Preferences/MIDI to something that divides evenly. But I wouldn’t do that since it will likely create confusion in the future.

excellent Raino, many thanks, works great!

I actually refined the idea: I created the seven shortened notes and like you said it’s not going to fit perfectly in the end. So choose all the notes with the mouse and then lengthen all of them until you reach the end of the beat. This way you have a perfect group of 7 16th’s! One doesn’t even need a quantize preset cause it takes a second to do this.
So cool!

Assuming I’m reading you right, lengthening all the notes in that manner can cause problems if you have consecutive notes on the same pitch. If you lengthen all the notes at once the end of the first note will be later than beginning of the second note, etc. This doesn’t cause a problem if the notes are different pitches. But if the two notes are for the same pitch the note-off for the first note will also turn off the second note right after it starts. In the sequence below the note-off at 71 turns off both of the previous note-on commands and the note-off at 139 does nothing. So it ends up sounding like the second note is muted.


Tick Action
0 - C3 note-on
68 - C3 note-on
71 - C3 note-off
139 - C3 note-off

right, I noticed the problem, but it doesn’t matter, your approach is fine anyway without this. These groups usually go by pretty fast so no one is gonna notice if they’re not a 100% even. In fact it’s probably a good thing, cause it takes the slightly robotic feel out of it

But why not let the Quantize Setup dialog do all that for you? (it’s really very easy :wink: )…
Let’s take two examples, using quintolets…
Open the Quantize Panel (or the Quantize pane in the MIDi Editor’s Inspector)

  1. 5 beats in a bar of 4/4…
    Set Grid to “1/1”
    Set Tuplet to “5”
    Done! :slight_smile:

  2. Quarter-note subdivided into quintolets…
    Set Grid to “1/4”
    Set Tuplet to “5”
    Done! :slight_smile:

… and you can even use the “Randomize” function in that same panel :wink:.

Great advice, thanks! However, I’m not sure I understand the second example. Do you have Cubase cut up a quarter note into those five or how does that work? You can’t choose that lenght in the Length drop down menu obviously so I had to draw em in without snap on

Well, once you have set up that Quantize preset, it will work on lengths too (either “Quantize lengths” in the Quantize pane of the Key Editor’s Inspector, or from the Edit menu>Advanced Quantize>“Quantize MIDI Event Lengths”. And of course, works on “Snap” too when dragging or cutting etc. :wink:.

EDIT: I should make a slight qualification here…
For this to work the same way on lengths, you must set the “L” (length) dropdown to “Link Quantize”.
But, even with some other setting in the “L” dropdown, your tuplet settings will still be valid for the options “Quantize Ends” and “Quantize Event Ends” (instead of “lengths”)

I can save a quantize preset and then choose it in the Q menu, but then when I have Snap on and draw in a note it’s not the length of the notes in the grid. And I can’t choose it in the L menu either.

Well, still it’s an improvement, would just be the icing on the cake if I could have the exact length plotted in as well instead of drawing and copying

I may be misunderstanding, but why not create this in the drum editor by using the drum tool and “swiping?” ( in the drum editor select the drum tool then left click and while holding it and swipe over the grid.) You can set the quantize, length, velocity etc.

Or is this difficult because you want 7 16th notes instead of 8 16th notes in a measure?

Once that is done close the drum editor and re-open that part with the key editor.

:exclamation: :question: Works perfectly here. Which version of Cubase are you using (not that that should make any difference :wink: )
Btw, yes, you are right, it doesn’t appear in the “L” dropdown, but, so long as you have “Quantize Link” in the “L” dropdown, and the new tuplet preset in the Quantize dropdown, it should work.

Thanks for the info Vic. It reminds me how many nooks and crannies there are in Cubase that I’ve never fully explored. :astonished:

Did your gran’pa never tell you that some stones are better left unturned? :astonished: :laughing:

it’s working fine here too now, don’t know what I did wrong the first time around.

Thanks again to all contributors in this thread, huge step forward for me with this stuff!