Ability to display both sharps & flats in key editor

I’d like to see a thread comparing the pros and cons, strengths and weakness, features and benefits, of using Score Editor vs. Key Editor. That would be a topic for another thread, however.

If we’re working in the world of Midi editing, as so many of us do, not having our Flat Keys and Flat Chords in the Editors really is a place Cubase needs to be improved. Cubase does wonderful harmony and transpositions, it just needs to include Flat notes, Flat Keys and Flat Chords and currently does not. The Chord Track sort of gets things right, but I still have to enter A#7 for Bb7 and so on. I find it particularly troubling when editing melodic lines in the key editor.

What’s odd is that Cubase does put emphasis on tonality and offers a wealth of impressive pitch manipulation tools, and transposition tools, but yet has this one oddity with the lack of the flats.

Whatever harmonic engine is driving all this should be updated so it includes the Flat Notes in all relevant places within the program starting with the Key Editor.

I imagine this lack has to do with some barrier to programming it, not a philosophical thing.
It looks like a simple thing, but when fonts are involved there’s another layer of complexity.

I think that comparison is an extremely personal thing. I use the Key Editor with note labels off, and I can tell what note I am looking at from the background, or by hearing it.

Yeah, but you’ve got real musical skills. Think about the rest of us. :open_mouth:

+1 and true for all users.

No matter if the user is working with ‘loops & beats’ for a rave
or ‘notation & orchestration’ for a community event;
we all spend $$ to be able to ‘use’ this amazing product.

All aspects of the programme should work as well as possible.

As Steve posted,
the Steiny developers are aware of this issue (Yea!)
but in all fairness, this thread has been around for a looooooong time.

C’mon Steiny. ‘get on the good foot’ —james brown
{‘-’}

I meant the background with the piano roll, with the different color keys. Maybe others prefer a nice bagel, or croissant, though, and that’s okay

But seriously, it was in the context of students entering notes from sheet music.

In any case, I do want actual flats– not just the Key Editor, but in all the menus and fields that only display sharp notes. And I would dearly love to see Cubase understand tonality more globally, and not just in relation to the chord track and score editor.

Let’s see what Cubase 9 brings, but tbh, I’m not holding my breath, and I am not going be angry about it, cause that’s just pointless. (you see, I am becoming more adaptive in my old age. :unamused: )

Well really I just replied to increase the post-count/issue importance of the thread (and acknowledge your skills, I have seen the video).

I tend to agree with you that it must be a real problem in the code since they know folks want this, it makes musical sense and it is aligned with recent additions like the Chord Track & Pads. I’m sure they want to fix this, which implies there is a significant barrier to doing so. That said, as a recovering programmer it seems like someone must have made a really dumb design decision long ago for this to be difficult to fix.

I’ll trying working with the labels off! Good suggestion. :slight_smile: It might just be easier and we do have the keyboard display to the left. I’ll give that a try, Steve.

Also if you set the note colors to the Chord Track they’ll get visual feedback about how the notes they are entering fit into the harmonic structure (assuming you have scale & chord info in the track).

I find when I’m use the right side of the Key Editor window it is easy to incorrectly see which lane lines up with the keyboard on the left. Guess I should take a look at the color preferences for this.

The part where this bothers me the most is when it comes to key selection. For instance if you set the pitch corrector plugin to a major key, only C# and F# are keys the rest have to be flat. It always takes me a second to “translate”. After studying music and years of practical experience it’s hard to adapt to all the mislabeling.

I just entered an A-flat major chord in the key editor and the score editor puts it in as G# C E-flat (facepalm). You’ll only find a G# major chord in C# major, not exactly a popular key. I know it’s all enharmonic etc. and easily changed on the score, but it’s very impractical.

It’s a bit like referring to someone from Europe as being “non-non-European” . Technically it’s correct but you’ll always have to think twice to work out whats going on.

To be fair the score editor does not suffer from the same problems in this regard as does the key editor.

The score editor follows regular Musical rules, and also allows for customization of accidentals.

True, the score editor does take some musical rules into account, and like I mentioned that accidentals are easily fixable, but the fact that it will put a G# and E-flat in the same chord shows Cubase’s preference for sharps.

Even if your’re working in C major the likelihood of using a G# maj instead of A-flat is slim because it will be borrowed from the parallel minor.

Among all the popular DAWs Cubase has always been head and shoulders above any other in catering for the needs of composers and musicians, with a top notch score editor and unparalleled midi editing and processing functions. Which is why I’ve been using it for the past 17 years.

This is why all the mislabeling throughout Cubase bothers me. Surely if you could setup your project root key to E-flat instead of D# like now, creating the subsequent filter to display the proper notes in the key editor would be less hassle for the dev team.

Well. the Project Root Key in Cubase has nothing do with note naming.

The issue with note names is present in lists, Info Line, and Key and List Editors. The Score editor definitely does not mislabel notes. You are seeing G# and Eb in C Major due to the settings in Score Settings>Project>Accidentals.

+1 to possibility to display flats in Key Editor and everywhere else - as well as controlling whether sharps or flats are shown with key signature markers in Event Display. It’d make things clearer when working in diatonic paradigm.

In addition to that, +1 to possibility to use custom note names (for things like numeric pitch class notation) and perhaps a 12-pitch staff. Would be very interesting to try working in numeric pitch class paradigm and see where it leads.

+1
Any news about this?

No, but Steinberg generally doesn’t comment about what’s in an update until it is released. So no news is the expected situation. However this has been on various request lists for so long that there is speculation that there is something funky deep in the code that makes resolving this difficult. So we need to keep asking, but not get our hopes up. :unamused:

I am optimistic. :sunglasses:

Probably because you’re green while I’m black & white.

+1

Done! in C9.