One last feature which is common to both the Smart and Pencil tools is split/consolidate note. Add Alt to create a new note at the selected note's position, and add Command (or Ctrl on Windows) to move the end of the note to the selected note start - this is great for creating a legato phrase. This, of course, will have no effect if the note you click on is already selected, since the note will just move to where it already is! Try it with another note selected and you'll get the idea. This toggles a new tool which isn't well understood, probably because if you select a note and click on it, nothing happens! It looks like a MIDI piano-roll note with a vertical line, and what it does is snap the start of the note you click on to the beginning of the selected note. One feature common to both the Smart and Pencil tools is accessed by holding Ctrl (Mac OS) or Start (Windows). This actually offers all of the functionality of the Smart tool, but with a couple of additions and improvements. The alternative, and in my opinion the better choice when editing MIDI, is the Pencil tool. When not held over a note, the Smart tool becomes a crosshair, which can be used to rubber-band groups of notes to select them. Adding Alt allows duplicate notes to be created, and holding Command (or Ctrl on Windows) introduces the velocity trimmer, which, as the name suggests, allows you to alter velocity by dragging up and down on the note rather than by selecting the velocity stalk in the controller lane. Using the Smart tool, you can create notes at the default length and velocity with a double-click, notes can be moved by grabbing from the middle, and when you hover it at either end of a note, the Smart tool becomes a Trim tool in the same way as it does with audio clips. While it is possible to use the Select, Grab and Trim tools in the same way as when editing audio, most people gravitate towards the Smart tool for audio and the Smart tool is a good, but not the only, choice when it comes to editing MIDI. This new and little-known MIDI tool snaps the start of whatever note you click on to the start position of the selected note.Whether you're working in the Edit window or in the dedicated MIDI editor, the choice of which tool to use isn't entirely cut and dried. However, there are still some basic decisions which need to be made first, such as which tool to use for a given job. These have been further refined over the years, and in its current incarnation I find I can do everything I need to do, particularly since the new arrow-based transposition keystrokes were introduced. The release of Pro Tools 8, back in 2008, not only added new virtual instruments to what had been a very meagre offering of stock instruments (Click? That will show the Logic users what they are missing!) but also introduced a raft of new MIDI features. However, until the introduction of the MIDI editor it wasn't possible to view multiple MIDI tracks together on the same piano-roll, which could make arranging strings or brass challenging. It's been possible to edit MIDI from within the Edit window for as long as MIDI has been supported, and it is extremely useful to be able to edit MIDI and audio together on the timeline. Things have changed a lot since I started using Pro Tools back in version 5!įor me there has only ever been one missing MIDI feature serious enough to make me use something else rather than adapt my workflow, and that was a dedicated MIDI editor - which was added in Pro Tools 8, over 10 years ago. I'm very aware that there are some MIDI features which Pro Tools doesn't have, and there are some advanced users who will be frustrated at their omission - but I'm equally sure that for an awful lot of people, the MIDI functions available in Pro Tools are more than adequate. I've often heard it said that "Pro Tools is no good for MIDI." It's one of those statements that used to be repeated so often that it became a shibboleth, and even when the MIDI functionality of Pro Tools was improved, people still subscribed to this so-called 'fact'. Pro Tools' MIDI implementation still has a bad reputation, but the reality is now very different.
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