User manual

553
How the Score Editor works
Display Quantize
Let’s say you used the Project window to record a figure
with some staccato eighth notes. When you open the
Score Editor, these notes are displayed like this:
This does not look anything like what you intended. Let’s
start with the timing – obviously, you were off at a couple
of places (the third, fourth and last note all seem to be a
32nd note late). You can solve this by quantizing the fig
-
ure, but this would make the passage sound too “stiff”,
and not fit in the musical context. To resolve this problem
the Score Editor employs something called “Display
Quantize”.
Display Quantize is a setting which is used to tell the pro-
gram two things:
• How precise the Score Editor is to be when displaying
the note positions.
• The smallest note values (lengths) you want displayed in
the score.
In the example above, the Display Quantize value seems
to be set to 32nd notes (or a smaller note value).
Let’s say we change the Display Quantize value to six-
teenth notes in the example:
With Display Quantize set to sixteenth notes
OK, now the timing looks right, but the notes still do not
look like what you intended. Maybe you can understand
that from a computer’s point of view, you did play sixteenth
notes, which is why there are a lot of pauses. But that’s
not how you meant it. You still want the track to play back
short notes, because it is a staccato part, but you want
something else “displayed”. Try setting the Display Quan
-
tize value to eighth notes instead:
With Display Quantize set to eighth notes
Now we have eighth notes, as we wanted. All we have to
do now is to add staccato articulation which can be done
with one simple mouse click using the Pencil tool (see the
chapter
“Working with symbols” on page 618) or using
musical articulations (see the chapter “Expression maps
(Cubase only)” on page 419).
How did this work? By setting the Display Quantize value to
eighth notes, you give the program two instructions that
would sound something like this in English: “Display all
notes as if they were on exact eighth note positions, regard
-
less of their actual positions” and “Don’t display any notes
smaller than eighth notes, regardless of how short they are”.
Please note that we used the word “display”, which leads
us to one of the most important messages of this chapter:
Choose your Display Quantize values with care
As explained above, the Display Quantize value for notes
puts a restriction on the smallest note value that can be dis
-
played. Let’s see what happens if we set it to quarter notes:
With Display Quantize set to quarter notes
Oops, this doesn’t look too good. Well of course it doesn’t!
We have now instructed the program that the “smallest”
note that occurs in the piece is a quarter note. We have ex
-
plicitly told it that there are no eighth notes, no sixteenths,
etc. So when the program draws the score on screen (and
on paper) it quantizes the display of all our eighth notes to
quarter note positions, which makes it look like above. But
again, please note that when you hit Play, the passage still
plays as it originally did. The Display Quantize setting only
affects the score image of the recording.
!
Setting a Display Quantize value does not alter the
MIDI notes of your recording in any way, as regular
quantizing does. It only affects how the notes are
displayed in the Score Editor (and nowhere else)!
!
Even if you manually enter notes in the score using
perfect note values, it is very important that you have
your Display Quantize settings right! These values
are not just used for MIDI recordings! If you for ex
-
ample set the Display Quantize value for notes to
quarter notes and start clicking in eighth notes, you
get eighth notes in the track (as MIDI data), but still
only quarter notes in the display!