Editing the Rhythms of Notes

With Composer, you can edit the rhythms of notes, as displayed in the score, independently of how they are actually performed during playback. This way, you can preserve the "feeling" of your original live recording of the notes, or of the originally imported MIDI file. Alternatively, you can also choose to change the performance so that it exactly matches, or more or less closely matches, the notation. Thus, Composer offers you a high degree of control over both the notation and the performance of notes.

edit just the notated locations and duration of notes

edit just the performed attacks and releases of notes

or edit both the notated and performed locations and durations of notes in synchronization

If you are not viewing the Piano Roll Notation, then any changes you make to the location and duration of notes will affect the notation and might or might not affect the actually performed attack and release times of the notes. For example, if you select a quarter note and click the

button or type "8", its notated duration will change to an eighth note. The actually performed duration of that note might or might not also change.

What determines whether the performed timing of a note changes along with the notation when you change the duration or starting location of the note? The answer is: it depends on whether the performed timing of the note is locked or not.

Composer employs the following rules for determining whether the performed timing of a note is locked or not:

Notes imported from a MIDI .mid or Karaoke .kar file are locked or not according to whether you set a check mark for the following option using the Note Performance Locking Options command in the Setup menu:

Similarly, notes recorded from your live performance on a MIDI keyboard are locked or not according to whether you set a check mark for the following option using the Note Performance Locking Options command in the Setup menu:

The performed timings are unlocked for all notes that you add with mouse clicks, or by the Step-Time Recording Method.

The performed timings are locked or unlocked if you explicitly lock or unlock the timings with the Lock Performance command.

Usually you will not need to think about whether the performed timing of a note is locked or not. However, at any time you can view the Piano Roll Notation of the notes, to see which ones are locked. The piano roll rectangles are white for locked notes. The piano roll unlocked notes is either yellow or not shown at all depending on whether you set a check mark for the following option using the Note Performance Locking Options command in the Setup menu:

The topics that follow describe procedures for editing the location and duration of notes: