How to force no overlap of MIDI notes (same note)?

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bhuether
Posts: 33
Joined: 09 Oct 2017

28 May 2020

Hi, I often write guitar parts as MIDI then apply some humanizing to note positions. This causes some notes to overlap and the particular Kontakt library (while polyphonic) doesn't behave well when there are two of same note overlapped. In Logic I can easily select MIDI notes and force notes to end at beginning of next (to get rid of overlap). In Reason is there something similar?

thanks,
Brian

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DaveyG
Posts: 2499
Joined: 03 May 2020

28 May 2020

Try F8 - Legato adjustments. The gap thing might do what you want.
Other DAWs just have a "remove overlap" option.

bhuether
Posts: 33
Joined: 09 Oct 2017

28 May 2020

You mean length adjustments in the Tool Window, with the first option (side by side)? Tried that, but doesn't work if I select all notes and try it in one shot. Attached shows before and after.

See what I mean? It doesn't treat notes on a single line in and of themselves. It applies some sort of logic based on legato to see when other notes of different tone are going on/off. But in my case I need the logic to be "Check for overlapping notes - if any two notes of same MIDI note number overlap, shorten one note to remove overlap, and don't make any length adjustments based on other MIDI note numbers".

This way if I have 2 C3 notes overlapping like -------------, then it simply makes it ------- -------- It would only slightly alter start time of the 2nd note (or equivalently end time of first note).

Otherwise to get this to work (which I just did), I would have to choose all pairwise overlapping notes and hit apply in the Tool Window. Too bad Reason doesn't have scripting engine like Reaper...

thanks
Attachments
Screen Shot 2020-05-28 at 10.12.27 AM.png
Screen Shot 2020-05-28 at 10.12.27 AM.png (7.89 KiB) Viewed 1243 times
Screen Shot 2020-05-28 at 10.12.48 AM.png
Screen Shot 2020-05-28 at 10.12.48 AM.png (15.5 KiB) Viewed 1243 times

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DaveyG
Posts: 2499
Joined: 03 May 2020

28 May 2020

I actually meant "legato adjustments" not length adjustments. I would expect that to force the notes to be singular and joined up but it is not something I have tried. The terrible MIDI editing options in Reason is one of the reasons it is not my main DAW!

bhuether
Posts: 33
Joined: 09 Oct 2017

28 May 2020

Yeah, I actually see it is indeed legato adjustments. That is what I used, but just doesn't work well.

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Benedict
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28 May 2020

It is a MIDI thing. When you Humanize, if you use a value of 32 ticks, that means that the note before could be 32 ticks late and the next note, 32 ticks early. 64 ticks of overlap.

So while the F8 gapping tool is not a bad idea it won't do the job without doing the maths.

I generally find it is easier to just drag note ends 1/16th shorter in such a situation as in reality if playing the same note again, you may well have to "take a breath" anyway. Sometimes you have to get a bit more surgical but the reality is that MIDI guitars never equal played guitars anyway so make it my own thing and not someone else's formula.
(they'll come for you either way)

:-)
Benedict Roff-Marsh
Completely burned and gone

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mcatalao
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Joined: 17 Jan 2015

29 May 2020

bhuether wrote:
28 May 2020
Yeah, I actually see it is indeed legato adjustments. That is what I used, but just doesn't work well.
It has to decide what will overlap if you have a lot of chords. You can help it decide, insted of selecting all the stuff, select the notes you don't want to overpal, so that it does the math with some help.

If you have stuff with decay you have to account for that, so maybe the gap settings are important.

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