This doesn’t 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 1/32nd note late). You could solve this by Quantizing the figure, but this could 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 program two things:
• How precise Score Edit should 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 1/32nd notes (or a smaller note value). When reading the next chapter (and when following the Tutorials) you will find out how to set the Display Quantize value yourself.
Let’s say we change the Display Quantize value to sixteenth notes in the example:With Display Quantize set to sixteenth notes.
OK, now the timing looks right, but the notes still don’t look like you intended. Maybe you can understand that from a computer’s point of view, you did play sixteenth notes, which is why there is 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 Quantize 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 Pen tool (you will find out about this in “Working with Symbols”).
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: “Please, display all notes as if they were on exact eighth note positions, regardless of their actual positions” and “Please, 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:
P 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 Score Edit (and nowhere else)!
As explained above, the Note Display Quantize value puts a restriction on the “smallest” note value that can be displayed. Let’s for a second look 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 explicitly 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 eight notes to quarter note positions, which makes it look like above. But again, please note that when you hit Play, the passage will still play as it originally did. The Display Quantize setting only affects the score image of the recording. One last important note:
P Even if you enter notes using the mouse and input 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 example set Note Display Quantize to quarter notes and start clicking in eight notes, you will get eighth notes in the Track (as MIDI data), but still only quarter notes in the display!
Above we use Display Quantize for notes. There is a similar setting called “Rest” Display Quantize which is used to set the smallest rest to be displayed. Often, this setting is very effective:
What if the original note example looked like this:
As you see, the first note is moved one sixteenth note later. If we change the Display Quantize value for the notes to eighth notes, the score will be displayed like this:
With Note Display Quantize set to eighth notes.
Unfortunately, this moves the first note to the same position as the second, since sixteenth note positions aren’t allowed. We could solve this by inserting extra Display Quantize values within the bar with the Display Quantize tool, but there is a much easier way: Change the Display Quantize value for notes back to sixteenths, but set the Display Quantize value for rests to eighth notes! This tells the program not to display any rests smaller than eighth notes, except when necessary. The result looks like this:
With Note Display Quantize set to sixteenth notes, but Rest Display Quantize set to eighth notes.
How did this work? Well, you instructed the program not to display any rests smaller than eighth notes, except when “necessary”. Since the first note appeared on the second sixteenth note position, it was necessary to put a sixteenth rest at the beginning of the figure. All other rests, however, could be hidden by displaying the notes as eighth notes, and were therefore not “necessary”.
This leads us to the following general guidelines:• Set the Note Display Quantize value according to the “smallest note position” you want to be shown in the score.
For example, if you have notes on odd sixteenth note positions, the Note Display Quantize value should be set to sixteenth notes.
A common setting would be to have Note Display Quantize set to 16 (sixteenth notes) and Rest Display Quantize set to 4 (quarter notes).
Unfortunately, the guidelines above won’t work perfectly in every situation. You may for example have a mix of straight notes and tuplets of different types, or you may wish to display equally long notes with different note values depending on the context. There are several methods you could try:
Automatic Display QuantizeIf your score contains both straight notes and triplets, you can use Auto Display Quantize. When this is activated, Cubase VST tries to “understand” whether the notes should be Display Quantized to straight notes or triplets (see page 71).
Using the Display Quantize ToolWith the “Q” tool, you can insert new Display Quantize values anywhere in the score. Inserted Display Quantize can either have a length (and thus affect only a few beats, for example) or affect the Staff from the insertion point onwards. See page 78.
Permanent Alteration of MIDI DataAs a last resort, you could resize, quantize or move the actual Note Events. However, this would result in the music not playing back like it originally did. Most often, it is possible to get the score to look like you want without altering any MIDI data.
This closes our discussion on the basic concept of Display Quantizing. There are a number of other special situations which require more advanced techniques, which you will find out about in the next chapters. You will also read about other settings which work along the same lines as Display Quantize but each with its own application. These are called “Interpretation Flags”.