Steinberg Nuendo 3 Working With MIDI Manual

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The MIDI editors 3 – 81
About this chapter
This chapter describes how to use the Key, Drum and List Editors. 
Please note that a lot of features are identical in these editors (espe-
cially in the Key and Drum Editors) – they are all described in the Key 
Editor section. The sections about the Drum Editor (see page 117) 
and the List Editor (see page 132) describe the specific features of 
these editors only.
Opening a MIDI editor
There are two ways to open a MIDI editor:
• Select one or several parts (or a MIDI track, with no parts selected) and select 
Open Key Editor, Open Score Editor, Open Drum Editor or Open List Editor 
from the MIDI menu (or use the corresponding key command).
The selected parts (or all parts on the track, if no part was selected) will open in the 
chosen editor.
• Double click a part.
Which editor opens depends on the settings in the Preferences dialog (Event Display–
MIDI page):
Double clicking will open the editor selected on the Default Edit Action pop-up menu. 
However, if the option “Edit as Drums when Drum Map is assigned” is activated and 
a drum map is selected for the edited track (see page 128), the Drum Editor will 
open. This way you can double click to open the Key Editor (or the Score Editor or 
List Editor, depending on your preferences) but drum tracks will automatically open in 
the Drum Editor.  
						

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3 – 82 The MIDI editors
• If the part you open for editing is a shared copy, any editing you perform 
will affect all shared copies of this part. 
Shared copies are created by pressing [Alt]/[Option]+[Shift] and dragging, or by using 
the Repeat function with the “Shared copies” option activated. In the Project window, 
shared copies are indicated by the part name in italics and an icon in the right corner of 
the part (see the chapter “The Project window” in the Operation Manual).
Handling several parts
When you open a MIDI editor with several parts (or a MIDI track con-
taining several parts) selected, you might find it somewhat hard to get 
an overlook of the different parts when editing.
If so, the editor toolbar features a few functions to make working with 
multiple parts easier and more comprehensive:
•The Part List menu lists all parts that were selected when you opened 
the editor (or all parts on the track, if no parts were selected), and lets 
you select which part should be active for editing.
When you select a part from the list, it is automatically made active and centered in the 
note display.
• Note that it is also possible to activate a part by using the Arrow tool and 
clicking on an event in a part.  
						

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•The button “Edit Active Part Only” lets you restrict editing operations 
to the active part only.
If you for example select “All” from the Select submenu on the Edit menu with this op-
tion activated, only events in the active part will be selected. Similarly, if you select notes 
by dragging with the Arrow tool (making a selection rectangle), only the notes in the ac-
tive part will be selected.
“Edit Active Part Only” activated on the toolbar.
•You can zoom in on the active part so that it fills the screen by select-
ing “Zoom to Event” from the Zoom submenu on the Edit menu.
•The button “Show Part Borders” can be used if you want to see clearly 
defined borders for the active part.
When this is activated, all parts except the active one are grayed out, making the bor-
ders easily discernible. In the Key Editor, there are also two “markers” in the ruler with 
the name of the active part, marking its beginning and end. These can be moved freely 
to change the size of the part.
“Show Part Borders” activated on the toolbar.
•It is possible to cycle between parts, making them active, with key 
commands.
In the Key Commands dialog – Edit category, there are two functions: “Activate Next 
Part” and “Activate Previous Part”. If you assign key commands to these, you can use 
them to cycle between parts in the editors. Please refer to the chapter “Key commands” 
in the Operation Manual for instructions on how to set up key commands.   
						

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3 – 84 The MIDI editors
The Key Editor – Overview 
The toolbar
As in other windows, the toolbar contains tools and various settings. 
The user can configure what toolbar items should be shown or hidden 
and store/recall different toolbar configurations – see the chapter 
“Customizing” in the Operation Manual.
Show/Hide Info line Solo Editor button Key Editor tools
Autoscroll on/offAudition on/off
Part listShow/Hide Part borders
Edit active part only
Nudge ToolsTranspose Palette
Snap on/off
Velocity for inserted notes
Grid modes    
						

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The info line
The info line shows information about selected MIDI notes. You can 
edit all values on the info line using regular value editing (see page 
100 for details). Length and position values are displayed in the for-
mat currently selected for the ruler (see below).
•To hide or show the info line, click the icon in the toolbar.
The ruler
The ruler shows the time line, by default in the display format selected 
on the Transport panel. You can select a separate format for a MIDI ed-
itor ruler by clicking the arrow button to the right of it and selecting an 
option from the pop-up menu that appears. For a list of the available for-
mats, see the chapter “The Project window” in the Operation Manual.
Quantize settings Step Input
Midi InputStep/Midi input controls
Color pop-up menu
Independent track loop on/off
Loop range (see page 91).
Chord recognition 
display Mouse pointer display: Current 
pitch- and meter position
Open Device 
Button    
						

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3 – 86 The MIDI editors
At the bottom of the pop-up menu there are two additional items:
•If “Time Linear” is selected, the ruler, note display and controller display 
will be linear in relation to time.
This means that if the ruler shows bars and beats, the distance between the bar lines 
will vary depending on the tempo.
•If “Bars+Beats Linear” is selected, the ruler, note display and control-
ler display will be linear in relation to tempo.
I.e. if the ruler shows bars and beats, the distance between beats will be constant.
In most cases, you would probably set the display format to 
“Bars+Beats” in “Bars+Beats Linear” mode when editing MIDI.  
						

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The MIDI editors 3 – 87
The note display
The note display is the main area in the Key Editor. It contains a grid, in 
which MIDI notes are shown as boxes. The width of a box corresponds 
to the note length, and the vertical position of a box corresponds to the 
note number (pitch), with higher notes higher up in the grid. The piano 
keyboard to the left serves as a guide for finding the right note number.
The chord recognition function
Nuendo features a handy chord recognition function that helps you 
identify chords in the key editor note display. To find out which chord 
some simultaneously played notes make up, place the project cursor 
over the notes. All MIDI notes currently “touched” by the project cursor 
are analyzed and the chord recognition display in the toolbar shows 
you which chord the notes form.
In the picture above, the project cursor touches the notes C, Eb and G. As shown 
in the chord recognition display, this results in a C minor chord.   
						

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The controller display
The area at the bottom of the Key Editor window is the controller dis-
play. This consists of one or several controller lanes, each showing 
one of the following properties or event types:
• Velocity values of the notes.
• Pitch Bend events.
• Aftertouch events.
• Poly Pressure events.
• Program Change events.
• Any type of continuous controller event.
To change the size of the controller display, drag the divider between 
the controller display and the note display. This will make the control-
ler display larger and the note display smaller, or vice versa.
Velocity values are shown as vertical bars in the controller display, 
with higher bars corresponding to higher velocity values:
Each velocity bar corresponds to a note in the note display.   
						

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Events in the controller display (that is, anything other than velocity 
values) are shown as “blocks”, the heights of which correspond to the 
“values” of the events. However, events that have been recorded (or 
drawn with a low quantize value) may appear more like “filled curves”, 
simply because they are positioned very closely:
If you zoom in on the upper “curve”, you will find that it consists of separate events.
• Unlike notes, events in the controller display have no length. The value 
of an event in the display is “valid” until the start of the next event:
For a description of editing in the controller display, see page 104.
If you delete the second event……the first event will be “valid” until 
the start of the third event.     
						

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Key Editor operations
Zooming
Zooming in the Key Editor is done according to the standard zoom 
procedures, using the zoom sliders, the Zoom tool or the Zoom sub-
menu on the Edit menu.
•When you drag a rectangle with the Zoom tool, the result depends on 
the option “Zoom Tool Standard Mode: Horizontal Zooming Only” in 
the Preferences dialog (Editing page).
If this is on, the window will only be zoomed horizontally; if not, the window will be 
zoomed both horizontally and vertically.
Playing back
You can play back your music as usual when working in a MIDI editor. 
There are a couple of features making it easier to edit during playback:
Solo button
If you activate the Solo button, only the edited MIDI parts will be heard 
during regular playback.
Autoscroll
As described in the chapter “The Project window” in the Operation 
Manual, the Autoscroll function makes the window “follow” the project 
cursor during playback, so that the current play position is visible at all 
times. However, when you are working in a MIDI editor, you may want 
to deactivate Autoscroll – this way, the events you are working with 
will stay visible.