Note chasing on clip and loop start points

This setting would allow notes whose note-on events are outside the clip or loop boundary to sound as long as the note’s extent is substantially inside the clip or loop.

What problem(s) would this feature resolve?

Unquantized clips with adjusted boundaries may contain notes whose note-on events miss the clip or loop start point by an arbitrarily tiny amount. Currently, such notes won’t sound. Unless the player is habitually dragging, this means 50%+ of notes on the first beat, a very common occurrence.

Manual adjustment / quantization of the note-on events shouldn’t be required.

As a sidenote, the UI doesn’t reflect this condition: such notes aren’t greyed out or visually distinguished, so identifying the problem in advance may already require zooming and pixel hunting.

My suggestion is a setting similar to Note Chase, except it wouldn’t just be applied at the start of playback, but every time the playhead entered a clip or wrapped around a loop.

Since the opposite condition (a note-off event just about making it into the start of a clip) would cause unintended notes to sound, the straightforward solution would be to play notes whose extent overlaps the clip or loop region by at least 50%. If they are mostly in the clip, they are part of the clip. If they mostly aren’t, they aren’t.

Notes that wrap around a loop would play as usual and would not be re-triggered, since their note-on event wasn’t missing.

How does this feature fit in Bitwig as a product?

As a simple setting: Clip note chase on/off.

Is there already an alternative way to achieve this on Bitwig?

No.

Could it be implemented using Bitwig components or APIs, without Bitwig team’s support?

No.

Could it be provided by a VST or something else reasonably integrated with Bitwig?

No.

Are there other products that offer this feature?

I don’t know.

Relevant links (optional)

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Hi @paipa this discussion looks related: Simpler handling of unquantized notes and those before a clip

Hi @icaria36 you’re right, thank you for the link. Unfortunately it looks like that thread didn’t really go anywhere either.

Do i understand your feature request correctly: It seems, that this note chase never is relevant for actual live-recording, because notes you dont play on the ONE (=within the clip boundaries) won’t be part of the clip anyway? They’re “lost” before the start of the ONE of the bar.

Or does your feature request also count for live recording, and you want clips to “include” notes which were played some milliseconds before the ONE?

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@paipa maybe a screenshot would help explaining your request?

Yes, you understand it well. This isn’t a live recording issue, it’s an issue when setting clip boundaries of longer clips.

Say, I have a clip and I want to create a loop out of bars 5-6-7-8, so I adjust the endpoints accordingly. But if the first note happens go on at 4.4.4.99, that note won’t sound. I have to manually snap the damn note to 5.1.1.1.

I can’t add a screenshot because I’ve uninstalled Bitwig after my trial expired. I just saw 5.0 came out though, so I’ll definitely give it another try soon.