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Alter Feel - Key Velocities dialog box

How to get there

  1. Choose Window > Advanced Tools. Click the MIDI tool . The MIDI tool menu appears.
  2. Choose MIDI tool > Key Velocities. If you’re in the MIDI tool split-window, select the region you want to affect by dragging through the "graph" display area or by selecting the handles of individual notes whose MIDI data you want to edit.
  3. Select some measures. (If you’re editing a one-staff region, double-click to enter the MIDI tool split-window.)
  4. Choose MIDI tool > Alter Feel.

What it does

The Alter Feel dialog box’s contents change to reflect your MIDI data type selection (key velocities or note durations; the Alter Feel command isn’t available for Continuous Data). Like the Add or Percent Alter commands, the Alter Feel command lets you add a positive or negative number to the velocities or durations of every note in the selected region. However, in the Alter Feel dialog box, you can target individual beats in each measure to receive the alterations.

For example, if you’ve selected Key Velocities, you can specify that the downbeat of each measure in the selected region should be played back with 50% more volume, while the other beats in the measure are unaffected.

When you read the following descriptions of the three text boxes, keep in mind that the number in each text box produces a different effect depending on whether the Absolute or Percent of Original button is selected (see below). For example, to double the key velocity of all downbeats (to make them twice as loud), click Percent of Original and enter 200 in the Downbeats By text box. But to add an equal amount of velocity to all downbeats—thus preserving their relative velocity values—click Absolute and enter a MIDI key velocity value in the Downbeats By text box.

By entering a value in this text box, you can increase or decrease the velocity (or the Start and Stop Times) of only the other beats of the measures in the selected region. (If you’ve selected Note Durations from the MIDI tool menu, you’re editing both the Start Time of each "other beat" and the Stop Time of the previous note.)

The number in this text box represents the amount by which you want to modify every backbeat in the selected region. (If you’ve selected Note Durations from the MIDI tool menu, you’re editing both the Start Time of each backbeat and the Stop Time of the previous note.)

One of the best uses for this option is to slightly delay the playback of every backbeat (by choosing Note Durations from the MIDI tool menu and then choosing the Alter Feel command). For example, by entering 171 into the Backbeats By text box, you create a true triplet swing feel.

See also:

MIDI

MIDI Tool menu

MIDI tool

 

 

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