Anyone have a good way to deal with pick up notes?

[Digital Larry]

Of course I mean the little notes that you play on the "4" of the bar preceding your big downbeat. Lots of times the pickup notes will be at the end of your loop and it's possible to copy them and paste them in at the beginning when you are working on the arrangement. It's a problem with anything that does looping.

I find that a lot of my parts really want pickup notes and I don't see how it's possible to generate these in session view, especially since the pickup notes to play depend on the next part to be played, and aren't really part of the current session, even though they need to be played before the next one starts.

[aseemsuri]

I don't know the exact situation but I think Follow Action on an empty clip might help in this case?

[TLW]

Setting the clip length and clip loop markers to different points can help with this.

For example, let’s say it’s a 4 bar part that needs to be looped with a one-beat note at teh start that doesn’t. Set the clip length to the entire 4 bars + one beat and the loop markers to only loop the four bars. That way the up-beat only gets played once.

Other clips that follow that one can be done the same way - to get their up-beat to play at the right moment requires setting the follow action on the clip before them to a time length that excludes the final beat of the last bar and moves straight to the beginning of the next clip instead.

For example, with 4 bar clip that only plays once and the next clip has an up-beat which needs to replace the last beat of the four bars the follow action needs to happen one beat short of the four bars .

I hope that makes sense. It’s harder to explain than do. Sorting out the correct timing for follow actions can be a bit tricky at times.

[Digital Larry]

Thanks for the tip, I will give it a try.

[Picky-Picasso]

The problem is not having the pickup note play, @TLW, but rather keeping the loop in time WHEN that pickup note plays. I KNOW i solved this in the past, but I can't seem to remember how. IF i have the rhythmic start (i.e. the 1 downbeat) as the start, then the pickup is missed, BUT if I have the pickup as the start, then the rhythm is off.

How do I get the pickup to play, but then the downbeat to still fall on ONE?

[Picky-Picasso]

OK - I remembered the key secret: You've got to adjust the Quantize on that clip with the pickup to at (or below probably too) the pickup length. If Global is set there, that would work too, but don't change something like that deep into a project - results might be undesirable.

In other words on THAT clip, set your start as TLW describes above, but also set the quantize to whatever allows your clip to play BEFORE the beat hits.

[braduro]

Global quantize to the pickup length is a neat approach. Problem is, you'll then introduce a syncopation from the global clock.

I think what you want to do is keep the downbeat "on the one" the same as your metronome. In that case, make your start point a full bar/measure before your loop point, long enough to catch all your pickup notes, and long enough to stay on the rhythm.