Hi
So, today I tried region playlist which seems to be a good tool to try different possible arrangements of the same piece.
But when getting at the end of a selection and having to go to another one, it plays a very tiny bit of the following one, so it sounds awful.
It's all in midi with only one synth sound.

Is there a trick to avoid this?


Longer explanation:
the piece originally goes with this structure:............intro / Verse / Chorus / Outro
thanks to Region playlist, I changed the structure to Verse / intro / Outro / Chorus

But when it arrives at the end of the verse, it plays a bit of the chorus, just before going to the intro, so the chords sound and it's awful ...

 

Apologies in advance if this is way off. I'm just thinking out loud (ignorantly) about what kinds of clues I might look for.

• Are the start and end points of your regions perfectly aligned with the starts and ends of bars? (I can't see why they would need to be but could it be relevant?)
• Are all MIDI notes start and end points perfectly contained within the regions? No notes straddling the region boundaries.
  
• Does snap to grid being on or off make any difference?

I'm fully expecting someone to laugh and say those ideas are irrelevant (clutching at straws) but they are the kind of quick tests I might do if I was just guessing for clues.

 

I don't know what Daw you use, but the other day I saw a video about what you're talking about (if I understood you correctly). That when you finish the verse and want to go to the chorus, you don't do it exactly in time.

 

Thank you for your answer.
Start and end points are perfectly aligned
Midi notes are strictly contained in each section, no overlapping
Snap to grid is on I haven't try without it but it shouldn't do any difference.

Thank you for your answer, I use Reaper, that's why this thread is into Reaper sub forum.
The region playlist, in Reaper, works like scratch pad, but only the playhead changes the order, no data is moved, nor copied. Note that I'm using it with midi and a vsti synth , no audio. So this is most probably part of the problem.

 

Last edited: Jun 28, 2022

oh sorry, I had not seen, I always come from the brother site here

 

I tried with the rendered the track, and as expected, in audio, it didn't give this problem.

So, I went the the first change, and delayed the first chord's notes of 1/128 and it worked, no more problem.

It means that the playhead is not changing fast enough, or that Reaper anticipate the midi order to the plugin.

Anyways, that makes this very interesting region playlist function unfortunately unusable. I hope that the guys behind this SWS Action / extension will update it.

 

Last edited: Jun 28, 2022

Hmm... this is a shot in the dark but buried in Reaper's loads of options there're several called "anticipative processing". Doesn't hurt to check'em.

 

Nice one.
So, perhaps mathematical perfection generated the fault. I suspect whatever maths Reaper used to determine the lengths of regions it has ended up with region durations where the first region ends on exactly the same clock tick as the start of the second region.
Your delaying the notes in the 2nd region was a nice practical solution but the solution Reaper needs is probably to shorten the regions by a few ticks to avoid that perfect overlap.
I see Reaper 'region properties' provides an easy way of precisely editing the lengths-durations of the regions, so an experiment shortening them could provide 'proof of idea'.
But those region properties are expressed in time durations (milliseconds?) - I couldn't see any MIDI friendly representation that would enable us to shorten a region by a 'few clock ticks'. (but as a non expert in Reaper I didn't look very far - and I know Reaper usually has further depth hidden somewhere)

EDIT-Update: well that was me as reaper-newbie. All I had to do was change the time-base-ruler display (or whatever Reaper calls it) to Measures:Beats instead of Minutes:Seconds and now Region Properties are displaying in nice Midi friendly measures-beats-xx format too. (not sure what that last parameter xx is (doesn't seem to be clock ticks - only goes up to 99 - maybe percent of beat???)

So how about a quick Test Oly,
Does shortening the region lengths by a few clock ticks (or a few percent of a beat??) solve the problem?

2nd EDIT-Update: I love these mini educational excursions into Reaper - one day I must commit to using Reaper more seriously. That 3rd parameter xx in Measures:Beats:xx does seem to be 100's of a beat. I see that in the Midi editor you can change that to Measures:Beats:Ticks but that 'ticks' option seems to be confined to the midi editor(s). Even when Measures:Beats:Ticks is being used, within any properties dialog box that I've seen durations are still expressed in Measures:Beats:Hundredths. Quirky but tolerable

 

Last edited: Jun 29, 2022

I frequently join Adjacent Midi blocks together inside that one track. Old habit from when computer based midi sequencers used to really suck. Worth a try, can't hurt much. Control+J in Logic, probably something similar in Reaper. Another silly trick that often works, if you are really stuck, you can insert a new MIDI Note On message/new note; but then assign it's velocity parameter to 0 or as close to it as it will let you. It will kill any lingering effects starting with that note On.

 

Last edited: Jun 29, 2022