Retrospective Midi Recording Alignment

This is a great feature, sort of... I love performing bits live, spur of the moment and this has so much potential for midi composition. Where I'm running into an issue is getting the performance that was captured to line up with bars/beats and tempo. It seems like the only way to get retrospective recording to work is by playing over a click, but thats not what I want to do.

Let's say I play a little, and retroactively record it, I can always slide/copy & paste the bit I want to keep so it starts on beat, that work... then I'd need to change the tempo of the grid so it matches the bit I played... but you can't do that when the tempo is not correct in the first place, it speeds up/slows down your original off time performance, so getting any sort of Bar/beat alignment seems almost impossible.

Anybody have any ideas that might make this work?

This is going to be a problem for a lot of people who realize it isn't really what is written on the can.

I just keep hearing "git good" will become the response...

or

"edit it on the grid"

but both are kind of in the yeah okay... great... but this feature doesn't help save me time...

Personally... if I'm in this situation... I'm probably going to write the track to audio then chop... sure it's not what you're looking for... but who's got time for "git good" whatever that may mean... and if I have to edit the notes in the grid view I might as well just be in step sequencer mode or writing them in with pencil in the first place.

Might be worth checking out the Bastl Instruments Midi Looper... don't think it is out yet, but I suspect it is going to help do some things that the retrospective midi recording alignment is not capable of doing...

Haven't tried it myself yet but if your jamming with existing tracks you should be reasonably in time?
Can you not quantise all notes in the pattern via tc ?

Wife's got a uni paper due and I've been banned from the office for a few days no time to really test 2.8 other than a quick play last night

skylab001 wrote:This is a great feature, sort of... I love performing bits live, spur of the moment and this has so much potential for midi composition. Where I'm running into an issue is getting the performance that was captured to line up with bars/beats and tempo. It seems like the only way to get retrospective recording to work is by playing over a click, but thats not what I want to do.

Let's say I play a little, and retroactively record it, I can always slide/copy & paste the bit I want to keep so it starts on beat, that work... then I'd need to change the tempo of the grid so it matches the bit I played... but you can't do that when the tempo is not correct in the first place, it speeds up/slows down your original off time performance, so getting any sort of Bar/beat alignment seems almost impossible.

Anybody have any ideas that might make this work?

There’s always going to be some sort of manual alignment needed after you print your idea to the sequencer grid. I just use the Q-links to drag my notes into the grid and then time correct afterwards. Not a big deal, really. Does what it says on the tin.

I think my post may have been slightly misunderstood, it’s not about quantization or needing to ‘git good’ per say. It’s just about wanting to set the tempo and meter after I have played my part. I actually have very solid tempo, so lining up my performance to a tempo afterwards is easy. playing to a click is no issue. I have been doing it this way via sampling for years, but being able to go in a tweak some of the midi would be even better.

it’s about composing for feel, capturing the part in the moment, and then setting the proper tempo and meter.

I re-read your original post, and I'm still playing with what Retrospective Record means here myself... I just don't think it is made for the use case of playing without playing to a tempo... and I'll stand by my original statement of check out https://www.musictech.net/news/gear/bastl-instruments-midi-looper/ or

I totally agree that it is not meant for my intended purposes but since it’s 90% there I figured there are always workarounds and if I can’t figure it out then trying the collective minds of the interwebs is a a good place to start.

I did look into the bastl midi looper. Unfortunately it’s just another piece of gear, ableton 10 has retrospective record as well, but it’s just more gear or another DAW...