Entering exact MIDI automation value (instead of pencil) ?

Under a MIDI track's piano roll lies the automation track. There, automation values can be entered with the pencil tool. For my current purpose (tuning some TR-8 drums, for example), I want to easily set an automation parameter to an exact value for the whole track.

I found that tapping and holding the pencil tool in a certain way, and then not releasing, produces a flat line that I can carefully move up and down to the exact value I want. So I found a way, but it is slow because fine adjustment is fiddly - and often the pencil tool decides that I actually want to draw a curve, so I have to delete and try again. Attempts with the step sequencer yield similar results.

What I would love is to select the target parameter, enter the value and be done with it. I haven't found that sort of functionality... Does anything approaching it exists ? Is the mysterious behaviour of the pencil tool that under uncertain conditions produce a flat line documented somewhere ?

A technique I have found useful is using the eraser tool: a "curve" is just a sufficient number of short flat sections to give the appearance of a curve - just discrete value points... So erasing all but one of them produces a flat line. Not the ideal way I imagined, but it speeds up the pencil tool data entry.

Hello,

2 ways :

Open the step sequencer, open the parameter selector ( defaults to « velocity » ) , choose yours, done. The qlinks allows to select quickly tbe good value, displayed in the upper left.
Use « shift » to smoother the qlink.
Cons: you may have to skip bars for a while, depending on where your event is in the timeline.

Or

Open the « list editor », and tweak your params here.
Use the « follow the playhead » and play/stop your sequence to avoid scrolling for hours.

Tips found by reading the MPC bible…

ivato wrote:Open the « list editor », and tweak your params here

Thanks, using List Edit for this is a very good approximation of what I wanted - it does the job almost painlessly. It'll do !

This would be nearly perfect if the List Edit's Track Automation view could be filtered by its "Mod Type" field - with several automations including some that vary continuously, the Track Automation view alone gets cluttered fast. But still, this works.

To declutter, I made a separate track to set the fixed MIDI CC parameters (that I now set in the List Edit), distinct from the track that actually plays music (with automation recording, or the pencil tool in the piano roll's automation panel)... Good - a sane workflow.