Absolute beginners questions

[Wire57]

Hi.
It is quite sticky, I think, if you need a funtion that should actually be very basic and simple, but you do not find out how to.
3 examples for right now:
1) When playing back, the clips I see should move with playing. I always see after a few measures the timeline leaving the screen, and I have to transport the visible window manually. It must be simple to change that.
2) I have several MIDI tracks, for some the range of notes from low to high is zoomed out, for some I only see 3 or 4 keys. If I right click the track, I can only make the entire track appear smaller or bigger, but the displayed range of notes remains always the same. Again, that must be simple to find out how to changes the displayed range of notes, but I need hours and hours to browse the entire ProTools Reference file because I do not know the keyword to search for this.
3) One of the MIDI tracks is the drum track. I had inserted BFD as instrument, and it plays fine. I can hear every note I see in the MIDI editor window. However in the track view the drum clip remains invisible. There is no clip, although I have been editing it in the MIDI editor.
Again, I know that are all absolute beginners questions, but without having any cue how to search for these times I fell rather helpless. (When I had tried out, years ago, to start with PT 8, I had abandoned that just because of this feeling to be unable to search for basic things. PT is absolutely fine, but not very intuitive for newbies. I do not recall having had so many basic issues when I changed to Cakewalk in those times. And now I am spoiled.
Maybe this is also because I was used to expressions and terms in German, and I do not always know the correct equivalent term in English. All help files being in English, that might make some things sticky for me.)

[joachim]

Concerning 1) :

Choose in Options - Edit Window Scrolling - "No Scrolling / After Playback / Page / Continuous" the prefrerred behaviour.

Manuall Edit Window Scrolling : Alt + Page down / Page up works also.
(Can be assigned to a programmable mouse, I use Scrollwheel tilt/press to left and right.)

[Wire57]

Originally Posted by joachim

Concerning 1) :

Choose in Options - Edit Window Scrolling - "No Scrolling / After Playback / Page / Continuous" the prefrerred behaviour.

Manuall Edit Window Scrolling : Alt + Page down / Page up works also.
(Can be assigned to a programmable mouse, I use Scrollwheel tilt/press to left and right.)

Thanks, Joachim, partly I could do the thing.
Please see picture for further comments.
I'd be happy to learn about my point 2) as well. Sorry. I could provide an image for what I am talking about as well, if wished.
To Point 3) The drum track appears in the Instrument track "BFD", although I had thought to have started writing into the MIDI track "BFD". Well, as I do not 2 different drum tracks simultaneously, that's perfect for me.

[ChuckS]

2) and 3) You're probably in Clip view. In order to set Zoom levels and scrolling, you need to change the view to Notes (or whatever you want to edit). Read page 579 of the PT 12.8 Reference Guide. If that page is not correct for your version, just search on 'zoom midi'.

[Wire57]

Originally Posted by ChuckS

2) and 3) You're probably in Clip view. In order to set Zoom levels and scrolling, you need to change the view to Notes (or whatever you want to edit). Read page 579 of the PT 12.8 Reference Guide. If that page is not correct for your version, just search on 'zoom midi'.

Thanks for following up.
For ProTools 12 there are several hits in the reference, page 587, "Audio and MIDI Zoom In and Out Buttons", Page 590 "Vertical Zooming In or Out of All
Audio Tracks Continuously", 594, "Zooming with a Scroll Wheel" (my Microsoft Mouse has a scroll wheel), but this only relates to the MIDI Editor pane.
I will add another screenshot, in case other newbies could find that helpful. Question 2 is marked with the red arrows. I do not find that any of the shortcuts described in the reference file are of any effect. HOwever, I got several zooming levels here as you can see.
Question 3 is solved, I found out accidentally. That's on the right side, the orange lines.

[ChuckS]

Your MIDI 3 and 4 are in Clips view. I don't know what view MIDI 2 is in (can't read it), but I see the scroll arrows above and below the piano keys. If you ctrl-shft-[ or ctrl-shift-] it should change the range of the piano keys on MIDI 2. At least I think that's what you want to do.

[Wire57]

Originally Posted by ChuckS

Your MIDI 3 and 4 are in Clips view. I don't know what view MIDI 2 is in (can't read it), but I see the scroll arrows above and below the piano keys. If you ctrl-shft-[ or ctrl-shift-] it should change the range of the piano keys on MIDI 2. At least I think that's what you want to do.

Thanks,ChuckS,
MIDI 2 had been in "Notes View" - strange enough, it looked just as the tracks below in "Clip View".
So I changed MIDI 2 from Notes to Clips View, and the key range changed.
However, there are two more tracks in Clip View, and there the keys are quite big, the range very small. So I tried out there to crtl-shift-[and nothing happened. By the way, to get [ you have to use crtl-Alt-8. Those shortcuts in ProTools are quite puzzeling sometimes. Is there another way of doing this, please?

[ChuckS]

Once you have a MIDI track in Notes view, you can zoom and scroll a number of ways. You have the zoom tools at the top and side of the edit windows, keyboard shortcuts and mouse options. If those don't work for you, then I guess I'm not sure what you're trying to do. I'm completely lost with ctrl-alt-8 thing.

[Wire57]

After some training I seem to get on a bit with ProTools. But still I keep hanging on features in MIDI editing that I grew used to with my old Cakewalk Sonar, which were handled very different from PT.
In Sonar, you had 3 ways of using copy and paste.
You copy a selection of notes (which they call "clip") and
a) paste them where you want to insert them, and all what was there before will be shifted to the end of the pasted "clip"
b) paste them where you want to insert them, and all what was there before will be overwritten
c) paste them where you want to insert them, and all what was there before will be merged with the inserted clip.
Option c) is very interesting when creating drum tracks like the way I love to do.
I first have a basic beat in the kick, add the snare: I edit a 4-bar-pattern for the snare and by copy&paste (merging) I can "loop" the snare pattern without overwriting the kick track I previously had made.
Then I would create a new 4-bar pattern for Hihat, and proceed by copy&paste (merging), so kick and snare will remain, but hihat being added.
And so on. Of course, the use of cymbals and toms will be more or less be reserved to forming a time structure of the drum track concerning the main song structure of "Verse", "chorus", and "bridge" (or the space for instrumental solo).
Now is this kind of thing possible in PT, or would I have to first build my 4-bar cell completely and loop that as much as I need?
And, if it's possible as I am used to, how (or where) do I toggle this "paste" function, please?
Thankx.

[Stig Eliassen]

a) Paste in Shuffle edit mode (F1-F4 are the edit modes)
b) Normal pasting does that
c) Alt+M to merge notes