How come DAWs can't do a "below zero" start?

I've noticed that I have to start all my songs on measure 2 or 3 because the opening chords of most instruments are actually strummed or struck before the actual start of measure 1.
 
If I were to start any song with my acoustic guitar on measure 1, it would be cut off because the actual strum begins a few milliseconds prior to the song start.
 
How come DAWs do not take this very important phenomenon into account? It always bugs me to have to start songs on a later measure in order to avoid that sound cutoff.

Then measure numbers are purely arbitrary, why not start all your recordings at measure 25, or measure 157, what is so special about measure 1?

To be slightly more serious I do understand your point, and a lot of scores will include notes in a bar before measure one as a sort of pre-amble. This makes it technically impossible to makes the measure numbers match between printed score and your DAW, but then I ask, why was the score printed like that? Why din't they call those first few notes measure 1?

At the end of the day it may be a little annoying, but it doesn't make any difference to your recording.

SimonFenner


Because musically you are starting in measure 1, but you are not using all of the beats in the measure. If you think about it how can you record music into a measure before measure 1? It's just not possible cos it doesn't exist. So the DAW is not at fault. It's no different to playing live where the drummer gives you a count in and you start before he has completed this!

You'll just have to accept that some of your songs will have some silent beats in measure 1.

+1 

Yeah, it would be nice to be able to do this. This seems to come up regularly, but it doesn't seem to be much of a priority. I guess based on your thread title that this is the case in other platforms as well?

For me, the way to deal with it is to use markers.

'Just curious, if you could start before measure 1 how would you then cut and paste from the beginning of the song when editing?

Karyn


Then measure numbers are purely arbitrary, why not start all your recordings at measure 25, or measure 157, what is so special about measure 1?

If you are sequencing against printed music that already has measure numbers, it would be way handy to have the numbers match up instead of having to add an offset.

I for one, would love the option of starting on measure zero (or -1 or -2 for that matter).

I agree, that feature will be a very nice adition.

Regards

Bar 4 or 8..old school time code !!

Hi Mike-

REAPER has been able to do this for quite a while.

-Susan

groovey1


Yeah, it would be nice to be able to do this. This seems to come up regularly, but it doesn't seem to be much of a priority. I guess based on your thread title that this is the case in other platforms as well?

For me, the way to deal with it is to use markers.

I don't understand - what you're asking for is pick up notes - 

so an easy example would be - if you have a 2 beat pick up top start the song - you can use measure one beats 3 and 4 and leave beats 1 and 2 blank 


OR another example would be 


to actually insert a 2 four bar as measure one if your dealing with a 2 bear pick up 




so yeah -- technically  and in music theory a few pick up notes are not considered a whole measure and what beats you didn't  use in music theory are suppose to be theoretically  tagged on the end - - if you want to get down to music theory rules I get that ....  

but in the case of recording this works....... the examples above works very well and  audibly you cant tell that that its in the computer as a measure and not a pick up note - it still SOUNDS like a pick up  




my concern MIGHT be if I was actually printing out the midi parts and wanted the pick up notes printed as pick up notes and not measures - 


but lets be honest - in terms of music notation Sonar is crap and I suggest a 99 dollar music program called "Print Music: that blows notation in sonar away -- or for much  more money   something like "Finale"  or "Sibilius" however you spell it "Sibilius" 


Have a good weekend everyone! 

Even Powertracks from PG music does this it has a feature called offset. The measure can look something like -2 -1 0 1 2 3

Are you sure Sonar does not have a feature like this somewhere?

I started with Cakewalk 2.0 for DOS, it didn't have "pre-roll", either. But if you played MIDI notes during the count-in, it would capture those, and place them all at 1:01:000, which is still does, effectively quantizing that first hit. But at least you don;t lose it like you do with audio.
 
My guess is that adding pre-roll (or whatever you want to call it) will mess with so many pieces of code that depend on where the audio clock starts in relation to the MBT timeline that, Cakewalk have been avoiding it, even though it's a quite popular feature request, and there are no doubt Cakewalk staffers who would like to have it.

Negative measures... Count me in!

Somewhat tangential to the discussion:

Has anyone else noticed that Sonar X1 (and earlier) can't actually play a MIDI note that starts at 1:01:000 ?
If I set up Bar 1 to be a four beat count-in, and then rewind to start and press PLAY, I do not hear the first beat.

So, to work around this, I set the count-in bar at measure 2 and start the song/project for real at measure 3. 

I've done this for years, so long in fact that I've forgotten to be annoyed by it.

In the case of live recording projects, I'm sure it's not such a big deal, in that you kind of have to have a lead-in ("Rolling...") and you're normally not generating score or anything.

But I would LOVE to have a measure 1 offset in SONAR projects.

F@ker


Like this?

Is this for real or a mock up?

I'll admit that I never specifically checked if this feature appeared recently in SONAR.

Thanks.

best regards,
mike