Using Take Lanes with MIDI?

Hi-
 
I'm trying to get used to take lanes and I have a couple of questions.
 
1. If I record some takes and delete the composite clip or whatever it's called from the "parent" track (as in I want to start over) I'm left with empty take lanes. I would think they'd be deleted automatically, but it seems I have to delete them manually if I want to remove them. Is that right?
 
2. In the video I watched, the take lane clips during loop recording were all neatly the same length because it was an audio recording. If I'm recording MIDI takes, is there a way to tell SONAR they're the same length? As it is, I might do 5 or whatever takes and get 5 clips of different lengths. Then I drag edges to get them to align with the loop points. I'm guessing there's a better way ;)!
 
Thanks!
 
-Susan

I think this could be a good candidate for a feature request.  ;)   Hi Susan,,, it's good to see you! 

I think where comping MIDI falls down - and there's really nothing to be done about it - is that when you spit a MIDI clip, the notes end right there, and except for patches with a long envelope decay, the sound is going to stop right there, too. So it's not possible to get a smooth crossfade from one clip to the next across a split as is possible with audio comping. With MIDI you'll get complete silence until the first note in the next clip is triggered. It's the nature of the technology. You can't break it up into chunks and have it play smoothly unless you only make splits where no events are sounding at all. Audio imposes limitations to this as well, but you can split a low-level signal and the cross-fades will give you an acceptably smooth transition.
 
EDIT: It occurs to me that controller messages make this even more daunting. The few attempts I've made to comp MIDI - just as an exercise - used clips that had no controllers in them.
 
 
 

Hi-
 
I can see I definitely have some unlearning/relearning ahead of me!
 
Dave & Dan, what you say makes perfect sense, that MIDI doesn't lend itself to comping. I'm not even sure yet that it makes sense to use Take Lanes at all for MIDI (Loop) recording because AFAICT it's impossible (or nearly) to separate the Lanes in the PRV when you're finished. I would be happy to be wrong about that, but I'm seeing every note of every Take Lane in PRV.
 
Since there are no longer Track Layers, I guess I'll just go ahead and select "Store Takes in Separate Tracks" when I'm loop recording MIDI.
 
Thanks-
 
-Susan

Yup there are quite a few improvements I'd like to see like..

<thread hijack>
http://forum.cakewalk.com...akelanes-m3170864.aspx
</threadhijack>

Susan G
 
...I'm still looking for the one where unused take lanes are deleted. It's gotta be around here somewhere...
 

 
http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR%20X3&language=3&help=Arranging.49.html
 

No imagination required for the automatic cleanup process/FR aspect - it was there at some point.   
 
Fortunately it's simple to remove the unused take lanes with the current process, though I get the request.  I wonder if scook has a HotKey script for this... 

scook
No script, sorry. Not sure there is a way to determine if a lane is empty.

I was thinking that running the command regardless would either work or not.   When there are no empty lanes I think the command is greyed out so not sure what would happen (if anything) in that case.