To/By Switch

OK I know this is going to sound dumb, but I just had to share...
 
I just randomly tried the To/By switch... and my whole world has changed. I mean seriously, my whole brain is shattered.
 
Switching to "By" fixes so many issues that normally were such a pain in the butt that I'd just work around them and have to limit myself creatively. As a matter of fact, I had posted a question about quantizing a few months back that led to some interesting ideas that I've implemented, but never quite helped what I needed... But if I had known about switching to "By" I'd have not had to rely on quantizing anyway! Of course using "To" is still the most common way I'd want it to be (there's a good reason it's the default), but "By" makes it so much easier to move things around and keep things in position when they're not meant to be lined up with the start of a bar, but still need to stay in time with where they originally were within a bar.
 
I know this all sounds ridiculous and "duh" haha, but I just had to share. I don't even know at which point this switch was implemented (I've been using Sonar since pre-Sonar, Cakewalk 5.0)... But I'm so excited. 

Paul P
Permit me to sound dumber, because I can see absolutely no difference in snap behaviour whether the switch is set to To or By.

 
Haha Ok so... and this is just one of many examples where this will prove useful to me... But lets say I came up with a bass riff or drum loop, or something that fits nicely in between the bars so i would be able to say "oh it's at bar 2 and I want it at bar 4, so I'll just drag it over" right? Great. Works fine... BUT... Lets say my little riff has a little spill over before the bar, like some kind of lead couple of notes before it... Now it starts a little BEFORE bar 2... So if I try to drag it to a little before bar 4, it will actually make those little lead in notes start right at the beginning of bar 4, making the whole thing off.
 
In the past, in the above situation (which happens all the time for me), I'd have to:
 
1) chop the clip right at bar 2.
2) drag the part of the clip that starts at bar 2 over to bar 4.
3) the part that was before bar 2, isn't a complete bar, so I can't move it by the grid, so I'd have to extend the clip to the left enough so that it extends to the beginning of bar 1 so it's at an even spot.
4) then drag it to bar 3, so those extra notes happen in the right spot, right before bar 4.
 
And it gets way more complicated with audio!
That's just one example of a situation where the default "To" option will move things directly to the start of the bar when I might not want them to (again, MOST of the time I will want it to behave that way, but there's these situations where I don't). When I switched it to "By" instead of moving and snapping to the next bar, it moves it one bar down, but still in the exact positioning it was previously.
:-)
 

Thanks. I used to do this "a long time ago", but forgot all about it. Good tip for saving time.
All the best.

polarbear
But lets say I came up with a bass riff or drum loop, or something that fits nicely in between the bars so i would be able to say "oh it's at bar 2 and I want it at bar 4, so I'll just drag it over" right? Great. Works fine... BUT... Lets say my little riff has a little spill over before the bar, like some kind of lead couple of notes before it... Now it starts a little BEFORE bar 2... So if I try to drag it to a little before bar 4, it will actually make those little lead in notes start right at the beginning of bar 4, making the whole thing off.

This is how I expect things to be, but I can't get it to work.  I just entered four 1/32 notes at the end of a 4/4 measure leading to a 1/2 note at the beginning of the next measure.  I have all snap settings set to 1/2.  I select the five notes and whichever note I click on to drag them is the one that is used to snap the 'riff' to the grid at 1/2 measure boundaries.  If I select the first of the 1/32 notes, it's the one that'll snap to beginnings or middles of my 4 beat measures.  If I select the half note, it's the one that'll snap.  Setting snap to either To or By has no effect on this behaviour either in the PRV on inline in the track.
 
I would expect, as I believe you're saying, that if I grab the first of my 1/32 notes with snap set to By, my riff will snap to a 1/2 note's distance from the position of that 1/32 note, with no regards to measure (or half measure) boundaries.
 
I get the same lack of difference when snapping the beginning or end of a note when changing its duration.  I seem to be permanently stuck on To.
 

Afrodrum
Good point. I was overlooking advantages of the "BY" too. Now I can't live without it.

Zargg71
Thanks. I used to do this "a long time ago", but forgot all about it. Good tip for saving time.
All the best.

Glad to know I'm not alone! haha.

Paul, where are you switching To/By?
 
There are 2 settings, one in the Control bar and one in the PRV. You need to switch the one in the PRV for it to work in the PRV.
 
That sounds dumb, but you know what I mean.
 
Apologies if you already know this, but it works fine here.
 

Bristol_Jonesey
There are 2 settings, one in the Control bar and one in the PRV. You need to switch the one in the PRV for it to work in the PRV.

Thank you Colin !  It works now in the PRV for the reason you provided.
 
But for inline editing of a midi clip, the switch in the Control Bar still has no effect.  Always behaves like "To" independant of switch position.
 
Can you get "By" to work in the inline view ?
 

My experience is that "By" is the default.
I even entered a Feature Request asking to have this set to "To" by default.
 
Sonar has several tools to aid snap-to-grid.
 
Clips can be given a snap offset,
Entire tracks can be given an offset (good for slow-attack sounds, like strings)
and, yes, "Snap By".

My confusion stemmed from working mostly in midi at the note level in the PRV (where the To/By selection is almost hidden).
 
I just discovered that there is also snap funcitionality at the clip level in track view, and it's this snap that is controlled by the To/By switch in the Control Bar.
 
So the only question that remains is whether it's possible to set snap to 'By' in the inline PRV view.
 
[I'd also like to know if it's possible to change the inline PRV's visible grid resolution]
 
 

polarbear
Hopefully someone else can help with Paul's question because I'm not used to PRV to begin with so I probably wouldn't be the best at figuring out why it wasn't working as expected for him.

Thanks just the same David since your thread got me to properly learn snap once and for all.  I never work in the inline PRV so the rest is just curiosity.
 

It's so funny how BIG and front and center the switch is, yet most of us all overlooked it for so long. Really glad I'm not alone in that haha. :-)

sharke

So what I do instead is to drag clip start points left to the nearest start of a measure, if it's not already there. This way it doesn't matter where the actual content of the clip begins, it always remains in position relative to the measures when I move it. Hope that makes sense. 

That's exactly what I've always had to do (if I don't give up and try something else haha). But its such a pain and sometimes, especially with audio, there will be more unwanted audio before the start of the clip of that I'm bringing back when I drag the start time back, so then I have to re-cut it back once it's in the right place. Just little pains in the butt... So this whole new way is really great for me.