Correcting a Take

Two different things can be wrong with a take, and Melody Rack keeps them apart on purpose. In Key corrects notes against the key, and leaves the ones you meant: it is the effect this product is built around, and it is the only thing in the window that has an opinion about pitch. The fix tools on the take bar correct things the detector heard wrong: a breath that came back as a note, one note split in two by a wobble, a tail cut by a consonant. This chapter covers both, and the line between them.

What you'll learn

• Why In Key never moves a note in the key
• The three questions a note outside the key has to get past
• All three controls on the In Key strip
• What the roll draws so you can see what was moved, and why
• The hand fixes, and adding and copying notes
• Pinning: how you say "I meant that one"

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7.1 What In Key actually asks

Every scale-lock plugin knows a scale and snaps anything outside it, however it was sung. In Key works from the key on the bar above too, but a note in the key is never moved, and a note outside it has to get past three questions first. Each one covers a case the other two cannot.

Where it does correct, the note's own position and length decide the order: a long note on a bar line first, a short note off the beat last. That order is what the Strength dial walks down.

1. Is it a quick in-between note?

A short note that steps between the notes either side of it, or dips off a note and straight back, is an ornament rather than a mistake, as long as it is not on the bar line or the half bar. Chromatic steps count: C C♯ D stays C C♯ D, and the quick G F♯ G on "is" in "A dream is a wish your heart makes" stays a dip instead of turning into three Gs. This is Keep passing notes.

2. Does the performance explain it?

This is the question no other tool in the category can ask, and it comes straight out of keeping the pitch curve.

A detector error and a blue note are both "out of key" and look nothing alike in the frames. The note's MIDI number is a rounded average of the pitch you actually produced, so the difference between the two is the rounding residual: near zero for a pitch you aimed at and held, near half a semitone for one your voice sat between and the detector had to call.

So a pitch you sang 4 cents off the note is a note you meant. A pitch you sang 43 cents off it could be either, and In Key corrects it. The tolerance narrows as Strength rises: at Strength 0 it is half a semitone, at full Strength it is 5 cents. C E B♭ G in C major keeps its B flat when you sang it squarely, and loses it when your voice sat between B flat and B.

The same residual breaks the snap's tie. Every flattened degree sits exactly between two scale tones, so a tie that always went upward fired on every blue note there is and resolved it back toward the major-scale note the flattening existed to avoid. Measured from the voice, an E flat sung a shade under goes down to D.

3. Did the person say so?

Moving a note by semitones pins it, and In Key does not get an opinion about a pinned note. An octave move does not pin. Evidence runs out, and when it does the answer belongs to whoever sang it. See §7.5.

In Key does not read the chords at all, so it works the same with Chords on, off, or anywhere in the chain. It runs ahead of Chords by default, so the progression is fitted to the corrected line rather than to the notes you missed.

7.2 The In Key controls

In Key opens on one knob, Correct, which turns all three controls below. Strength rises with it from 0% to 100%, Keep notes you meant switches off from 85%, and Keep passing notes from 93%, so the top of the turn moves every note into the key. It starts at 70%, which is the settings below as they ship, and double-clicking it goes back there. The three controls themselves are in the strip's drawer.

There is no Follow the chords switch any more (since 0.5.20). In Key used to read the chords that Chords wrote, but Chords fits those chords to the very notes In Key exists to correct, so a missed note could buy a wrong chord that then made the missed note look right. In Key now answers to the key alone and runs before Chords.

The strip's head says which key it is reasoning in and how many notes it moved: C maj · moved 3 of 14, or C maj · moving nothing. Without that, "the dial is at 30%" and "this control is broken" look the same.

7.3 Seeing what was moved

Every note In Key moved is drawn against where you sang it: a dashed rule at the sung pitch, and a riser up to the block.

This exists because In Key moves the block and shifts the pitch curve with it, which is correct (the curve belongs to the note) but meant the roll was showing a note at a pitch nobody sang, drawn identically to one they did, with the sung line running neatly through the middle of it. There was no answer anywhere on screen to "is my take being snapped to this key or not".

Rest on a note and it says which question decided it, with the number you can check:

• In Key · up 1 semitone / sung 43 cents off · right-click › keep to undo
• In Key · kept / outside C maj · sung 4 cents off. You meant it.
• In Key · kept / outside C maj · passing note
• In Key · kept / outside C maj · Strength 45% would move it
• Held / In Key leaves it alone.
• 2 semitones down from what you sang / Moved by the rack, not by In Key.

A note in the key gets no caption, which is most of a take.

7.4 Fixing what the detector got wrong

Click a note on the roll and a word appears on the right of the take bar: the note's pitch, or a count. Click the word (or right-click the roll) and the list opens.

Cmd+A selects everything, Esc puts it down, and you can drag a range across the roll. On Windows, use Ctrl for Cmd.

Adding and copying notes

Double-click an empty spot to add a note one grid step long. If a note is already sounding there, it moves to that row instead. A note nobody sang has no pitch curve, so Expression has nothing to work with and it is flat in the MPE export, the same as a note played in from Keys.

Hold Cmd while you drag and the notes stay where they are while copies land where you let go. You can press or let go of Cmd partway through the drag. Cmd+V puts copied notes down at the play cursor and moves the cursor on past them, so pasting again carries the line on, and what you copied stays copied when you switch takes. Cmd+D repeats the selection straight after itself: a phrase of a bar or more on the next bar line, anything shorter on the next grid line. A copy keeps the pitch curve you sang, and it replaces a note of the same pitch that it lands on.

The grid

A dragged note is pulled onto the roll's grid, which is Feel's Grid setting: , makes it finer and . coarser. Hold Option to put a note between the lines. Feel's Tighten dial is separate: it pulls the output toward the same grid, as much or as little as you set it to.

Corrections are written to the take, and the whole rack re-runs from them, so fixing a note the detector heard wrong fixes every part generated from it.

7.5 Pinning, and the keep switch

Moving a note by semitones pins it. In Key does not get an opinion about a pinned note. An octave move does not pin: the note keeps its name, so In Key has nothing new to argue with.

This is not a hidden rule so much as the only sensible reading of the gesture. Before it existed, selecting the E in C E G E, pressing the up arrow twice to reach F sharp, and watching the block go from E to G was the control lying about the exact thing the rest of this chapter is about. Moving a note in pitch by hand is the only gesture in the product that states a pitch rather than reporting one, so it is the right one to carry the decision: no new control, discovered by doing it, and it is the escape hatch for the case no reading of the frames can settle. I know it is outside the key. I meant it.

keep is the same state said out loud, for the cases a nudge cannot reach: holding a note the detector already got right, putting back a note In Key corrected (the roll's tip says right-click › keep to undo), and letting go of one you have thought better of. The word does not change when it is on; the lit rule under it is the state.

A held note is drawn with a bright edge down its front. It is still transposed, still humanised, still dropped by Chance: only In Key reads the pin.

keep is dead while the rack has no key or In Key is off, and says so, because nothing is moving your notes then and there is nothing to keep them from.

Chapter 8 is every slot in the rack, In Key included, as a reference.