Defining and using the Snap Grid

Music Creator lets you define a snap grid that makes it easier to arrange clips, select time ranges, and control envelope shape drawing. To use the snap grid, enable the Snap to Grid button in the Control Bar (or press N) and set the grid resolution to an interval of musical time, such as a whole note, half note, or quarter note; a unit of absolute time: a number of frames, seconds or samples. When the Snap to Grid button is enabled, if you move or paste clips or markers, items will be snapped to the nearest point on the snap grid.

You can also use the snap grid to move clips by a certain interval, rather than snap them to the interval. Moving by an interval can be useful during drag-and-drop operations, if your data are not exactly aligned with measure or note boundaries. To set advanced Snap to Grid settings, go to Edit > Preferences > Customization - Snap to Grid.

Magnetic snap. Cakewalk’s snap grid has an option called magnetic snap. This means that when you’re dragging the boundary of an object, you can move the boundary freely until the boundary gets within a certain number of ticks from the snap target. The closer the object gets to the snap target, the more strongly the object is pulled to the target. You can set the strength of magnetic snap to low, medium, high, or off. Note that if you are zoomed out a certain amount, the time boundary around the snap target will appear to be quite small, and you might think that the snap grid is not functioning. If this is the case, zoom in closer to enhance your editing experience. If you’re dragging a whole clip, magnetic snap is not in effect.

To enable or disable the Snap Grid

Do one of the following:

Click the Snap to Grid button in the Control Bar.

Press N.

To change the snap options

1.	Right-click the Snap to Grid button in the Control Bar to access the following options:

Smart Grid. The snap resolution is dynamically determined by the horizontal zoom level, and the M:B:T time rulers in the Clips pane and Piano Roll view are optimized to show relevant snap locations.

Snap To. Align data to the snap grid.

Snap By. Move data by the grid resolution.

Snap Settings. Opens the Snap to Grid dialog box, which contains the following settings:

Time resolution. Snap to the selected musical or absolute time resolution. Click and hold the mouse button pressed to select a different duration from the pop-up menu. For absolute time resolutions (samples, frames, seconds), type the desired number of units.

Triplet . Reduces the duration of the selected Musical time resolution by 2/3 of its original duration. When Triplet is enabled, three note events fit in the space of two.

Dotted . Increase the duration of the selected Musical time resolution by half of its original value (150%).

2.	Go to Edit > Preferences > Customization - Snap to Grid.

3.	If you want to change the magnetic snap strength, or turn off magnetic snap, adjust the Snap Intensity slider.

4.	If you want to automatically snap edited audio clips to the nearest zero crossing of the waveform (the point at which there is no volume, to minimize the glitches that can happen when waveforms are spliced together) select the Snap to Nearest Audio Zero Crossings check box.

5.	Click OK to close the dialog box.

All time selections and drag-and-drop editing operations use the new snap grid resolution(s).

 

See also:

Snap to Grid shortcuts