If you have noticed that when recording MIDI in Logic, the first note or 2 can get cut off sometimes when you play it back, this Tutorial explains why it happens, and offers up 3 different ways it can be fixed. So if you are a blind or visually impaired musician who has been frustrated by this in Apple’s Logic Pro, this walk through covers how to resolve it using VoiceOver, the built in screen reader on MacOS.
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The first option for resolving this issue can be as simple as pressing Q to quantize the performance. A lot of times this will work, but at times it may not, or it may throw off other aspects of the performance. In those moments, it’s time to try one of the other options.
The other options involve using either the Event List or the Piano Roll. Use Command 7 to open the Event List, and then find the note in question (usually the notes that starts with a 0 in the position column) and double click on it. You can do this with VO Shift Space twice quickly. Type in 1 for the position where it should start and press return. If this doesn’t work for you when you double click from the keyboard, set mouse pointer to follow VoiceOver curser. This setting will need to be changed in the Navigation category in VoiceOver Utilities, which you can get to withVO F8.
The other option is to press Command 4 to open the Piano Roll. Once in the Piano Roll layout area, find any note that doesn’t start with a bar number with VO left/Right arrows. Once on the first one, press return to make sure the playhead is at bar 1. Then press the semi colon to move the selected note to the playhead. Rinse and repeat till all notes are at Bar 1 if this is for a chord that comes in at Bar 1.
While there may be other techniques for resolving this issue, I find these three the most effective and efficient. Also turning on chase (which is found in MIDI settings) may prevent the early notes from being cut off, but this seems more effective after bar 1 rather than before Bar 1. For more details on turning on chase, subscribe to the mailing list to get a copy of the free “Getting Started With Logic Course”, which has an exclusive tutorial on turning on chase.
