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I had already considered the polyphony issue, but didn't want to muddy my proposal further. But since you brought it up, here's what I was thinking.

Suppose on beat one is a single B note, and on beat two is a chord: C-E-G.

Then when stepping by note (which Rui has already kindly implemented), the B is selected. Stepping again lands on the C. Stepping once more goes to E, and again to the G. In other words, stepping on a chord simply runs through the notes from low to high (or high to low would work as well).

I have no idea if this is do-able, not knowing exactly how MIDI stores the notes of a chord. But suppose it's not, it's still not a big deal, since one could always revert to the mouse at that point to select the desired note of the chord. The stepping function gets the user to the right instant of time, and then the mouse chooses the desired note if it's not the one landed upon. Of course, if the passage consists only of solo notes (which is perhaps the most common situation for this type of editing/entry), then it's not even an issue at all. Just keep stepping along, note to note!

As for the keys, I like the idea of Up, Down, Left and Right covering the entire mechanism, but of course that's not important here, since the hotkey assignments can be personalized anyway as desired.

The important thing is this: for the step-by-note operation, to be most useful the stepped-to note should be automatically selected and highlighted.

Rui's new implementation is already greatly useful. But making the note selected would polish the operation completely. And then the user can customize the hotkey assignments as desired, or even choose to ignore everything and continue using the mouse.

Thomas