First Post

[dcornutt]

Yes. Not only that..I can hear that its a C7#9b13. You could break that down to 2 triads...Em and AbM with are easily identifiable in your "piano scroll" edit window. Beyond that..its just years of "hearing" and knowing what the sounds are.(where the tension is, quality of the chord...beats..pulses that are produced from certain intervals)

That said..I usually..have no trouble identifying which voice is in which instrument..which one is a problem..and or..what the overall quality of the chord is..just by hearing it. If I know..my chord is supposed to be a C7#9b13 at a given point..I could surmise a couple of things about this chord..before I ever started looking at it. First..you have 2 areas you have to be careful with...the E (3rd)and the D# (#9) and similarly..the G(5th) and Ab (b13).. If you have them voiced in the same octave..it could produce a problem. (the 1/2 step)...depending on which INSTRUMENT/Voice they are assigned to.

But..my point in traveling down this long winded road..is..that your score window in PTle won't help you much with all this.

If you think about it..if you have your chord split in a 4 part..or more arrangment..ie..voices in diff instrument trakcs...when you open your score window..that chord is STILL gonna be splayed all over the place...located over several staves split into diff voices..instruments.

To further complicate this..you have to remember ..that different instruments..use different key signatures...ie concert pitch. So..while your flute is in C...your clarinet will be in Bb..etc. So..NOW..your gonna need a function..like..keeping everything in C concert until the end..the "transposing" the charts..out for parts.

A task..that I surmise..is suited for a full bore notation package..and still requires some clean up "accidentals" etc..after the fact.

So..in conclusion..to follow your question...I would say..yes..if you have all the notes of a chord sounding on one beat in one instrument..then..its just as easy to see..what the chord is in a "piano scroll editor" as it is a notation window...IF you know the spelling of the chord.

However..if the notes in the chord are split over many parts..voices..then...you have the same problem in identifiying your chord in either window. That said..It would be easier to "change"/edit the chord..in a score window..where all tracks/notes were visable in one view...as opposed to double clicking each track at a given point and adjusting the notes...but only if your score was in C concert for every instrument.

So..yes..I find full featured notation packages invaluable for this type of work.
Whether or not you can get one in your sequencer is another matter. .

So..I feel..that having a limited scoring funtion..is somewhat useful..but..in the scheme of things..not as important as having all the quantize, tempo map..etc..tools in a sequencer.

Having a FULL featured scoring app is very important. Having the 2 integrated would present some problems..a few of which Ive outlined above. Perhaps...Logic comes as close as anything..in balancing..the 2...ie..what notation features..can be useful in a sequencer..etc. But..there will always be times..that your gonna need a full blown scoring/noation package.

Since I regularly..have to use a seperate notation package anyway..Ive simply incorporated its use..into my work flow...using the import/export midi.

My gut feeling is..that Digi won't be making a full boat notation window for PTle...ever.
In this regard..I would much rather see them focus their energies on getting the "performance" tools of the sequencer up to speed..have PTle play nice with more apps...more flexibility..and..to do something about the aging OMS/instrument support.

dcornutt

[lwilliam]

I can just barely recognize that chord on a 5-line staff - and ONLY if it's treble clef...

------------------
LW

[Lee Blaske]

Mike Connelly wrote:

<<The notation in Logic works great! I've never had problems getting files that sound good and have correct notation as well - if you've had trouble, you probably don't understand the features well enough.>>

Nice dig, Mike.

Let me counter it by saying that you musn't be doing serious orchestral work, or you wouldn't have made such a comment.

Getting a really good orchestral approximation with samples requires a lot of non-traditional live playing techniques (e.g. duplicating regions on keyboards for two handed playing of realistic rolls (or fast repetitive passages), using the sustain pedal to accomplish tricky voice leading in sustained chordal sections that will eventually be expanded, sections comprising many banks of different dynamics/types of samples (often mapped to different key areas), major/minor trills, tremolos, intuitively playing way ahead of the beat using samples with realistic, long attacks before the meat of the tone, odd tuplet runs, glisses, non-quantized parts played with a live feel intuitively compensating for the way the sound speaks, highly chromatic music, and on and on and on).

Personally, I'd have to modify, duplicate, amd combine tracks, plus do a ton of editing and additional inputting to get useful notation output from Logic (plus hassle with non-contiguous things like tempo breaks and fermatas). It's much faster for me to simply use my Logic sequence as the notepad, and enter things fresh in a Finale document (correction is clunky and time-consuming). It's also a great time to eyeball, reconsider and edit parts hastily played in "demo" mode to deal with doubling and voice leading issues. Logic's scoring is among the best in a full-featured sequencing package, but applications like Finale or Sibelius blow it away from a notational standpoint. There's simply no comparison.

Apart from the notational aspects, Emagic has also not been giving serious attention to music with tempo changes for some time. It's amazing that they haven't fixed the waveform display bug that prevents accurate display when tempo changes are used. Also, matching a click track to a freely performed MIDI or audio track is a real ordeal compared to the way SVP worked. It also seems unlikely that Emagic will ever implement a multiple subsequence capability with independent tempo maps (extremely useful for conducted music and composing in a modular style). Logic is definitely an application that favors folks writing music in a constant tempo.

Because wrangling tempo changes in Logic is such a mess, I often play without click (perhaps with just a set-up click and then a few hit points for certain obligations). Subsequent parts are "conducted" by playing live watching the matrix edit window as a guide track scrolls. Unless I need a click track for other players, I'm not going to waste my life anally noodling click tracks around with Logic's painfully inefficient tools when I can simply lock SMPTE position and slide things around.

Digidesign could make some serious inroads into the scoring community by taking these things seriously. Major improvements could be made. Unfortunately, I fear the potential sales wouldn't be lucrative enough to warrant investing a ton of development money from either Digidesign or Emagic.

I'm hoping that someday, the world will get really tired of metronomic music.

Lee Blaske

[mike connelly]

"Let me counter it by saying that you musn't be doing serious orchestral work, or you wouldn't have made such a comment."

Sorry if I wasn't specific enough - I was addressing the notion that in Logic, unquantized midi results in "many tied 16th and 32nd notes" in the notation. No "dig" intended - obviously there will always be complicated midi techniques that won't translate directly to notation. Lee, I pretty much agree with everything you said in your posts - I just want enough notation in PT to do "sketch" work before exporting to Finale.

I'm not interested in scoring at Finale's level, I agree that would be a waste of resources. I'm merely interested in a midi editing view that lets me see the notes on staves - that's the quickest and easiest way for me (and I'm sure many musicians) to see what's going on musically at a glance as I'm composing. Sure, the printout is much better in Finale, but I just want to be able to drag notes around without having to look at a tiny "note name" window or decipher a tiny piano keyboard graphic way at the left of the screen (there's a reason you don't hand a printout of a piano roll to a player - notation conveys the musical information much more quickly and intuitively to someone who reads it). Sure, there probably are folk who could analyze a Mahler symphony from looking at a piano roll view, but I'm sure they're in the minority.

I'm only interested in on-screen view - most likely, I'd never use PT to print anything out. Something simple (probably even simpler than Logic) would be fine - just notes on staves, with decent rhythmic interpretation (perhaps independent notation quantize values like logic) would be fine with me.

As I said, I rarely use Logic for scores - for that I export to Finale (which is far superior for that sort of thing).


Mike

[Lee Blaske]

I guess we agree, then.

My only additional point was that if Digidesign worked in partnership with Coda on this, perhaps there could be an export/inpot routine that was slicker than what we now deal with. Finale has also added the publish to web feature, and that might tie in in some way with the whole Rocket network deal.

As Digidesign is working on integrating more sophisticated tempo changing routines into PT, it would also be nice if they took into consideration features that would apply to conducting (e.g. visual cues like punches, streamers, and cooler things that haven't been invented yet). PT could become the application of choice for live orchestra film scoring sessions, live sweetening sessions,
etc.

Lee Blaske

[Adrian Haselhuber]

Hi folks,

great suggestions about notation, thanks much! It's really interesting to see that my personal hunch seems to be right on the money: let other software do what it can do best. Notation in Pro Tools would be a great feature...but only if it did everything what you expected and then a little bit more. ;-) I agree that we should offer a convenient way of exporting to dedicated notation software but would that alone really do it?

Let's talk about a simple way of showing notes on MIDI tracks. What exactly would you expect? What's the minimum feature set that would make you use it? Let's brainstorm a little bit. I am really curious to hear your opinion. Feel free to drop me an email to my address below (also guarantees faster responses ;-)

Regards,

Adrian Haselhuber
Product Manager MIDI/Synth/Sampling
digidesign, a division of Avid
[email protected]