Re: MIDI input [was Re: Nested transposition]

[Silvain Dupertuis]

Hello everyone,

As I do not have any midi keyboard,
I have programmed for myself a web-piano-keyboard-entry (HTML-CSS-JavaScript).
I use regularly for Lilypond - it combined different syntax, does Lylipond in 
relative mode.
Actually, if was to be used for other systems also.

You can find the file there 
, download and open 
in any browser.
The comments are in French, but I can easily make an English version if it is useful for 
anyone.
You have to choose/confirm the type of syntax and the key and then click on notes and 
duration on the keyboard and duration symbols...


Of course, you get one voice only, but it is easier that writing the names of 
notes...

And again, I did not have any problem using \relative x y { ... } syntax...

Hope it can be useful.
Silvain


Le 14.03.21 à 16:53, Ralph Palmer a écrit :
On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 9:14 PM Kieren MacMillan > wrote:


Hi Carl!

>> My music entry is done 99% by MIDI input, so I type almost no commas or 
apostrophes.
> Can you tell me how you do your MIDI input?  I'd like to do that, but I 
don't have
a good workflow for it.

1. I use Frescobaldi.


Wow. I missed this somehow. I can see why you use absolute values exclusively, Kieren. 
I'm almost exclusively transcribing and transposing fiddle tunes. I do a lot of entry 
from sheet music, and do a lot of proofreading, then transposing. Not terribly 
complicated, but valuable to me. Relative entry works much better for me than absolute 
entry. I can input the tune in treble clef, proofread it, and transpose to alto clef 
with fewer than 10 keystrokes.


All the best,

Ralph

--
Ralph Palmer
Brattleboro, VT
USA
(he, him, his)
palmer.r.vio...@gmail.com 



--
Silvain Dupertuis
Route de Lausanne 335
1293 Bellevue (Switzerland)
tél. +41-(0)22-774.20.67
portable +41-(0)79-604.87.52
web: silvain-dupertuis.org 

Re: MIDI input [was Re: Nested transposition]

[Ralph Palmer]

On Sun, Mar 14, 2021 at 12:41 PM Kieren MacMillan <
kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca> wrote:

> Hi Ralph,
>
> >> 1. I use Frescobaldi.
> >
> > Wow. I missed this somehow. I can see why you use absolute values
> exclusively, Kieren. I'm almost exclusively transcribing and transposing
> fiddle tunes. I do a lot of entry from sheet music, and do a lot of
> proofreading, then transposing. Not terribly complicated, but valuable to
> me. Relative entry works much better for me than absolute entry. I can
> input the tune in treble clef, proofread it, and transpose to alto clef
> with fewer than 10 keystrokes.
>
> Have you tried Frescobaldi and MIDI entry?
>

No, I'm afraid not. I never learned a keyboard instrument, and I don't
think I have the time at present to add that to my list. I really do
understand why absolute values would work very well with MIDI input.

All the best, and thanks for all you do to help others on this list, Kieren,

Ralph


-- 
Ralph Palmer
Brattleboro, VT
USA
(he, him, his)
palmer.r.vio...@gmail.com

Re: lilypond-user Digest, Vol 220, Issue 40

[Kieren MacMillan]

p.s. This workflow discussion is, to some extent, mutually exclusive from the 
“relative vs. absolute” discussion: Frescobaldi will automatically generate 
code in whichever format you want.  =)


Kieren MacMillan, composer (he/him/his)
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: kie...@kierenmacmillan.info

Re: lilypond-user Digest, Vol 220, Issue 40

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Peter,

> How do you manage enharmonics? Is the black key between C and D a C sharp or 
> D flat? Unless the music is completely tonal, I'd have thought you spent more 
> time adjusting the accidentals than simply inputting the music from the 
> computer keyboard. But I may be wrong. Certainly in the song I was 
> transcribing both accidentals are used in profusion.

Most songs I transcribe are heavily tonal, and the accidentals tend to be 
consistent enough that Frescobaldi’s input setting (use the key signature 
whenever possible, favour sharps or favour flats when outside the k.s.) keeps 
outliers in the <5% range (and often literally zero!). Where I do have to 
adjust, I do it in the second/proofreading pass, and that change is very quick 
to implement.

That being said, I’ve also used my workflow on Second Viennese School 
transcriptions, and while obviously slower than tonal music it’s still 
impressively fast to crank out that kind of note-code.

> how does it manage durations?

I just “plunk” each note out one by one, with no particular care about 
durations; in the “second half” of the input process, I pass through and add 
durations. My workflow is more finessed than that — e.g. if I come up to a 
large run of 16th notes, I’ll stop the playing process to add a “16” after the 
first one — but I do find that multi-tasking slows me down, so I tend to just 
play all the notes through in a single pass (using the MIDI keyboard, ignoring 
durations), then add durations (using the computer keyboard/numberpad) as a 
second pass. I can usually “code” the pitch portion of an entire vocal line of 
a standard (~3') musical theatre song in less than 30s; “running string lines” 
can be played at maximum speed (n.b. my undergrad degree was in piano 
performance), so I can get dozens or hundreds of notes from a string part into 
pitch-code form in less than a minute; etc.

There is a “QuickKeys” plug-in somewhere that lets you trigger durations with 
one hand (on the keypad) while playing in the notes using the other hand (on 
the MIDI keyboard)… but my current workflow is so fast that any potential speed 
gain (and it isn’t immediately obvious to me there would be one!) is countered 
by the learning/coordination curve I’d have to climb.

> And can one input a piano piece (as opposed to a single voice)? Two hands, 
> lots of splitting into separate voices.

1. Chords are wicked fast, obviously: just play all the notes (it doesn’t even 
have to be "exactly together"!), and Frescobaldi does the right thing.

2. The way my code is formatted, every voice has its own variable — so I just 
play each voice into the right variable, and combine them later in the score 
block.

Naturally, every tune is different in terms of the challenges to get the 
data-entry done. But now that I’ve found this “MIDI -> pitch code, then add 
durations” workflow, I’m kicking my 12-year-ago-self that it took me so long to 
get on board with Frescobaldi+MIDI.

Hope that helps!
Kieren.


Kieren MacMillan, composer (he/him/his)
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: kie...@kierenmacmillan.info

Re: lilypond-user Digest, Vol 220, Issue 40

[Peter Toye]

Kieren,

How do you manage enharmonics? Is the black key between C and D a C sharp or D 
flat? Unless the music is completely tonal, I'd have thought you spent more 
time adjusting the accidentals than simply inputting the music from the 
computer keyboard. But I may be wrong. Certainly in the song I was transcribing 
both accidentals are used in profusion.

And how does it manage durations? I didn't see anything on the menu to imply 
that you could set the tempo, so how does it know what value a beat has?. I 
don't have a keyboard to experiment with, though, and with Covid around it's 
not practicable to borrow one.

And can one input a piano piece (as opposed to a single voice)? Two hands, lots 
of splitting into separate voices.

Years ago I read a paper by Christopher Longuet-Higgins who managed to get a 
computer to analyse a single melody and work out which black notes were sharps 
and which were flats. I seem to remember that it got the cor anglais solo from 
the opening of the 3rd act of 'Tristan und Isolde' right except for one note 
which, to be fair, Wagner could have notated either way. But it's not a trivial 
task.

Best regards,

Peter
mailto:lilyp...@ptoye.com
www.ptoye.com


> --

> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2021 11:53:51 -0400
> From: Ralph Palmer 
> To: Kieren MacMillan 
> Cc: Carl Sorensen , Flaming Hakama by Elaine
> ,  Lilypond-User Mailing List
> 
> Subject: Re: MIDI input [was Re: Nested transposition]
> Message-ID:
> 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

> On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 9:14 PM Kieren MacMillan <
> kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca> wrote:

>> Hi Carl!

>> >> My music entry is done 99% by MIDI input, so I type almost no commas or
>> apostrophes.
>> > Can you tell me how you do your MIDI input?  I'd like to do that, but I
>> don't have a good workflow for it.

>> 1. I use Frescobaldi.


> Wow. I missed this somehow. I can see why you use absolute values
> exclusively, Kieren. I'm almost exclusively transcribing and transposing
> fiddle tunes. I do a lot of entry from sheet music, and do a lot of
> proofreading, then transposing. Not terribly complicated, but valuable to
> me. Relative entry works much better for me than absolute entry. I can
> input the tune in treble clef, proofread it, and transpose to alto clef
> with fewer than 10 keystrokes.

> All the best,

> Ralph

Re: MIDI input [was Re: Nested transposition]

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Ralph,

>> 1. I use Frescobaldi.
> 
> Wow. I missed this somehow. I can see why you use absolute values 
> exclusively, Kieren. I'm almost exclusively transcribing and transposing 
> fiddle tunes. I do a lot of entry from sheet music, and do a lot of 
> proofreading, then transposing. Not terribly complicated, but valuable to me. 
> Relative entry works much better for me than absolute entry. I can input the 
> tune in treble clef, proofread it, and transpose to alto clef with fewer than 
> 10 keystrokes.

Have you tried Frescobaldi and MIDI entry? I do a lot of transcriptions and 
transpositions as well — usually for musical theatre pit musicians (e.g., 
multi-instrumental** wind players) — and I find it really easy to play the 
[absolute] part in from the original (usually transposed!) part, proofread, and 
then use Frescobaldi’s transposition tool to change the code to concert pitch 
for all work going forward.

I’m not here to tell you that you *need* to change your workflow — it sounds 
like you’ve got one that really works well for you, which is great! I just want 
to make sure that anyone reading this thread in the future knows that 
transcribing and transposing can also be done really easily in absolute mode.

Cheers,
Kieren.

** Lilypond still doesn’t really handle multi-instrumental parts very well, but 
that’s an issue for a whole separate thread.  ;)


Kieren MacMillan, composer (he/him/his)
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: kie...@kierenmacmillan.info

Re: MIDI input [was Re: Nested transposition]

[Ralph Palmer]

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 9:14 PM Kieren MacMillan <
kieren_macmil...@sympatico.ca> wrote:

> Hi Carl!
>
> >> My music entry is done 99% by MIDI input, so I type almost no commas or
> apostrophes.
> > Can you tell me how you do your MIDI input?  I'd like to do that, but I
> don't have a good workflow for it.
>
> 1. I use Frescobaldi.
>

Wow. I missed this somehow. I can see why you use absolute values
exclusively, Kieren. I'm almost exclusively transcribing and transposing
fiddle tunes. I do a lot of entry from sheet music, and do a lot of
proofreading, then transposing. Not terribly complicated, but valuable to
me. Relative entry works much better for me than absolute entry. I can
input the tune in treble clef, proofread it, and transpose to alto clef
with fewer than 10 keystrokes.

All the best,

Ralph

-- 
Ralph Palmer
Brattleboro, VT
USA
(he, him, his)
palmer.r.vio...@gmail.com

why Kieren is a \relative evangelist [was “Re: Nested transposition"]

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Davids,

>> One might wonder why the subject of \relative, a textual input
>> method, should concern you so much.

1. I lament how much struggle I went through for the decade that I used 
\relative, and how much struggle I see other newbies go through — posting about 
it, over and over — because they are using it. I personally believe that 
struggle is totally unnecessary. It’s worth noting the relative [ha!] dearth of 
posts about absolute music giving anyone trouble when transposing, reusing 
code, etc.

2. The obstacles and confusion generated by the use of \relative compound 
quickly when one uses Lilypond for more complicated scores, or tries to reuse 
code (ostensibly to increase efficiency), etc. We are (I thought?) trying to 
make Lilypond *more* user-friendly, not *less*. It frustrates me when I see 
newbies being led up the already-not-easy early learning curve via the 
\relative path, because I know that most of those who get beyond simple scores 
will hit these \relative-only problems, and that will [unnecessarily!] make it 
seem like Lilypond is “even more complicated and fussy” than they first 
imagined.

3. The *single* serious argument against absolute music — that it requires 
extra typing [of apostrophes and commas] — is essentially eliminated by using 
an IDE like Frescobaldi: using MIDI input means I avoid typing note code 
(including octavation symbols) almost entirely, and the transposition functions 
let me instantaneously re-octavate large sections of code if that’s ever 
required (which it basically never is). I believe we should be encouraging 
users to use tools like Frescobaldi — because I believe their coding lives 
would be made easier in *so* many ways — and the “crutch” of \relative means 
there’s less incentive to do so in the early stages of the learning curve 
(which is exactly when habits, good or bad, tend to be formed).

Perhaps “back then”, if someone had clearly explained how to get around some of 
the bigger problems (e.g., by always making sure there’s a \relative inside 
\transpose), I might not have been driven to such a point of frustration by 
\relative that I found no alternative but to abandon it and become an \absolute 
evangelist…? That being said, the fact that it’s STILL clearly a problem YET 
ANOTHER decade later apparently justifies my choice.

> a majority of traffic on this list is generated by people doing
> their best to be helpful, making other people's lives easier.
> 
> Is there a reason you think that this isn't what Kieren is doing?

Making other people’s (especially newbies’) lives easier *is* ultimately what 
I’m trying to do.

Cheers,
Kieren.


Kieren MacMillan, composer (he/him/his)
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: kie...@kierenmacmillan.info

Re: Nested transposition

[David Kastrup]

David Wright  writes:

> On Sat 13 Mar 2021 at 09:21:07 (-0500), Kieren MacMillan wrote:
>> Hi Elaine,
>> 
>> > That may be so, but you likely pay for it every day by typing out
>> extra commas and apostrophes.
>> 
>> My music entry is done 99% by MIDI input, so I type almost no commas
>> or apostrophes.
>> ;)
>
> I'm happy to see that you have optimised your chosen input method.
> One might wonder why the subject of \relative, a textual input
> method, should concern you so much.

Uh, a majority of traffic on this list is generated by people doing
their best to be helpful, making other people's lives easier.

Is there a reason you think that this isn't what Kieren is doing?

-- 
David Kastrup