Re: [Rosegarden-user] Ugly notation formatting
That is a great analogy. I would also say that music notation is fundamentally visual, not audio or sequential. Musicians reading a score aren't necessarily going "note by note" anymore than the typical person reading text reads "letter by letter". I guess sequencers aren't quite up to the human visual system's powerful processing! Perhaps another limitation regarding scoring sequencer music are the limitations of MIDI? Are there MIDI standard events for everything a music score can convey? On 04/08/2016 06:30 AM, Silas Mortimer wrote: > That makes a lot of sense. > > On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 9:50 AM, Lorenzo Sutton > wrote: >> As I already said this is really a bit of a conundrum >> I think a good analogy would be imagine writing in a word processor >> (e.g. Writer) or typesetting system (e.g. Latex) VS. trying to feed what >> you wrote to a Text To Speech (TTS) engine/system able of rendering the >> text you write as if it were a professional actress. >> >> Feed plain text to a text to speech and it will sound like... well text >> to speech, if you want to add articulations etc. you have to 'break' the >> plain text with some sort of semantics (markup), or invest a lot in some >> sort of interpretation engine which can also do linguistic analysis. >> >> That kind of thing gets magnitudes more complicated with music.. >> >> But after all, notation is really made for humans, while the matrix >> editor (or even the event list editor) is much more similar (if still >> high-level) to what you would feed to a machine (by the way the matrix >> editor is called "piano roll" in some applications for a reason, so >> 'machine' is not necessarily a computer). >> >> Well well always very interesting discussions on the RG mailing list :) >> >> On 08/04/2016 15:19, D. Michael McIntyre wrote: >>> On 04/07/2016 07:04 PM, Silas Mortimer wrote: >>> If I might ask, because I've been wondering about this, what makes doing notation so difficult? >>> >>> I think the root of it is because notation is a very analog, >>> infinitely-variable kind of thing that is difficult to represent and >>> manipulate in an orderly digital world. >>> >>> I have probably over 1,000 pages of commercially published sheet music >>> for various instruments sitting around in my house, and it probably >>> wouldn't take me 30 seconds to find a score that Rosegarden can't be >>> used to reproduce. It would probably take me more on the order of 30 >>> minutes to find a score that Rosegarden CAN reproduce exactly like the >>> original, with no compromises. I would probably have to pull that out >>> of some basic band method book too. >>> >>> Notation is difficult, because of the amount of effort that would be >>> required to address any random one of a hundred different scenarios I >>> could come up with that Rosegarden doesn't know how to handle. >>> >>> Kneed beams. How the hell would we ever make kneed beams work without >>> seriously rethinking everything from the ground up? I have utterly no idea. >>> >>> Anacrusis is something I've banged on off and on for years, and we still >>> can't really handle it probably, or get it exported to LilyPond >>> properly. Close, but not really a cigar. I have a trumpet method book >>> with 1,000 pages of stuff Rosegarden can't handle. It's basic, common >>> stuff that's hard to work out how to achieve in a notation editor >>> grafted onto a MIDI sequencer. >>> >>> After 15 years of this, I could go on for days, Silas. Doing notation >>> on top of a sequencer is borderline insanity, but it's a crazy kind of >>> fun to challenge the limits of what is possible, even if it isn't smart >>> or practical. >>> >>> The true notation editors like MusE Score and Finale (they work directly >>> with notes and lines and staffs instead of MIDI) have an easier time >>> with a great many of these problems, but they face their own nightmares. >>> Those things are especially weak when it comes to rendering imperfect >>> human performances on a page. I've seen absolutely nothing on any >>> platform in close to 30 years of computer music that could produce a >>> playable sheet of music without a considerable amount of fiddling around >>> to tweak all the glitches. >>> >>> I'm pretty sure if that magic button could be written, it would be on >>> the market by now, and would probably cost $10,000 a copy. -- David W. Jones gn...@hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community http://dancingtreefrog.com -- Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/ gampad/clk?id=1444514301&iu=/ca-pub-7940484522588532 ___ Rosegarden-user mailing l
Re: [Rosegarden-user] Ugly notation formatting
On 04/08/2016 12:29 PM, Silas Mortimer wrote: > Not that I think we should abandon the old way by any means, but maybe > there ought to be a notation 2.0, completely reworked to be an easy > learning curve for those who already know the old notation, but make > more sense to coding. I wonder if that's even possible. There are all kinds of strange little projects out there already, but nothing ever gains enough traction to displace traditional notation. For that matter, I think and deal with western traditional notation exclusively, but there are other traditions that are of a similar age. It reminds me of this cartoon about standards: https://xkcd.com/927/ Reading back over my previous comments, I'd like to point out that all of those pages and pages of things Rosegarden can't render always come down to just a bar here and a bar there. I've worked out a lot of ways to fake my way around things like this over the years, and usually get something done, but not without compromises. Even LilyPond, vast and venerable as it is, still requires compromises sometimes. People could engrave literally anything on a music plate back in the day, and they did! > You know, I say that I'm completely new to composing on a computer, > but that's not *quite* true. In the days of DOS, I remember creating a > BASIC file that would play some notes using computer beeps, lol. I > remember doing Slayer's "War Ensemble" that way and it was hilarious. > Just a random thought. The first program I used to compose computer music had four voices of polyphony, and no real control over what the voices sounded like. I typed it out of a Rainbow magazine, and it took hours. You composed melodies on a vertical grid, by typing pitches at the right time intervals. It was just like a MOD tracker in that respect, but way before MOD files existed. Things have come a long way! -- D. Michael McIntyre -- Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/ gampad/clk?id=1444514301&iu=/ca-pub-7940484522588532 ___ Rosegarden-user mailing list Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user
Re: [Rosegarden-user] Ugly notation formatting
That makes a lot of sense. On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 9:50 AM, Lorenzo Sutton wrote: > As I already said this is really a bit of a conundrum > I think a good analogy would be imagine writing in a word processor > (e.g. Writer) or typesetting system (e.g. Latex) VS. trying to feed what > you wrote to a Text To Speech (TTS) engine/system able of rendering the > text you write as if it were a professional actress. > > Feed plain text to a text to speech and it will sound like... well text > to speech, if you want to add articulations etc. you have to 'break' the > plain text with some sort of semantics (markup), or invest a lot in some > sort of interpretation engine which can also do linguistic analysis. > > That kind of thing gets magnitudes more complicated with music.. > > But after all, notation is really made for humans, while the matrix > editor (or even the event list editor) is much more similar (if still > high-level) to what you would feed to a machine (by the way the matrix > editor is called "piano roll" in some applications for a reason, so > 'machine' is not necessarily a computer). > > Well well always very interesting discussions on the RG mailing list :) > > On 08/04/2016 15:19, D. Michael McIntyre wrote: >> On 04/07/2016 07:04 PM, Silas Mortimer wrote: >> >>> If I might ask, because I've been wondering about this, what makes >>> doing notation so difficult? >> >> I think the root of it is because notation is a very analog, >> infinitely-variable kind of thing that is difficult to represent and >> manipulate in an orderly digital world. >> >> I have probably over 1,000 pages of commercially published sheet music >> for various instruments sitting around in my house, and it probably >> wouldn't take me 30 seconds to find a score that Rosegarden can't be >> used to reproduce. It would probably take me more on the order of 30 >> minutes to find a score that Rosegarden CAN reproduce exactly like the >> original, with no compromises. I would probably have to pull that out >> of some basic band method book too. >> >> Notation is difficult, because of the amount of effort that would be >> required to address any random one of a hundred different scenarios I >> could come up with that Rosegarden doesn't know how to handle. >> >> Kneed beams. How the hell would we ever make kneed beams work without >> seriously rethinking everything from the ground up? I have utterly no idea. >> >> Anacrusis is something I've banged on off and on for years, and we still >> can't really handle it probably, or get it exported to LilyPond >> properly. Close, but not really a cigar. I have a trumpet method book >> with 1,000 pages of stuff Rosegarden can't handle. It's basic, common >> stuff that's hard to work out how to achieve in a notation editor >> grafted onto a MIDI sequencer. >> >> After 15 years of this, I could go on for days, Silas. Doing notation >> on top of a sequencer is borderline insanity, but it's a crazy kind of >> fun to challenge the limits of what is possible, even if it isn't smart >> or practical. >> >> The true notation editors like MusE Score and Finale (they work directly >> with notes and lines and staffs instead of MIDI) have an easier time >> with a great many of these problems, but they face their own nightmares. >>Those things are especially weak when it comes to rendering imperfect >> human performances on a page. I've seen absolutely nothing on any >> platform in close to 30 years of computer music that could produce a >> playable sheet of music without a considerable amount of fiddling around >> to tweak all the glitches. >> >> I'm pretty sure if that magic button could be written, it would be on >> the market by now, and would probably cost $10,000 a copy. >> > > -- > ___ > Rosegarden-user mailing list > Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user -- ___ Rosegarden-user mailing list Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user
Re: [Rosegarden-user] Ugly notation formatting
I can definitely believe it, I just didn't see it before you explained it. It makes sense. Not that I think we should abandon the old way by any means, but maybe there ought to be a notation 2.0, completely reworked to be an easy learning curve for those who already know the old notation, but make more sense to coding. I wonder if that's even possible. You know, I say that I'm completely new to composing on a computer, but that's not *quite* true. In the days of DOS, I remember creating a BASIC file that would play some notes using computer beeps, lol. I remember doing Slayer's "War Ensemble" that way and it was hilarious. Just a random thought. On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 8:19 AM, D. Michael McIntyre wrote: > On 04/07/2016 07:04 PM, Silas Mortimer wrote: > >> If I might ask, because I've been wondering about this, what makes >> doing notation so difficult? > > I think the root of it is because notation is a very analog, > infinitely-variable kind of thing that is difficult to represent and > manipulate in an orderly digital world. > > I have probably over 1,000 pages of commercially published sheet music > for various instruments sitting around in my house, and it probably > wouldn't take me 30 seconds to find a score that Rosegarden can't be > used to reproduce. It would probably take me more on the order of 30 > minutes to find a score that Rosegarden CAN reproduce exactly like the > original, with no compromises. I would probably have to pull that out > of some basic band method book too. > > Notation is difficult, because of the amount of effort that would be > required to address any random one of a hundred different scenarios I > could come up with that Rosegarden doesn't know how to handle. > > Kneed beams. How the hell would we ever make kneed beams work without > seriously rethinking everything from the ground up? I have utterly no idea. > > Anacrusis is something I've banged on off and on for years, and we still > can't really handle it probably, or get it exported to LilyPond > properly. Close, but not really a cigar. I have a trumpet method book > with 1,000 pages of stuff Rosegarden can't handle. It's basic, common > stuff that's hard to work out how to achieve in a notation editor > grafted onto a MIDI sequencer. > > After 15 years of this, I could go on for days, Silas. Doing notation > on top of a sequencer is borderline insanity, but it's a crazy kind of > fun to challenge the limits of what is possible, even if it isn't smart > or practical. > > The true notation editors like MusE Score and Finale (they work directly > with notes and lines and staffs instead of MIDI) have an easier time > with a great many of these problems, but they face their own nightmares. > Those things are especially weak when it comes to rendering imperfect > human performances on a page. I've seen absolutely nothing on any > platform in close to 30 years of computer music that could produce a > playable sheet of music without a considerable amount of fiddling around > to tweak all the glitches. > > I'm pretty sure if that magic button could be written, it would be on > the market by now, and would probably cost $10,000 a copy. > > -- > D. Michael McIntyre > > -- > ___ > Rosegarden-user mailing list > Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user -- ___ Rosegarden-user mailing list Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user
Re: [Rosegarden-user] Ugly notation formatting
As I already said this is really a bit of a conundrum I think a good analogy would be imagine writing in a word processor (e.g. Writer) or typesetting system (e.g. Latex) VS. trying to feed what you wrote to a Text To Speech (TTS) engine/system able of rendering the text you write as if it were a professional actress. Feed plain text to a text to speech and it will sound like... well text to speech, if you want to add articulations etc. you have to 'break' the plain text with some sort of semantics (markup), or invest a lot in some sort of interpretation engine which can also do linguistic analysis. That kind of thing gets magnitudes more complicated with music.. But after all, notation is really made for humans, while the matrix editor (or even the event list editor) is much more similar (if still high-level) to what you would feed to a machine (by the way the matrix editor is called "piano roll" in some applications for a reason, so 'machine' is not necessarily a computer). Well well always very interesting discussions on the RG mailing list :) On 08/04/2016 15:19, D. Michael McIntyre wrote: > On 04/07/2016 07:04 PM, Silas Mortimer wrote: > >> If I might ask, because I've been wondering about this, what makes >> doing notation so difficult? > > I think the root of it is because notation is a very analog, > infinitely-variable kind of thing that is difficult to represent and > manipulate in an orderly digital world. > > I have probably over 1,000 pages of commercially published sheet music > for various instruments sitting around in my house, and it probably > wouldn't take me 30 seconds to find a score that Rosegarden can't be > used to reproduce. It would probably take me more on the order of 30 > minutes to find a score that Rosegarden CAN reproduce exactly like the > original, with no compromises. I would probably have to pull that out > of some basic band method book too. > > Notation is difficult, because of the amount of effort that would be > required to address any random one of a hundred different scenarios I > could come up with that Rosegarden doesn't know how to handle. > > Kneed beams. How the hell would we ever make kneed beams work without > seriously rethinking everything from the ground up? I have utterly no idea. > > Anacrusis is something I've banged on off and on for years, and we still > can't really handle it probably, or get it exported to LilyPond > properly. Close, but not really a cigar. I have a trumpet method book > with 1,000 pages of stuff Rosegarden can't handle. It's basic, common > stuff that's hard to work out how to achieve in a notation editor > grafted onto a MIDI sequencer. > > After 15 years of this, I could go on for days, Silas. Doing notation > on top of a sequencer is borderline insanity, but it's a crazy kind of > fun to challenge the limits of what is possible, even if it isn't smart > or practical. > > The true notation editors like MusE Score and Finale (they work directly > with notes and lines and staffs instead of MIDI) have an easier time > with a great many of these problems, but they face their own nightmares. >Those things are especially weak when it comes to rendering imperfect > human performances on a page. I've seen absolutely nothing on any > platform in close to 30 years of computer music that could produce a > playable sheet of music without a considerable amount of fiddling around > to tweak all the glitches. > > I'm pretty sure if that magic button could be written, it would be on > the market by now, and would probably cost $10,000 a copy. > -- ___ Rosegarden-user mailing list Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user
Re: [Rosegarden-user] Ugly notation formatting
On 04/07/2016 07:04 PM, Silas Mortimer wrote: > If I might ask, because I've been wondering about this, what makes > doing notation so difficult? I think the root of it is because notation is a very analog, infinitely-variable kind of thing that is difficult to represent and manipulate in an orderly digital world. I have probably over 1,000 pages of commercially published sheet music for various instruments sitting around in my house, and it probably wouldn't take me 30 seconds to find a score that Rosegarden can't be used to reproduce. It would probably take me more on the order of 30 minutes to find a score that Rosegarden CAN reproduce exactly like the original, with no compromises. I would probably have to pull that out of some basic band method book too. Notation is difficult, because of the amount of effort that would be required to address any random one of a hundred different scenarios I could come up with that Rosegarden doesn't know how to handle. Kneed beams. How the hell would we ever make kneed beams work without seriously rethinking everything from the ground up? I have utterly no idea. Anacrusis is something I've banged on off and on for years, and we still can't really handle it probably, or get it exported to LilyPond properly. Close, but not really a cigar. I have a trumpet method book with 1,000 pages of stuff Rosegarden can't handle. It's basic, common stuff that's hard to work out how to achieve in a notation editor grafted onto a MIDI sequencer. After 15 years of this, I could go on for days, Silas. Doing notation on top of a sequencer is borderline insanity, but it's a crazy kind of fun to challenge the limits of what is possible, even if it isn't smart or practical. The true notation editors like MusE Score and Finale (they work directly with notes and lines and staffs instead of MIDI) have an easier time with a great many of these problems, but they face their own nightmares. Those things are especially weak when it comes to rendering imperfect human performances on a page. I've seen absolutely nothing on any platform in close to 30 years of computer music that could produce a playable sheet of music without a considerable amount of fiddling around to tweak all the glitches. I'm pretty sure if that magic button could be written, it would be on the market by now, and would probably cost $10,000 a copy. -- D. Michael McIntyre -- ___ Rosegarden-user mailing list Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user
Re: [Rosegarden-user] Ugly notation formatting
On 04/07/2016 07:00 PM, Silas Mortimer wrote: > I don't mind sending it here. Got it, and took a quick look. I need to take a more detailed look to figure out what's going on here, and I will have to come back to this tomorrow. Everything is fixable though. No worries. -- D. Michael McIntyre -- ___ Rosegarden-user mailing list Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user
Re: [Rosegarden-user] Ugly notation formatting
>>> My understanding of notation is that a whole note is a whole measure. Only in 4/4 or 2/2 time that is. I would like to add that a whole REST can mean a whole measure, even if time is not 4/4, if the rest is placed in the middle of an otherwise empty bar! I have not tried if RG knows this. -- MT -- ___ Rosegarden-user mailing list Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user
Re: [Rosegarden-user] Ugly notation formatting
On 07/04/2016 21:15, Silas Mortimer wrote: > I should start doing that. > > Anyway, as I said before, I had to make the time signature 2/4, which > would make a whole note of four beats span two measures. I know it's > weird, but I started composing the piece on guitar and wound up having > trouble finding the right signature before finding that 2/4 worked > really well. Though now that I have a good portion of it down, I > should be able to come up with a better signature. Obviously I don't know the piece, but if you are using whole (semibreve - 4/4) notes, why not switch to 4/4? While there *is* a difference between 2/4 and 4/4 the fact you are using whole notes makes me guess you are actually "thinking in fours". Anyway, as David says notation-wise if are in 2/4 and want a note to last 4/4 what you write is two tied minim notes (2/4). > > On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 1:31 PM, David Jones wrote: >> Hmmm, I use only the notation editor. My understanding of notation is that a >> whole note is a whole measure. So if I have a note to be held longer than a >> measure (say 3), I put a whole note in each measure and tie them together. >> Not make a dotted whole note to get a note that runs longer than a measure. >> >> Just my free contribution. >> >> David W. Jones >> gn...@hawaii.rr.com >> authenticity, honesty, community >> http://dancingtreefrog.comOn Apr 7, 2016 02:37, Lorenzo Sutton >> wrote: >>> >>> Hi! >>> >>> On 07/04/2016 00:27, Silas Mortimer wrote: >>> >>> [...] >>> One example is at one point I wanted to make a chord ring out longer than I'd originally put it and had already added notes after it. I searched for what I should do there, and from what I gather, I could only do that in the matrix editor. Is that the case? Anyway, I did it there, and the notation not only looks bad, it no longer makes sense. I think there might be a whole note listed in one bar (again, it's in 2/4), and there's something that should be tied, plays like it's tied, but it's not shown that way. >>> >>> I think that's expected and software can't really help you there. >>> >>> I guess this is the basic concept and conundrum of sequencer which (like >>> rosegarden) also support notation: if the notation is 'perfect' from a >>> visual/typesetting point of view it will sound mechanical from a >>> performance point of view. The matrix editor (aka Piano Roll in some >>> software) enables you to tweak notes so that e.g. they result more >>> realistic but that will inevitably screw notation. >>> >>> Really, it's a conundrum in music itself. No one performs exactly what >>> is written on a score (some contemporary music can be an exception), so >>> imagine writing down on a score *exactly* what a performer is playing... >>> >>> Rosegarden actually does have some 'intelligence' when it comes to >>> interpreting notation (e.g. dynamics), but it cannot 'imagine' what you >>> would like especially in terms of note onsets and lengths. >>> >>> My recommendation would be to: >>> a.) use notation for: >>> 1. Inputting notes when you are familiar or more comfortable with >>> traditional notation. >>> 2. Want to concentrate on the notation aspects of your piece, e.g. >>> because you want to eventually publish it. >>> >>> b.) Use the matrix editor when: >>> 1. You want to concentrate on how your piece actually sounds. >>> 2. You become familiar enough with the matrix paradigm to be able to >>> input notes directly there. >>> 3. Adjust at the fine level not onsets, durations, velocities etc. >>> >>> To conclude, take into account that some sequencers simply do not >>> provide notation, so think of Rosegarden as a sequencer with a (very >>> advanced compared to many sequencers) support for notation ;) >>> >>> Hope this helps. >>> Lorenzo. >>> >>> -- >>> ___ >>> Rosegarden-user mailing list >>> Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe >>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user >> -- >> ___ >> Rosegarden-user mailing list >> Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user > > -- > ___ > Rosegarden-user mailing list > Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user > -- ___ Rosegarden-user mailing list Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforg
