Notation pre-release thread (part 2)

[krahosk]

Some users have gone to great lengths to do this.

http://wiki.cockos.com/wiki/index.php/TabEditor
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=78938

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjOSqLnKzAc

and what was mentioned in a previous post:

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.p...75#post1704175

[magicmusic]

Originally Posted by pipelineaudio

Guitar Pro support, GP R.I.P.

Life would be grander

do you know there come no new guitar pro ?. they have do for android. at least there are many songs for guitar pro.

good is, when reaper can create in note editor bend half, bend full easy or vibrato fast slow easy. this is often use in songs. or maybe there are some actions for it ?

[hamish]

So talking 'incrementally' here, the display quantize dialogue with sliders is currently slower for me than the old way for two reasons.

1) Have to select the track I want to adjust from a drop-down menu.

2) Need to un-check the 'project default' check boxes before touching the sliders.

Now if the dialogue could be made aware of the currenly 'targeted' track AND the check boxes could automatically clear on adjustment of a slider then this system would be quicker than the old one.

Anyone else have an opinion or suggestion on this? (assuming you are a Notation view user who regularly sets display quantize per track)

[snooks]

I know the last time it was mentioned Schwa said they'd need to have a think about how to implement variable (within a track) display quantize. I think any improvement (obviously) needs to take the future into account.

The way Product C works is having Display Quantize markers (which you can show/hide) that can be set along a track. I don't think it gets much better than that, although with a grand staff it could do vertical placement:

Top - this staff

Center - both

Bottom - this staff

Maybe Definitely with a SchwaNotatorHandle™ on them so with the handle not extended it is a marker and with it extended it is a display quantize region, resetting to previous afterwards.

[hamish]

I guess display quantize REAPER notation markers/events in the MIDI stream would allow the kind of bar wise control that we are looking for.

How that would integrate or be reconciled with the current per project/track settings and interface is the question.

I wonder if it might better be handled with a new layer (new functionality) such as a 'notate as' function (thanks sebas777) that would cover a range of special cases, such as tremolo and rolled (strummed) chords. So a group of notes, like a spread chord, can be selected and notated as a simplified duration plus an arpeggio arrow. Also select a bar of tremoloed notes and notate a whole note with tremolo stems. (Also staccato could be covered like this).

[snooks, looks like there was closely related discussed this thread, posts #806-813]

[juliansader]

Yay! v5.22 allows per-note quantization and modification of displayed length and position.

The following actions are available:

"Notation: Nudge length display offset left"
"Notation: Nudge length display offset right"
"Notation: Nudge position display offset left"
"Notation: Nudge position display offset right"
"Notation: Clear display offset"

(Also listed under "Display offset" in the notes' right-click menu.)

The per-note display info is accessible to user scripts, so I whipped up these two scripts for ReaPack:

js_Notation - Set displayed length of selected notes to custom value
js_Notation - Double displayed length of selected notes and add staccato articulation

[lowellben]

Originally Posted by juliansader

The per-note display info is accessible to user scripts, so I whipped up these two scripts for ReaPack:

js_Notation - Set displayed length of selected notes to custom value
js_Notation - Double displayed length of selected notes and add staccato articulation

THANKSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
When can they be downloaded via ReaPack? Just tried now, and no updates yet

[juliansader]

Originally Posted by lowellben

THANKSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
When can they be downloaded via ReaPack? Just tried now, and no updates yet

Online...... Now!

[MonkeyBars]

Well done, thanks Julian!

[hamish]

Very interesting. With just four new actions it looks like we have a powerful tool for display quantization exceptions and maybe even sophisticated 'notate as' macros.

Now please could that display quantize dialogue be made a bit smarter and friendlier? At least can it know what the targeted track is? It takes more clicking than the old system.

[Soli Deo Gloria]

@Schwa : There is a problem with the beaming of independent voices when you have a tuplet in one of them. I show a simple recipe to reproduce it here : http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=180150

I hope you can have a look at it, since it restricts a lot of notation possibilities.

Thank you very much in advance!

[FnA]

Can you do a courtesy accidental? Not seeing it.

[Winfield]

Originally Posted by krahosk

I wonder with MusicXML now supported in Reaper, how would that plugin evolve. Ideally, Like TuxGuitar, Progression and Sibelius, Reaper could import GuitarPro files and display the notes and tab correctly.
That would be WOW.

Originally Posted by creal

It would be very WOW !

It would be WOW to the max!
Just being able to import GP-files in Reaper would be wow!

-W

[snooks]

Good news with the actions for individual display quantization for notes. Could do with some visual indication and toggle to see what's been moved maybe.

RE notation view in general, I assume most people in this thread are not happy about the notation view and MIDI editor auto scrolling and zooming when using the Track List?

[hamish]

Yes I agree I'd like an option to turn off autozoom.

[juliansader]

Originally Posted by snooks

Good news with the actions for individual display quantization for notes. Could do with some visual indication and toggle to see what's been moved maybe.

The script "js_Notation - Select all notes that have customized display lengths or positions.lua" may be helpful to find all these hidden customized notes.

Originally Posted by snooks

RE notation view in general, I assume most people in this thread are not happy about the notation view and MIDI editor auto scrolling and zooming when using the Track List?

+1

[juliansader]

I have submitted the following Feature Request:

Originally Posted by juliansader

REAPER's notation editor has a clever algorithm for deciding when to display a single note as multiple tied notes. This algorithm takes into account the time signature as well as overlapping notes in the same voice.

As an alternative, there is an action (and right-click option) named "Minimize ties", which is useful for notation of certain syncopated rhythms, for example 1-2-2-2-1, or 3-3-2 tresillo, which do not follow the time signature.

I would like to suggest the following:

* The name of the action, "Minimize ties", is a bit misleading since it is actually a toggle: If the selected notes' ties are already minimized, the action will actually UNminimize the ties. The action can therefore be renamed to something like "Toggle minimize ties".

* It would be useful to have two additional actions, "Minimize ties" and "Unminimize ties" that are not toggles. Toggle actions are problematic for scripts that try to minimize ties (by calling the action via MIDIEditor_OnCommand), since scripts do not know whether the action will in fact minimize or unminimize the ties.

* Another action that would be super useful, is a global "Display all notes with minimal ties" option that can be switched on or off (similar to the "Automatically voice overlapping notes" option). By default, the MIDI editor displays notes with ties. Notation with minimal ties are not 'correct' as per the rules of notation, but it makes it much easier the see the flow of notes at a glance.

[hamish]

I'm happy to see this coming for v5.24

+ Notation editor: display quantization dialog defaults to the active track

Also julian while you're here your script for adding staccato didn't work so well for me when my staccato notes were very short, less than a sixteenth, and doubling the value didn't amount to a quarter. I wondered if it would be better for the user to input the required display length, although I realise that it would become slower to opereate with the extra input.

[juliansader]

Originally Posted by hamish

Also julian while you're here your script for adding staccato didn't work so well for me when my staccato notes were very short, less than a sixteenth, and doubling the value didn't amount to a quarter. I wondered if it would be better for the user to input the required display length, although I realise that it would become slower to opereate with the extra input.

Could you please try again with the version that I uploaded earlier today? It has more accurate calculation of the displayed lengths.

Doubling of a note that is less than a sixteenth should amount to a note that is less than an eighth - not a quarter? I actually intend to upload another script that quadruples the note length and adds a staccatissimo, which may be more appropriate for such short notes.

If you prefer to input a custom length, you can also try the script "js_Notation - Set displayed length of selected notes to custom value".

EDIT: If the doubling or quadrupling do not give precisely the desired display lengths, REAPER's own actions can be used to fine-tune the display lengths in multiples of 1/64 notes.

[hamish]

Originally Posted by juliansader

Could you please try again with the version that I uploaded earlier today? It has more accurate calculation of the displayed lengths.

Doubling of a note that is less than a sixteenth should amount to a note that is less than an eighth - not a quarter? I actually intend to upload another script that quadruples the note length and adds a staccatissimo, which may be more appropriate for such short notes.

If you prefer to input a custom length, you can try the script "js_Notation - Set displayed length of selected notes to custom value".

Oops, sorry yeah I meant and eighth. I think using the 'Set displayed length of selected notes to custom value' and then just manually adding the staccato marks would be no problem.

I tried the latest script versions, but for my example the double length + staccato was not appropriate. The quadruple may do, but I'm more inclined to use the 'Set displayed length..' one in a custom action with add staccato. It works very well.

[hamish]

While the script works well, I'm not getting 100% success, and it may be that I've uncovered a REAPER bug, or hole in the logic for display offset. (More accurately this is a problem with disp_len)

Here are screenshots of the notes in the various editors, to show what's happening. You can see that the notes that have not been shown as eighths are not the shortest or the furthest from the grid, but they are notes that are in the previous bar by their absolute timing. The script has done it's work, but for some reason the Notation editor is not rendering them as desired.

[juliansader]

Originally Posted by hamish

While the script works well, I'm not getting 100% success, and it may be that I've uncovered a REAPER bug, or hole in the logic for display offset. (More accurately this is a problem with disp_len)

Good catch! I think you have indeed discovered a bug in the display logic.

REAPER's own "Nudge length/position display" actions give the same result.

EDIT: I have submitted your post in the Bug Reports subforum: Notation: "Nudge length/position display offset" actions fail if note crosses bar line

[snooks]

Originally Posted by juliansader

The script "js_Notation - Select all notes that have customized display lengths or positions.lua" may be helpful to find all these hidden customized notes.

Yes, that's very useful - thanks!

[schwa]

Originally Posted by hamish

the Notation editor is not rendering them as desired

Fixed for the next build, thanks for the report.

[michael diemer]

There is a great need for horizontal scrolling while selecting a group of notes. Last night I was trying to do some arranging/orchestrating, and I needed to move groups of notes around between violins and violas. Three sets of strings, and the notes were all divided, with an upper and lower voice. Plus, they were in 9/8 time, and there were 18 notes per instrument per measure. And this went on for 12 measures. If I wanted to move the upper voice of the violas to the second violins, for example, I had to highlight as much as the view would allow, then move the view, do it again, and keep doing that several more times to get the whole thing selected. And I would also have needed to first delete the notes in the second violins, or move them to another silent instrument, for the time being. Which would also have been an ordeal. I may have needed to try 6 different combinations between the three string groups, to see what worked best. I finally gave up. Just too cumbersome. To do this in PRV, as has been suggested in another thread, defeats the whole purpose of having notation view.

And this needs to be done with any grouping, not with the whole orchestra. I need to be able to bring up 2, 4, 6 etc instruments, whatever I'm working on at the time.

Thank You.

[juliansader]

EDIT: Fixed in 5.24pre10

Possible bug in mouse modifiers for notation:

It seems that the default action for double-click is hard-coded to "Erase note" in notation view -- even if it is set to another action in Preferences.

(In the piano roll view, double-click works OK, and can be changed to another action.)

[fabiolcati]

Originally Posted by michael diemer

There is a great need for horizontal scrolling while selecting a group of notes. Last night I was trying to do some arranging/orchestrating, and I needed to move groups of notes around between violins and violas. Three sets of strings, and the notes were all divided, with an upper and lower voice. Plus, they were in 9/8 time, and there were 18 notes per instrument per measure. And this went on for 12 measures. If I wanted to move the upper voice of the violas to the second violins, for example, I had to highlight as much as the view would allow, then move the view, do it again, and keep doing that several more times to get the whole thing selected. And I would also have needed to first delete the notes in the second violins, or move them to another silent instrument, for the time being. Which would also have been an ordeal. I may have needed to try 6 different combinations between the three string groups, to see what worked best. I finally gave up. Just too cumbersome. To do this in PRV, as has been suggested in another thread, defeats the whole purpose of having notation view.

And this needs to be done with any grouping, not with the whole orchestra. I need to be able to bring up 2, 4, 6 etc instruments, whatever I'm working on at the time.

Thank You.

@Michael Diemer

Hi Michael, nice to meet you here.

While supporting any reasonable request for Notation View improvement,
I wish to suggest you a workaround for testing alternative assignment of parts.

You can "Enable track free item positioning" from the Track menu
to feed the chosen track with items in multiple rows running in parallel
to each other along the same timeline (see attachment)
whereas I have pizzicato basses in upper row and arco in lower one.

Toggling between muted and unmuted items I can hear the same part
played with different techniques and be able to choose the one that better fits
in the score.

You can do the same with parts you wrote e.g. for violins and want to listen
how it will sound if violas are called in instead; just copy it in a second, parallel,
free-positioned row in target track.

Hope it helps.

(Thanks to xpander and vanhaze for their hints at
http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=178449)

[juliansader]

Originally Posted by michael diemer

I finally gave up. Just too cumbersome. To do this in PRV, as has been suggested in another thread, defeats the whole purpose of having notation view.

There are several nifty features of the PRV that are not yet available in the notation view, including
* Arpeggiate mouse modifiers (my favourite note-tweaking action)
* Regions and Markers display
* CC lanes

I expect that all of these missing features will eventually be ported to the notation view, but even when they are, it will still be worthwhile to familiarize yourself with the PRV. The purpose of the notation view is not to replace the PRV, but to complement it, since some things are easier done in notation view, while others are easier done in PRV. IMO, the most efficient workflow would use both views simultaneously.

[fabiolcati]

Originally Posted by juliansader

There are several nifty features of the PRV that are not yet available in the notation view, including
* Arpeggiate mouse modifiers (my favourite note-tweaking action)
* Regions and Markers display
* CC lanes

I expect that all of these missing features will eventually be ported to the notation view, but even when they are, it will still be worthwhile to familiarize yourself with the PRV. The purpose of the notation view is not to replace the PRV, but to complement it, since some things are easier done in notation view, while others are easier done in PRV. IMO, the most efficient workflow would use both views simultaneously.

I totally agree.

[michael diemer]

Thanks very much, Fabio. I haven't had a chance yet to try that. I decided to download the Sonar Artist demo, to see if I could work with it, and finish the piece I'm working on. Bad idea, I couldn't get any sound. Eventually realized I needed to reinstall all my synths. This did not used to happen from one version of sonar to the next, to my memory. Anyway, I got rid of it (had to do a system restore), went back to Reaper and worked on some other parts, then when I got to the challenging part, I just bit the bullet and did the slow, tedious selecting by measures per view, then advanced the view, etc. However, I plan to check out your suggestion, as your advice is always helpful. The whole process of trying Sonar Artist did teach me one thing: I'm a confirmed Reaper user. No going back.

[gibi25]

Originally Posted by juliansader

IMO, the most efficient workflow would use both views simultaneously.

I do agree with this.

[lowellben]

Originally Posted by juliansader
IMO, the most efficient workflow would use both views simultaneously.

That'd be the obvious best choice, two panes two views at the same time. Maybe it's on the horizon.

[juliansader]

Originally Posted by lowellben

That'd be the obvious best choice, two panes two views at the same time. Maybe it's on the horizon.

I am not sure if there are any plans to implement multiple panes per MIDI editor, but multiple separate editors, all working on the same tracks, are already possible!

[juliansader]

1) Big bug in scripting versus notation:
MIDI_SetNote function removes articulations, ornaments and other notation settings.

If the mouse is used to edit a note in the MIDI editor, or if the "Note Properties" dialog box is used, the note's notation information is preserved.

In contrast, if a script uses MIDI_SetNote to edit the PPQ position, channel of pitch of a note, all notation settings are lost.

(PPQ, channel and pitch are the parameters by which the notation editor knows which MIDI 'text event' corresponds to which note. When a script uses MIDI_SetNote to change these parameters, the corresponding text event is not automatically updated, so the notes loses its notation settings.)

2) And a bug that affects the notation view as well as piano roll:
The "Set channel for new events" actions activate the event filter.

As discussed earlier in this thread, the MIDI editor needs channel better management, similar to the notation view's new Voice dropdown menu. While we are waiting for this feature to be implemented, users are dependent on the actions "Set channel for new events to ..." to set the channel for new events. Unfortunately, there is a bug in these actions (as reported in a separate Bug Report): they automatically activate the event filter, which causes notes and CCs to disappear without the user knowing why.

This bug also affects some of the scripts that I wrote to provide better channel management.

[lowellben]

Originally Posted by juliansader

I am not sure if there are any plans to implement multiple panes per MIDI editor, but multiple separate editors, all working on the same tracks, are already possible!

How do you suggest I get the notation view side by side with the MIDI editor if I'd like both docked? Not floating.

[juliansader]

Originally Posted by lowellben

How do you suggest I get the notation view side by side with the MIDI editor if I'd like both docked? Not floating.

In each floating MIDI editor, go to Options -> Dock window. (I think by default there is also a 'Dock' button in the toolbar.) When they are docked, they can be moved around between docks like any other docked window. So you can place one editor in the bottom left dock of the main window, and the other one in the bottom right.

[reddiesel41264]

Originally Posted by juliansader

In each floating MIDI editor, go to Options -> Dock window. When they are docked, they can be moved around between docks like any other docked window. So you can place one editor in the bottom left dock of the main window, and the other one in the bottom right.

How do you open more than one MIDI editor for an item?

[lowellben]

Originally Posted by reddiesel41264

How do you open more than one MIDI editor for an item?

Exactly!

[juliansader]

Originally Posted by reddiesel41264

How do you open more than one MIDI editor for an item?

Change preferences to "One MIDI editor per item" or "per track" (and also set the "Behavior for open items" to "Open the clicked MIDI item only"). Then, when you double-click an item that is not yet editable in the existing MIDI editors, a new editor will open, with that item set as the active item.

In previous versions of REAPER there were some ugly bugs when using multiple MIDI editors simultaneously, but since v5.22, notation and piano roll work well together.(*)

The only remaining limitation is that multiple editors cannot have the same active item, but this does not inconvenience workflow if you are editing multiple tracks per editor(**): all editors can edit any item, even items that are active in other editors. Edits and inserted events immediately show up in the other editors.

When in notation view, the aforementioned limitation does not apply: the notation editor can insert notes even into tracks that are not active, so the limitation of "One MIDI editor per media item" has actually been overcome to a large extent.

(*) The event list view mode is not yet fully compatible with multiple MIDI editors, if I am not mistaken.

(**) If you prefer to edit one item at a time, with the setting "Active MIDI item follows selection changes in arrange view", you are unfortunately out of luck: This setting is not available when using multiple MIDI editors. (I would suggest, however, that IMO the advantage of using multiple editors/views gets bigger, the more tracks you are editing simultaneously. When you are editing a single track at a time, using a hotkey to switch between views is about as quick as moving your eyes between editors.)

[lowellben]

Originally Posted by juliansader

(**) If you prefer to edit one item at a time, with the setting "Active MIDI item follows selection changes in arrange view", you are unfortunately out of luck: This setting is not available when using multiple MIDI editors. (I would suggest, however, that IMO the advantage of using multiple editors/views gets bigger, the more tracks you are editing simultaneously. When you are editing a single track at a time, using a hotkey to switch between views is about as quick as moving your eyes between editors.)

This is me

How can I get simultaneous views?