Brainstorming: Piano Roll

believe me you’ll get used to entering melodies in hex …
I’m not against a piano roll , ( it would make life easier ) but I think a lot of brainstorming has to be done if it should be vertical or horizontal …

ive read this several times now, dont take this personaly but nobody is entering melodies in hex!
what annoys me is, that i have read something like that in a review from a music magazin.
and this is simply wrong ;)

c-4 is exactly what it is, but definitely no hex :)
vol/pan and the other pattern effect colums are hex values.
please, don`t make things more complicated as they are.

if you say “Please play A-3” to a pianist he exactly plays
the A in the 3rd octave :yeah:

ofcourse, a piano roll would help sometimes and i think horizontal is the best choice.
doing it like the automation would be cool.

my mistake …just an unfortunate mispelling

:D

I want it vertical and in tracker column for exactly the same reason I would like automation curves to be there: I want to see timing right where it belongs, right next to notes, parameters or what else instead of constantly checking numbers (!) between two different views. I like to see my data in context and not scattered around. To me current way of automation would be like having pattern fx commands at different panel stuffed somewhere, unvisible and uneditable with the note data they belong to.
edit: typo

Really cool concept for an alternate piano-roll that would actually fit the tracker paradigm perfectly. Maybe something like this could be achieved with some kind of future scripting capabilities (I mean, further up the road than 2.6). Would be awesome!

Imagine there was another little pop-up menu following the notes, one that would hook up with an external database of chords, sequences, scales, etc. You’d bind it to a specific instrument or track. THAT would really spice things up!

interval types

Great vid, Thanks for posting!

I usually take note of intervals by numbers but I like the way the vid presents intervals.

Here’s another interesting approach at presenting intervals, notice across each note in Synplant is the Diabolus in Musica, 6 notes above and below…

[F#][G][G#][A][A#][B]
[C][C#][D][D#][E][F]

The circular nature of Synplant makes it easier to track your intervals…but its not a sequencer and can’t be changed to a circle of fifths or a chord progression chart…

EDIT: was just roaming in http://www.musanim.com/index.html, great site + a wealth of information…Music Animation Machine MIDI Player “With this program you can listen to your own MIDI files (or play live) while viewing these visualizations:”

The thing about the first vid you posted was that it illustrates so well the amount of relationships of intervals you are taking in, when listening to a piece over time. This is not always visually obvious when following a score. It illustrates that complexity that you can hear and brings it to life visually. Really impressive!

May have to take another look at synplant, didn`t really give it a proper spin before.

Cheers

(will have to start a new thread before getting split off here :P)

More piano roll shenanigans.
EDIT: I’m working on a horizontal version since its much easier to navigate using a generic text editor that way + the limits of the PSP text editor since I switch between that and TextEdit on my Mac. I’ll make a tune in Renoise and use the bottom as some sort of proof of concept, see if it makes sense.
previousEdit/03032010Wed/avocadoIceCream :): A way to view polymeters would be nice…
currentEdit/03042010Thu/clintEastwood: polymeters is tight fit but visually works, also managed to include a bass + guitar seq to go along the pRoll, some technique notation can fit…

==============================================================instrumentRanges  
[AaB ___E__G___B _________a_ cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB]  
[ 1[G 2 45 7 9+ 2 4 67 9  
[2[D 23 5 7 9+ 2 45 7 9]  
[3[A 23 5 78 + 2 45 7 9+]  
[4[E1 3 5 78 + 23 5 7 9+]  
[1[E1 3 5 78 + 23 5 7 9 +]  
[2[B1 3 56 8 + 23 5 78 +]  
[3[G 2 45 7 9+ 2 4 67 9]  
[4[D 23 5 7 9+ 2 45 7 9]  
[5[A 23 5 78 + 2 45 7 9+]  
[6[E1 3 5 78 + 23 5 7 9+] fGgAaB  
[AaB ___E__G___B _________a_ cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB]  
=====================================================================frequency  
SB16Hz-60Hz ]B60Hz-250Hz ]M250Hz-2khz ]Hm  
 20Hz-60Hz ] 60Hz-300Hz ] 300Hz-2khz ]  
[AaB ___E__G___B _________a_ cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB]  
[2233333444455566677889911111111111122222223333344445556667788991111111111112]  
[7902468136815815937272701123345678902346791246914692582593838380112334567890]  
[-----------------------30630865445670361731999250633472989300274074198666679]  
[51876782629902742474349----------------------------------------6844860810493]  
[36040905491073091800998054858586006009616162903018233224996037-------------]  
[583881349930056662779930471936110050843863339000685735569910375775590020750]  
[All notes used in song  
[AaB ___E__G___B _________a_ cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB]  
[Notes used per pattern  
[AaB ___E__G___B _________a_ cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB cDdEFfGgAaB]  
0=== E = = = = == = = == = == = = == = == = = == = == = = ==|0  
1--- | - - - _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|1  
2--- - 3 - - _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|2  
3--- - | - - _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|3  
4--- - | 4 - _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|4  
5--- - | | - _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|5  
6--- 7 - - 6 _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|6  
7--- | - - | _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|7  
8=== | = = | = == = = == = == = = == = == = = == = == = = ==|8  
9--- | - - | _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|9  
A--- | - - | _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|A  
B--- | - - | _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|B  
C--- | - - | _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|C  
D--- - - - - _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|D  
E--- - - - - _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|E  
F--- - - - - _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _- _ __ _ _ _-|F  

no ta
i stopped using cubase when my amega died way back when

That comment makes zero comment ?
Perhaps you mean’t you stopped using Cubase when your Atari died ?
There was never a Cubase for Amiga

Cheers

He’s talking about an Amega though ;) http://webspace.webring.com/people/bi/irata/megastseries.html

in my opinion just do a piano roll screen that is separate to the pattern matrix and is exactly like the cubase piano roll. it will be an easier process to tranfer music between renoise and cubase than if piano roll is all mixed up in the pattern matrix

piano rolls are bad and old
cubase is bad and old
if you want to use a piano roll use cubase and live in the 1980’s
dont be trying to turn my renoise into that pile of s**t
is what im saying

Well, I’m of a different opinion, but that’s just me. I don’t care about trackers being l33t, I just want a good piece of software. And Renoise is exactly that, and with a (vertical) pianoroll it would be even greater. But again, that’s just me.

the piano roll in the latest versions of cubase is actually pretty good. of course, tracking will always be better because of the fast workflow and you dont need to keep scrolling up and down which gets annoying when using a piano roll. i’d say keep the pattern editor as it is and add a separate piano roll screen as well as an alternative which will make the transition to renoise easier on piano roll lovin’ peeps… coloured ‘blocks’ or ‘clips’ in the pattern editor would be sweet though in my opinion.

I’d like to see alternative suggestions from all these piano roll haters.

It’s not the piano roll most people here want, piano roll would just be a very familiar solution for many problems we have at the moment - bad sub tick editing, parts recorded with midi keyboard are very hard to edit while maintaining the “human touch”, visualizing the bigger picture and so on.

Don’t have anything against piano roll, nor I support the idea, but I wish we had a solution to problems described above.

What is the current development status of the piano roll?
Is it currently in active development?
Are we likely to see it in one of the future 2.x updates or will be in something bigger like Renoise 3?