piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by dmiraie - 20 Jun 06:16PM (edited 20 Jun 07:57PM) Hide picture In terms of the bigger picture, what do you think are the pros/cons/strengths/weaknesses etc. of today's piano roll (pic attached) vs. traditional music notation? (Visually-speaking in particular), which is ultimately better for creating/expressing/communicating musical information, and WHY? (To clarify, I'm not speaking solely in terms of performing musicians, but any/all reasons a person might have for reading music.) Attachment PIANO ROLL.jpg (231K) Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Laurence Payne - 20 Jun 06:29PM Hide picture Put the piano roll page on your piano's music stand. Can you play it? Does that answer your question? -- FAQ www.laurencepayne.co.uk/sibelius.html If you want help with a score, attach the sib file! Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by James - 20 Jun 07:01PM Hide picture The piano roll view is useful in a DAW (digital audio workstation). Sibelius is a notation program, although quite often is mistaken for a DAW, and some people kinda use it that way. -- Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks Sibelius 6.2 Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by dmiraie - 20 Jun 07:08PM (edited 20 Jun 07:11PM) Hide picture Hi, thanks for the reply! But.. no, that doesn't really answer my question,, because by 'bigger picture' I mean to include things beyond just a pianist (or any other type of musician) performing off of 'sheet music'... ie, notation has other uses.. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Mike Lyons - 20 Jun 07:45PM Hide picture Notation as art - what is the point? Get the damned thing played! -- Win 10 Pro, 1.6GHz Intel i7 Quad core, 8GB,7TB 7200rpm HDD, Scarlett 6i6, Sib 6.2,7.5, 8.3 NotePerformer, Miroslav Phil, Harmony Asst, GPO, COMB2, EWQLSO Plat, EWQLSC, Si me castigare vis, necesse est me intellexisse. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by dmiraie - 20 Jun 08:05PM Hide picture ..Music is more than just it's aural component. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Andy G - 20 Jun 09:21PM Hide picture Maybe so, but we're talking notation as a visual image here. So please tell us what you mean by that statement. -- PC: Q6700@3.2GHz,4GB RAM.Win 7. M-Audio 2496 + Terratec DMX6Fire USB. Sib 6.2 and 7.1.3. Web: www.andrew-gilbert.com Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by dmiraie - 20 Jun 09:51PM Hide picture FYI, here's an example of a helpful answer I got when posting this on Reddit. "You can represent a wider range with traditional notation-- on a piano roll that's the same size as a notation staff, I can only get about an octave showing at a time. Traditional notation can get me 2 octaves easy, and can extend way beyond that with clef changes or use of 8va markers. Secondly, traditional notation is much better and showing exact relationships at a glance. If I'm following a piano roll in real time, I might see that the melody jumps up by about half an octave, but I have to count lines to figure out what the exact interval is. With traditional notation I can spot immediately that it's a (say) perfect fourth. Since traditional notation is always limited to 5 lines (excluding ledger lines), it's super easy to spot things without counting. I can recognize something that's on the middle line, or the bottom line, or top space etc. immediately. With piano roll, there's no "middle" line, and any point of reference you might set will change when you scroll around. It's worth noting that none of the instruments I play are keyboard based, so reading piano roll notation on a piano might make more sense, but for anything else it's more like a guitarist trying to read guitar tab while playing a piano." Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Rob Tuley - 20 Jun 10:16PM Hide picture > Put the piano roll page on your piano's music stand. Can you play it? Well, apparently a Dutchman call Cornelis Pot (that's his name, not his preferred recreational substance) thought it might work... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klavarskribo -- Rob Sib 4.1, Windows 10. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Mike Lyons - 20 Jun 10:36PM Hide picture I'm not even remotely sure what you are getting at with this question. -- Win 10 Pro, 1.6GHz Intel i7 Quad core, 8GB,7TB 7200rpm HDD, Scarlett 6i6, Sib 6.2,7.5, 8.3 NotePerformer, Miroslav Phil, Harmony Asst, GPO, COMB2, EWQLSO Plat, EWQLSC, Si me castigare vis, necesse est me intellexisse. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Mike Lyons - 21 Jun 06:29AM (edited 21 Jun 06:33AM) Hide picture The purpose of notation is to notate. The purpose of Music Notation is to notate music. It has to be precise and clear and easy to read at speed. I used to examine composition for AQA and schools would often send in piano roll views of Cubase based compositions which were next to useless for telling what was going on musically at any point. Why on earth they didn't use Cubase's score editor for printouts I'll never know. Piano roll is NOT notation. It is merely a representation of pitch and duration (at least, in your image, there is no representation of dynamics, tempo, style or pulse). You would also have to keep constantly referring back to the left hand side to see which pitches were to be played and that would slow down reading, defeating the whole object of the notation. -- Win 10 Pro, 1.6GHz Intel i7 Quad core, 8GB,7TB 7200rpm HDD, Scarlett 6i6, Sib 6.2,7.5, 8.3 NotePerformer, Miroslav Phil, Harmony Asst, GPO, COMB2, EWQLSO Plat, EWQLSC, Si me castigare vis, necesse est me intellexisse. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by dmiraie - 21 Jun 08:27AM Hide picture I think your last sentence was the main thing I was looking for, thnx! Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Stephen Wrigley - 21 Jun 08:27AM (edited 21 Jun 08:31AM) Hide picture >Well, apparently a Dutchman call Cornelis Pot (that's his name, not his preferred recreational substance) thought it might work... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klavarskribo Amazing! Why?! Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Jody Hughes - 21 Jun 11:28AM Hide picture This thread feels like a request for help writing an essay :-) I think you would be unable to find a more information-efficient way (in an Edward Tufte sense, q.v.) of presenting music on the page. I started listing the parameters that traditional music notation clearly conveys: • Pitch (vertical axis, higher in pitch is higher on the page) • Organization of pitch into mode/scale (shown by use of the staff lines etc.) which leads to but is slightly separate from • Tonality (esp. when using key signature) which gives a meaning (tonal function) to each note, whether in the key or not • Time (horizontal axis, notes to the right are later than notes to the left) • Rhythm (a mix of noteheads, beams, stems, tuplets, etc. gives specific proportional lengths for each event) • Organization of the rhythm into bars (shown by time sigs and barlines, i.e. a hierarchy of beats,) • Co-ordination of any number of instruments together (in score), with instruments grouped according to family, etc., shown by systemic and other barlines • Articulation and other techniques (by a mix of symbols, lines, and text, applied note-to-note) • Dynamics, using a mix of text and lines in a separate layer usually below • Lyrics (in vocal music) a separate layer usually below • Form, through use of double barlines and text, as well as (often) rehearsal letters And so on. I expect there is stuff I've missed. The amazing thing is that all of these things are apprehensible at a glance by a well-trained musician, without consciously thinking any of it through. Anyway, there you go. Jeremy -- music editor/engraver Sibelius 6.2 – 8.3 on Mac Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by James - 21 Jun 02:53PM Hide picture Occasionally I have had a student ask me, "Who invented music notation? He must have been very smart." Not all of my students are so innocent. I also had a student say, "That song 'Hot Cross Buns' brings tears to my eyes." ;^) -- Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks Sibelius 6.2 Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by vintagevibe - 21 Jun 06:50PM Hide picture The usefulness of piano roll is for editing and is superior to notation in some ways for this. Dorico will have a piano roll type view and it will be a huge help. Notion also has a piano roll. It's not for reading it's for editing and would be a great addition to Sibelius. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Mike Lyons - 21 Jun 09:18PM Hide picture I don't think it would be of much use at all. I always work in notation. I have never used Cubase's piano roll nor Logic's. I find it quite useless! -- Win 10 Pro, 1.6GHz Intel i7 Quad core, 8GB,7TB 7200rpm HDD, Scarlett 6i6, Sib 6.2,7.5, 8.3 NotePerformer, Miroslav Phil, Harmony Asst, GPO, COMB2, EWQLSO Plat, EWQLSC, Si me castigare vis, necesse est me intellexisse. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Laurence Payne - 21 Jun 10:12PM Hide picture I used to make great use of the Score Edit page in Cubase, maybe through some idea that I was a "real musician" not one of those loop-jockeys :-). But I'm almost completely converted to the piano roll when preparing a performance rather than notation. And if I was preparing notation, I probably wouldn't be in Cubase. Input is almost always "live", through a MIDI keyboard. Sometimes to a click, often not. Frequently un-quantised. Departures from the grid, whether expressive or accidental, can be most instructive! Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Peter Roos - 22 Jun 04:14PM Hide picture Piano rolls are for editing midi, and computer generated music ... very useful to tweak the notes and sound just the way you like it. But I have never met a human musician who preferred a piano roll over sheet music with notes on staves. Dorico will have both ... quite an exciting prospect (a number of DAWs already have a built in notation feature but more often than not, it is pretty clunky in terms of execution). -- Peter Roos www.summeroflovemusic.com IMDb: www.imdb.com/name/nm2039241 Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by vintagevibe - 23 Jun 03:04AM Hide picture There are a lot of closed minds in this thread, unable to see beyond what they have used or needed. "If I don't need it how could anyone else need it?" Right? Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Mike Lyons - 23 Jun 09:06AM (edited 23 Jun 09:07AM) Hide picture [QUOTE]"If I don't need it how could anyone else need it?" [/QUOTE] That's not what I said! However, for performance purposes - as in live musicians reading from a stand on a stage or in rehearsal - piano roll would only make the music much more difficult to read - therefore it would be a pointless exercise. For working in a studio, on a DAW and tweaking a performance, that's quite a different matter, but that's not the purpose of notation! Nor is it IMHO Sibelius' purpose. Sib is an engraving tool, not a DAW, however much certain people might wish it otherwise. -- Win 10 Pro, 1.6GHz Intel i7 Quad core, 8GB,7TB 7200rpm HDD, Scarlett 6i6, Sib 6.2,7.5, 8.3 NotePerformer, Miroslav Phil, Harmony Asst, GPO, COMB2, EWQLSO Plat, EWQLSC, Si me castigare vis, necesse est me intellexisse. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Serendipity - 23 Jun 09:09AM Hide picture Sadly, musicians (in my experience) are no more open minded than the general population! Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Rob Tuley - 23 Jun 01:08PM Hide picture IMO, any question that asks which of two very different concepts is "ultimately better" for something is just about as pointless as asking whether lemons or aubergines are "ultimately better" to use in cooking. They are both useful, but just replacing one by the other is probably a bad idea. -- Rob Sib 4.1, Windows 10. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Mike Lyons - 23 Jun 10:26PM Hide picture Imagine Moussaka made with lemons! Mmm! :-) -- Win 10 Pro, 1.6GHz Intel i7 Quad core, 8GB,7TB 7200rpm HDD, Scarlett 6i6, Sib 6.2,7.5, 8.3 NotePerformer, Miroslav Phil, Harmony Asst, GPO, COMB2, EWQLSO Plat, EWQLSC, Si me castigare vis, necesse est me intellexisse. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by vintagevibe - 24 Jun 03:11AM Hide picture [QUOTE] For working in a studio, on a DAW and tweaking a performance, that's quite a different matter, but that's not the purpose of notation! [/QUOTE] If you don't care how your output sounds you might think this way. If the sound of your notation in your notation application is important to you you will absolutely want these tools. Dorico will have them in spades. The whole "not the purpose of notation" shows you just don't get it. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Mike Lyons - 24 Jun 07:56AM Hide picture You are right, I absolutely don't. My music will be played by live musicians. -- Win 10 Pro, 1.6GHz Intel i7 Quad core, 8GB,7TB 7200rpm HDD, Scarlett 6i6, Sib 6.2,7.5, 8.3 NotePerformer, Miroslav Phil, Harmony Asst, GPO, COMB2, EWQLSO Plat, EWQLSC, Si me castigare vis, necesse est me intellexisse. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by vintagevibe - 24 Jun 07:48PM Hide picture [quote]You are right, I absolutely don't. My music will be played by live musicians. [/quote] So you have different needs than I do. Surely you're not advocating that Sibelius should only cater to you particular set of needs? Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Mike Lyons - 24 Jun 08:05PM Hide picture Sibelius is first and foremost a notation engraving program. I don't see what the problem is? -- Win 10 Pro, 1.6GHz Intel i7 Quad core, 8GB,7TB 7200rpm HDD, Scarlett 6i6, Sib 6.2,7.5, 8.3 NotePerformer, Miroslav Phil, Harmony Asst, GPO, COMB2, EWQLSO Plat, EWQLSC, Si me castigare vis, necesse est me intellexisse. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Rob Tuley - 24 Jun 09:08PM Hide picture > So you have different needs than I do. Surely you're not advocating that Sibelius should only cater to you particular set of needs? I think that is back-to-front. The logical way to solve that problem is Step 1: decide what YOUR real needs are. Step 2: decide what software meets those needs. Step 3: decide what computer hardware you need to run that software Step 4: Buy what you need to achieve steps 1-3. Complaining that "Sibelius doesn't do what you want" is no more logical that complaining that you already have a sports car, but it's no use for taking a group of 12 people on a trip because it hasn't got enough seats. -- Rob Sib 4.1, Windows 10. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Mike Lyons - 24 Jun 09:45PM Hide picture +1 -- Win 10 Pro, 1.6GHz Intel i7 Quad core, 8GB,7TB 7200rpm HDD, Scarlett 6i6, Sib 6.2,7.5, 8.3 NotePerformer, Miroslav Phil, Harmony Asst, GPO, COMB2, EWQLSO Plat, EWQLSC, Si me castigare vis, necesse est me intellexisse. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by vintagevibe - 25 Jun 01:35AM (edited 25 Jun 01:36AM) Hide picture [QUOTE] Complaining that "Sibelius doesn't do what you want" is no more logical that complaining that you already have a sports car, but it's no use for taking a group of 12 people on a trip because it hasn't got enough seats. [/QUOTE] That analogy doesn't work on any level. Sports cars to software? Really? Apparently you are arguing against new features and functions in general. I can't even approach that "logic". Live in whatever world you choose but software and industry needs change. I see you don't understand that. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by vintagevibe - 25 Jun 01:40AM Hide picture "Sibelius is first and foremost a notation engraving program. I don't see what the problem is? " Notation used to be only done with pencil and paper. Should we go back to that? Modern notation includes audio. Modern composers want professional mockups. Dorico will allow that to happen without going back and forth between two apps and all the hassle that entails. Sibelius is only half the way there yet people some on this forum are arguing it should remain half baked. It all comes back to "if I don't need it Sibelius shouldn't have it." Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Mike Lyons - 25 Jun 06:07AM Hide picture "Sibelius is only half the way there yet people some on this forum are arguing it should remain half baked. It all comes back to "if I don't need it Sibelius shouldn't have it." No, it comes down to "Horses for courses". If I wanted to use Piano roll, I would use Cubase (which I have) because Cubase is good at that (amongst many, many other things) but if I want to produce high quality engraving, I will use Sibelius, because Cubase is fairly basic in that direction. Making programs "Jacks of all trades" generally results in them becoming "Masters of none". -- Win 10 Pro, 1.6GHz Intel i7 Quad core, 8GB,7TB 7200rpm HDD, Scarlett 6i6, Sib 6.2,7.5, 8.3 NotePerformer, Miroslav Phil, Harmony Asst, GPO, COMB2, EWQLSO Plat, EWQLSC, Si me castigare vis, necesse est me intellexisse. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Robert Enns - 25 Jun 11:56AM Hide picture Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. There is a reason Adobe has three programs in its publishing suite rather than one. Each is complicated but superb at what it does. I prefer focused programs such as Sibelius not to try to be all things when there is a mature program such as Cubase available which does more than an addon to Sibelius would implement. But yes ultimately "horses for courses" indeed. -- Rob Win 10 64 bit, 3.1 GHz, 8 Gigs RAM Sibelius 7.5, and Sibelius 8.3 Sibelius Sounds 7.1.2, NotePerformer, GPO4, GPO5 Photoscore 8.0.4 Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Mike Lyons - 25 Jun 01:51PM Hide picture +1 -- Win 10 Pro, 1.6GHz Intel i7 Quad core, 8GB,7TB 7200rpm HDD, Scarlett 6i6, Sib 6.2,7.5, 8.3 NotePerformer, Miroslav Phil, Harmony Asst, GPO, COMB2, EWQLSO Plat, EWQLSC, Si me castigare vis, necesse est me intellexisse. Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by vintagevibe - 29 Jun 05:37PM Hide picture The reality for modern composers is that they cannot afford to suck up hours of time going back and forth between an program that displays high quality notation and one that allows for getting high quality sounds. It is not possible in Sibelius to get the highest quality sounds because of it's lack of robust controller handling and robust mixing. Similarly in a DAW there is currently no ability to see high quality, deeply editable notation. Going back and forth between programs using (inconsistent) XML or MIDI is a huge time suck and workflow killer. Whether or not anyone in this thread realizes this or has a need to work that way does not change that fact that a significant porting of users have the need for a unified approach. This is why Yamaha/Steinberg has made a significant investment in creating an app that addresses this situation. Like it or not technology moves on and there are always those who fight it. Those who fight always lose. People used to think that the electric guitar was not a real guitar... Back to top | All threads

Re: piano roll VS. traditional notation ..? Posted by Rob Tuley - 29 Jun 06:10PM Hide picture > ... yet some people on this forum are arguing it [Sib] should remain half baked ... Some people on this forum live in the real world, and accept the reality that given the current situation at Avid, Sib WILL remain at best half baked, and may not even "remain" at all. > Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. There is a reason Adobe has three programs in its publishing suite rather than one. Each is complicated but superb at what it does. Of course there is a reason. It means Adobe can extract three subscription licenses from its users, not one. And even better, they can sell the same *core* parts of the software (common to all the apps) three times over to each user! -- Rob Sib 4.1, Windows 10. Back to top | All threads