Notation Editor - version 5 discussion

[paaltio]

Just to throw in my couple of cents as someone who frequently composes for live orchestra.

I think the note metadata idea is central here for the workflow to scale as much as possible. I think the goal should be that you can basically edit notation without ever opening the notation window.

What I mean is display quantize, voice selection for stem direction, dynamics, articulations and other details should be accessible from other editors. The MIDI Editor for example doesn't have to support any of this directly, but at least there should be some possibility through the APIs to get all this done, so we can create key commands for all of this. And of course having the articulation metadata exposed in JS as well would allow plugins like my articulation mapper (https://stash.reaper.fm/v/18047/artic...apper_v0.1.zip) to correctly play back notation.

Anyway, I'd love to create pretty finished notation in my DAW, but without actually using a notation UI. Notation is just inherently incompatible with a good computer user experience in my opinion, so being able to avoid actually doing anything in that view while still creating notation markings would be best of both worlds.

Not saying you shouldn't be able to do anything in notation view -- of course you should! There are a lot of people who expect to do that. But just to keep this scalability in mind.

Of course MusicXML export is really crucial to get it all out to a program that specializes in engraving. I don't think REAPER devs should be concerned that much with engraving, as that's a total nightmare to do well enough. As long as you can 1) edit as efficiently as possible 2) get a basic visual result that works for lead sheets etc. but exports well to Finale/Sibelius, I think it'll be perfect.

[hamish]

+1

Nice delineation of what is necessary from the REAPER notation system for it to be truly useful, and the best fit for the full range of workflows. IMHO, as someone who doesn't frequently score for orchestra.

[urednik]

Originally Posted by paaltio

Anyway, I'd love to create pretty finished notation in my DAW, but without actually using a notation UI. Notation is just inherently incompatible with a good computer user experience in my opinion, so being able to avoid actually doing anything in that view while still creating notation markings would be best of both worlds.

Funny, but I am sure I wouldn't want to play in that orchestra.

See - this is not only naive, but a clean bullshit:
a composer needs to compose in a software intended to work, not one that uses a mathematical guess on how to print a note in a comprehensive score ... This means you generate a mess. A big mess.
Please forgive me to be offensive, but I have to do it. Also to the one supporting you in this nonsense.
Oh gosh - people wake up.

[hamish]

Originally Posted by urednik

Please forgive me to be offensive, but I have to do it.

That's why some people have put you on 'ignore'.

[urednik]

Originally Posted by hamish

That's why some people have put you on 'ignore'.

you don't say. You just fell in a trap of revealing lack of knowledge for this thread. So it is better to stop twitting if you care for your renome.

Stick to the topic.
FYI the thread is about notation editor in Reaper, not your obsession with urednik.
And the code word is SENSE.
I had to say this because you get into a debate about something that has no SENSE + I do not have any aspirations in debating your sensibility settings here.

[paaltio]

Originally Posted by urednik

Funny, but I am sure I wouldn't want to play in that orchestra.

See - this is not only naive, but a clean bullshit:
a composer needs to compose in a software intended to work, not one that uses a mathematical guess on how to print a note in a comprehensive score ... This means you generate a mess. A big mess.
Please forgive me to be offensive, but I have to do it. Also to the one supporting you in this nonsense.
Oh gosh - people wake up.

I think people would take you more seriously if you actually read their posts. I guess you're trolling, so there's no reason to clarify, but just in case:

I do in fact agree you shouldn't put stuff like that in front of musicians.

In fact, I have never put anything in front of an orchestra that comes out of Cubase, Logic or Digital Performer engraving, period. I know it's "fine" when you fine-tune it, and I don't criticize anyone else for doing it, but I think it makes a difference with players who see tons of incredibly professional parts every day that mine also look good. Also in scoring sessions, time is of the essence, so every little detail matters as it makes sight-reading faster.

So for me the workflow is always MusicXML to Finale or Sibelius and then I or an orchestrator and copyist will finish it. But I recognize the fact that this isn't the only way to work, so that's why I'm advocating for scalability, not a single workflow in REAPER's notation. It has the potential to be the best option for small and large notation tasks alike in this way.

[urednik]

Originally Posted by paaltio

Anyway, I'd love to create pretty finished notation in my DAW [...]

I repeat your nonsense.
If this part of your comment ain't counter-productive then I do not know what are we talking about here ... Well pro notation surely not, be it with UI or without ...

And XML we talked about it already quite a lot and it is unfortunately probably not going to happen. So you could say thank you troll for this xml idea mentioned 100 times in the thread already

[paaltio]

By the way for anyone interested in engraving, Daniel Spreadbury's (formerly of Sibelius) blog on their new notation program is very interesting: http://blog.steinberg.net

Reading it to me underlines the importance of leaving the finished layout for dedicated applications and optimizing DAW notation workflow for efficiency and MusicXML export.

[urednik]

Originally Posted by paaltio

By the way for anyone interested in engraving, Daniel Spreadbury's (formerly of Sibelius) blog on their new notation program is very interesting: http://blog.steinberg.net

Reading it to me underlines the importance of leaving the finished layout for dedicated applications and optimizing DAW notation workflow for efficiency and MusicXML export.

See this is why I disagree with you statement
And we are still pretty far from any XML in Reaper, also because SOME users claim it is doable via MIDI.

[Lazarus]

Originally Posted by paaltio

Just to throw in my couple of cents as someone who frequently composes for live orchestra.

I think the note metadata idea is central here for the workflow to scale as much as possible. I think the goal should be that you can basically edit notation without ever opening the notation window.

What I mean is display quantize, voice selection for stem direction, dynamics, articulations and other details should be accessible from other editors. The MIDI Editor for example doesn't have to support any of this directly, but at least there should be some possibility through the APIs to get all this done, so we can create key commands for all of this. And of course having the articulation metadata exposed in JS as well would allow plugins like my articulation mapper (https://stash.reaper.fm/v/18047/artic...apper_v0.1.zip) to correctly play back notation.

Anyway, I'd love to create pretty finished notation in my DAW, but without actually using a notation UI. Notation is just inherently incompatible with a good computer user experience in my opinion, so being able to avoid actually doing anything in that view while still creating notation markings would be best of both worlds.

Not saying you shouldn't be able to do anything in notation view -- of course you should! There are a lot of people who expect to do that. But just to keep this scalability in mind.

Of course MusicXML export is really crucial to get it all out to a program that specializes in engraving. I don't think REAPER devs should be concerned that much with engraving, as that's a total nightmare to do well enough. As long as you can 1) edit as efficiently as possible 2) get a basic visual result that works for lead sheets etc. but exports well to Finale/Sibelius, I think it'll be perfect.

Yes, having a Lilypond-esque input method for everything as well as a GUI could be more efficient and would certainly be more flexible. This is something I hadn't considered, I was thinking of using the metadata in plugins (and scripts), but not inputting it directly.

Thanks for your perspective.

[Lazarus]

@urednik: I've reported you to the mods. If it was up to me I would restrict your access to the pre-release forum to read-only since you don't appear to understand the process and are a destructive influence.

[hopi]

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=157909

some discussion here and a thought about a colab between Cockos and Musescore 2 [free notation editor]

Is is possible? Might it be a win\win for both dev's???

[pcartwright]

It could be cool to see those programs integrated, but the changes between the two would need to be dynamic (ie real time updates). I have no idea if this would be any more or less complex than creating notation from scratch, but there would always be risk that a change in muse score could break the compatability.

Edit - integrated may be the wrong word.

[urednik]

I do certainly NOT understand people here discussing matters which are SF at the moment + all of them were already discussed in a similar way. Lazarus I understand that some of you feel hurt. But there is nothing I can do about it. I am just evaluating comments and discussing matter.
Did never name you a troll or idiot ... We just clearly disagree.

Now I'll stop - cause this is getting offtopic.

[paaltio]

Originally Posted by hopi

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=157909

some discussion here and a thought about a colab between Cockos and Musescore 2 [free notation editor]

Is is possible? Might it be a win\win for both dev's???

Technically a third party could create an external MIDI or notation editor. The necessary APIs from REAPER's side are there, i.e. there are convenient hash functions to see when MIDI data changes etc. and of course you can get all the MIDI information as is. You'd basically have to relay MIDI information via TCP sockets between the programs.

The big issue I see for external notation specifically is that the REAPER APIs don't support attaching arbitrary metadata to notes, so how you would actually store note-related markings is a bit tricky. That's why I'm hoping the built-in notation editor will lead us to having that feature set in the APIs, as it would open a lot of new possibilities!

[Lazarus]

Well you can store per-note data just now by storing text events at the same position as the note with channel, note and length combined as an id and by keeping track of changes.

An example of storing a MusicXML slur on an Am scale of 16ths channel 1 would be having 2 text events at the positions of the first and last note (I've thrown in voicing here):

01A316:V1:<slur type="start" number="1"/>

01A416:V1:<slur type="stop" number="1"/>

... which would be a bit daft, because raw MusicXML is clearly not the most efficient way of doing that - but it could be condensed right down to more of a Lilypond style...

01A316:V1:(

01A416:V1:)

... or whatever.

It would of course be nice if the API made this attaching and retrieval of additional note data automagic with perhaps the ID part being somehow protected when editing events manually.

[paaltio]

Originally Posted by Lazarus

Well you can store per-note data just now by storing text events at the same position as the note with channel, note and length combined as an id and by keeping track of changes.

An example of storing a MusicXML slur on an Am scale of 16ths channel 1 would be having 2 text events at the positions of the first and last note (I've thrown in voicing here):

01A316:V1:<slur type="start" number="1"/>

01A416:V1:<slur type="stop" number="1"/>

... which would be a bit daft, because raw MusicXML is clearly not the most efficient way of doing that - but it could be condensed right down to more of a Lilypond style...

01A316:V1:(

01A416:V1:)

... or whatever.

It would of course be nice if the API made this attaching and retrieval of additional note data automagic with perhaps the ID part being somehow protected when editing events manually.

That's a great point. Although that method seems like it wouldn't have a very strong connection to the note. E.g. most likely you'd just have to let it break when the user moves notes around, right? For stuff like articulations you'd really want to carry it over through whatever moving, splitting and cut 'n paste operations the user might do.

[Lazarus]

You could certainly check for differences between a pre-edited version and and the new version after a single edit and move/adjust the text events accordingly knowing that there are only a few distinct edits that could have been carried out. That would go from simple with one note being changed/deleted to tricky with stretching or moving big groups. You'd need to track all notes of course, not just the ones with notation.

It would be much, much easier if Reaper could tie notes to text events internally so they moved automagically, like having internal per-note data 'rendered' as text events for further use. I'm sure though that Schwa has something fiendishly clever up his sleeves that may or may not have much to do with what we are thinking about.

PS, out of interest what are your views on Lilypond?

[paaltio]

Originally Posted by Lazarus

You could certainly check for differences between a pre-edited version and and the new version after a single edit and move/adjust the text events accordingly knowing that there are only a few distinct edits that could have been carried out. That would go from simple with one note being changed/deleted to tricky with stretching or moving big groups. You'd need to track all notes of course, not just the ones with notation.

It would be much, much easier if Reaper could tie notes to text events internally so they moved automagically, like having internal per-note data 'rendered' as text events for further use. I'm sure though that Schwa has something fiendishly clever up his sleeves that may or may not have much to do with what we are thinking about.

PS, out of interest what are your views on Lilypond?

Lilypond is really impressive. There's clearly a tremendous amount of work that has gone into the engraving engine there. I've been wondering what its performance is, i.e. would it be suitable to use as a backend for a notation editor in a DAW.

[Lazarus]

I know, Reaktor:[Dave] had the right idea on page 1...

I was hoping the devs would make use of free software projects like LilyPond. The current approach seems to include saving notation specific information in the midi clips, so why not store it in a way that this information can be used with LilyPond?

I only started exploring it a couple of weeks ago now but it smells like he was on the money. I don't know if Lilypond could be doably integrated into a live editor though, but it would be cool if it could. Even if the format was just used for some metadata markups, it is definitely very nice and compact on a per-voice level at least.

[reddiesel41264]

Originally Posted by schwa

So, consider what is there now as a sort of preview, or as a demonstration of how to do a bunch of stuff in Lua. I'd say the new version will be ready for feedback in maybe a week.

Is this still under development?

[Lawrence]

As a passive observer, I get the feeling that notation, doing it right, is a lot harder than audio, lots of little bit and pieces that always have to fit together and/or play nice with each other or it all kinda goes to hell.

The maybe somewhat apparent truth being that not that many (if any at all) pro audio workstations have really great notation functions might support that general idea... so Schwa is probably working hard at it... to get it right.

I would imagine that 'easy' would be a word that's not associated with that process.

[keys]

Originally Posted by reddiesel41264

Is this still under development?

I most certainly hope so!

[LCipher]

Originally Posted by keys

I most certainly hope so!

same here.... keep checking in to see if there's any news

[semiquaver]

+1 for looking at using lilypond files to represent notation.

lilyponds basic file format is very very simple and well thought out - and output is fantastic.

it would be incredible to be be able to export a .ly file from REAPER....

[schwa]

Hi everybody. We have been working on a REAPER notation editor, and it is at the stage where it is ready for user testing.

However, we are currently planning to hold back on public testing of this feature until after REAPER 5.0 is released. It will probably be in REAPER 5.1 or 5.2. This is because the testing, feedback, development, release, cycle will take some time for the notation editor, and we don't want the other 5.0 features to be held up.

So, our current plan is to go through the 5.0 release candidate and public release process, and give the official 5.0 release some time to settle down (there are always a number of bugs and use cases that are identified as soon as a new version is released publicly). After that, we will start on a 5.1 cycle with the notation editor and some other features.

Just to provide a little more detail, the notation editor will be a MIDI editor view just like the piano roll or event list. Notation metadata will be stored within the .RPP file, and we anticipate supporting MusicXML import and export.

Thanks for being patient with this feature. In retrospect, it was a fun experiment to build a "lite" notation editor in Lua, but it will be much more useful and extendable as a built-in REAPER feature.

[Win Conway]

Originally Posted by schwa

Hi everybody. We have been working on a REAPER notation editor, and it is at the stage where it is ready for user testing.

However, we are currently planning to hold back on public testing of this feature until after REAPER 5.0 is released. It will probably be in REAPER 5.1 or 5.2. This is because the testing, feedback, development, release, cycle will take some time for the notation editor, and we don't want the other 5.0 features to be held up.

So, our current plan is to go through the 5.0 release candidate and public release process, and give the official 5.0 release some time to settle down (there are always a number of bugs and use cases that are identified as soon as a new version is released publicly). After that, we will start on a 5.1 cycle with the notation editor and some other features.

Just to provide a little more detail, the notation editor will be a MIDI editor view just like the piano roll or event list. Notation metadata will be stored within the .RPP file, and we anticipate supporting MusicXML import and export.

Thanks for being patient with this feature. In retrospect, it was a fun experiment to build a "lite" notation editor in Lua, but it will be much more useful and extendable as a built-in REAPER feature.

Wasn't there a groove feature that was supposed to go through the same process at v4 ?
I may be remembering wrong.

[heda]

Thank you Schwa for the news. Very appreciated.

[schwa]

Originally Posted by gpunk_w

Wasn't there a groove feature that was supposed to go through the same process at v4 ?
I may be remembering wrong.

We did do some work on a MIDI groove quantize feature. It was never as far along as the notation editor feature is. There may have been a similar "it's coming later" discussion, I don't recall. Technically, it is still coming later

There are a number of potential features that exist in development branches within the REAPER code base, that are not anywhere near usable.

[EvilDragon]

Schwa, I believe before notation view in the MIDI editor is implemented, we should be able to open the same item/bunch of items in more than one view. What I mean by that is having the piano roll and event list active at the same time (not exclusive to each other). Or piano roll and notation. Or all three.

This is paramount for workflow, IMHO. It's sorely missing in Reaper...

[Lannister]

Can you tease us with a screenshot?

[reddiesel41264]

Thank you for the update. Good idea to hold it back for now and work on the more important features for the next release.

[paaltio]

Originally Posted by schwa

Just to provide a little more detail, the notation editor will be a MIDI editor view just like the piano roll or event list. Notation metadata will be stored within the .RPP file, and we anticipate supporting MusicXML import and export.

Sounds awesome, look forward to testing it.

[pcartwright]

Not sure what the process is for user testing, but I would be happy to use, test, bug report, etc, in the interim.

[hamish]

Sounds like a good plan. I'm happy to wait a little longer.

Having MusicXML would really seal it as 'useful' imo.

[pcartwright]

Originally Posted by schwa

Just to provide a little more detail, the notation editor will be a MIDI editor view just like the piano roll or event list. Notation metadata will be stored within the .RPP file, and we anticipate supporting MusicXML import and export.

Interesting. Will the metadata be available to extensions, scripts or JS effects?

Nice to see MusicXML import/export as well.

[urednik]

Schwa, thanks for listening to my complain about missing musicXML.
I am glad this seems to go in a good direction now.

[Win Conway]

Originally Posted by schwa

We did do some work on a MIDI groove quantize feature. It was never as far along as the notation editor feature is. There may have been a similar "it's coming later" discussion, I don't recall. Technically, it is still coming later

There are a number of potential features that exist in development branches within the REAPER code base, that are not anywhere near usable.

OK i didnt imagine it then, cool

[nicholas]

Originally Posted by schwa

However, we are currently planning to hold back on public testing of this feature until after REAPER 5.0 is released. It will probably be in REAPER 5.1 or 5.2. This is because the testing, feedback, development, release, cycle will take some time for the notation editor, and we don't want the other 5.0 features to be held up.

So, our current plan is to go through the 5.0 release candidate and public release process, and give the official 5.0 release some time to settle down (there are always a number of bugs and use cases that are identified as soon as a new version is released publicly). After that, we will start on a 5.1 cycle with the notation editor and some other features.

Eminently sensible.

[soundlimit15]

I second Evil Dragon's comment about viewing event list and piano roll/notation at the same time.I miss this feature from way back to my C-lab Notator days.