Pitches-First Method of entering music

[Richard Shann]

I've now finished (I hope!) work on the pitches-first method of
entering music in Denemo. Attached is an example created this way - it
took 30 minutes to create this, which I don't think is faster for me
than the rhythm-first method (given my years of experience with that
method), but it brings a marked improvement to the experience of
entering the music into the score - you hear the music both in the
pitch entry stage and the rhythm entry stage. This makes the entering
of the rhythm feel and sound like a performance of the piece. It is
also much easier to avoid losing your place in the music as you can
hear and see the pitches of the notes in both stages.

I've given a relatively comprehensive guide to the method in the manual
- I've pasted the text below.

Please test and report back, and if anyone could create a Demo that
would be really good.

Richard 
21.2.1 Pitches-First Method

This is new in version 2.6. The basic idea is to play in the pitches
using the MIDI keyboard and then use the duration keys to actually
enter the notes into the score.

The Playback/Record->Recording menu gives the commands to start/pause
recording pitches from your MIDI controller. First you position the
Denemo cursor at place where you want to enter the notes into the
score. Then you invoke Record from MIDI-in (Off/On) to start recording,
Alt-r. A click track is created at the top of the score to act as a
MIDI track. It has no clef because the recorded notes are displayed on
the staff as belonging to the clef of the staff you are intending to
enter the notes into, the one that contains the Denemo cursor. While
you are recording the Denemo Display has a red cast to it to remind you
that playing the MIDI keyboard will enter notes into the recording
rather than into the score.

Playing in the pitches

Once you start playing on the MIDI keyboard headless notes are entered
on the MIDI track staff with an indication of their start and end
points on the blue line at the top of the display. If you leave a long
gap between two notes (e.g. because of a long rest) the recorded track
will not leave a big gap but resume directly after the last note - you
can control the amount of rest time you want to allow in a recording
via the Edit->Preferences->MIDI preference “MIDI-in recording
timeout”. 

If you play a wrong note and you can delete it with Alt-Backspace and
then continue playing the correct notes - it may help to make a mark on
the source original that you are playing from at this stage by dragging
a small line at the location where you have stopped.

On the MIDI track the green MIDI headless note with the highlighted
green circle is the currently marked MIDI note. You can play the
recording from this note with Alt-p. To alter which note is currently
marked MIDI note click on the note in the MIDI track which you want to
be marked or use the Alt-Left/Right to move the marker. The currently
marked MIDI note is the first one that will be entered into the score
when you enter a duration.

When playing the pitches augmented and diminished intervals are played
on the pitch-spelling channel, so that you can easily detect enharmonic
errors (e.g. D-sharp for E-flat). You can turn this off via the Edit-
>Change Preferences->Audio tab, by making the pitch-spelling channel
the same as the channel for the notes.

When playing in the pitches you do not have to keep strict time, but it
helps in keeping the display of the pitches nicely placed over the
bars. For this reason it helps to set the movement tempo in the
playback controls to a tempo you can comfortably play the notes at -
you can change it afterwards to the intended tempo of the movement.

As you record the pitches the staffs will have extra blank measures
added so that the MIDI track can show the pitches in the tempo of the
movement. There is no need to pause recording to go on to entering the
rhythms - just start typing in the durations.

Playing in the durations

Pressing duration keys, including dotted rhythm, triplet and ties and
slurred versions of those commands will insert the marked MIDI note
into the score at the Denemo cursor and move the marked MIDI note
forwards so you can continually enter the music mostly in music time
and rhythm. Use the Ins key to enter the additional notes in a chord.
You should enter any rests needed in between the notes via the usual
shortcuts (Alt-0,1,2 ... ). Mostly you can enter the rhythm in music-
time so that you hear the melody as you press the duration keys, but
you can stop off at any moment to insert dynamics etc and resume
entering durations without a problem. When you reach the end of the
recorded notes a clash of cymbals sounds and the duration keys will
revert to entering pure duations - by this time you will have reached
the small red marker in the original source you are transcribing from
(if you placed one as you finished playing the notes). While you are
entering the rhythm the MIDI recording track re-synchronizes the marked
MIDI note at every new bar you reach so that the recorded note that
will be entered next in that bar is visible immediately above on the
MIDI track.

If you make a mistake while entering a duration you can delete the last
duration(s) you entered using the Backspace key - the currently marked
MIDI note will back up and you can continue with the correct
duration(s). Alternatively you can alter the duration using the usual
Shift-n shortcut and continue. If you want to delete a note without
backing up you can use the other deletion methods (Del,Del, or Ctrl-X
etc) or move the currently marked MIDI note forward using Alt-Right or
by clicking on the note that you want to be the marked MIDI note. 

The shortcuts for entering triplets crash the sounding of the notes
together - you can use the TAB shortcut to avoid this if you wish,
though that, of course, breaks up the rhythm of your keystrokes.
Otherwise you can just visually check that the right notes have been
entered in the triplet.

Mouse Operations

Right-clicking on the MIDI track pops up the menu of the commands
available in the Playback->Recording menu.

Left clicking on a note on the MIDI track will make that note become
the currently marked MIDI note. Other left click operations:

You can alter the tempo of the MIDI recording by Ctrl-Left-Drag, moving
to the right stretches the recording out, to the left compresses it.
This is only needed if you want to play back the MIDI recording with
your score, otherwise the recording will be automatically synchronized
and stretched/compressed while entering the durations as you reach each
new measure. A click sounds as this re-synchronization takes place -
this provides a check that you have entered the correct rhythm to
complete the measure. 

To reposition the recorded MIDI track relative to the score you can
Shift-Left-Drag: drag from the MIDI track down to the place in your
score where you want the currently marked MIDI note to be synchronized
to and release. The MIDI track will be shifted so that the marked MIDI
note appears above the place chosen. With Ctrl-Shift-Click you can set
a note on the MIDI track as the currently marked MIDI note and start
the recorded MIDI playing from there - clicking again stops the play.

Composers

For people who compose at the keyboard one possibility is to turn on
recording (Alt-r) and then play around with musical ideas until you
have found one you wish to transcribe. At this point you can “rewind”
your recording (using Alt-Up arrow) by a specified interval from the
end. The exact place to rewind to can be found by playing the recording
from this point (use Alt-right to step through or Alt-p to play) and
rewinding some more or stopping when you reach the right point. Once
synchronized to this starting point you can proceeed to enter the
durations as usual. Again Alt-Del, c will delete the unwanted blank
measures at the end if you have created them.

When finished

The shortcut Alt-Del, Alt-Del deletes the current recording while Alt-
Del, c deletes the recording, the MIDI click track and any trailing
blank measures that may have been created if your recording tempo did
not match the tempo of the movement.

Miscellaneous points

If you want to reset the marked MIDI note to the start of the recording
you can use the Alt-Up shortcut and accept the default value given -
this places the marked MIDI note at the start and synchronizes it to
the current cursor position.

The pitches-first entry method can be used even by unskilled keyboard
players. As long as you can pick out the notes one after the other
there is no need to play the music strictly in time - you can just
enter one bar, or a line, or a short passage and then immediately
switch to entering the durations with the number keys not even looking
at the MIDI track created. Once you have used up the pitches you can
just continue playing in another passage and so on until the piece is
done. As mentioned above, the display of the pitches over the measures
they belong to will not be perfect, but it is not critical.

Another method, for skilled keyboard players, is to press Alt-r to
start recording then Fn5 to start the click track playing and then play
in the notes in time to the click track. Then the entered notes will
appear in the bars they belong to and (if you are composing rather than
transcribing) can give you an indication of the rhythm you need to
enter to notate what you played.

Sonata6-Naudot.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document