Notation Editor Inquiry

[Frodo]

Does anyone use the Notation Editor? I'm not talking about QuickScribe-- but Notation Editor, which is only accessible through another edit window's mini menu. It's not even in DP's main menus, let alone part of the Consolidated Window quick links (upper right of the frame).

It's kind of a misleading name, because it's strongest point is not notation itself. If you'd rather read musical notes while putting in controller data instead of the Graphic Editor's piano roll bars, it all starts to make sense.

Drawing in velocity and expression curves appears to offer a more musical context to sculpt a MIDI track. I really enjoy reading notes more than symbols, but I should say that I spend a lot of time in the Graphic Editor window-- which is one of my favorite editors in DP.

Back to the Notation Editor, I will confess that I've never used this window for one reason: the graphic display of the notes are hard on the eyes-- on my eyes, anyway. There are plenty of zoom features, etc., but that's not what bothers me. I can't deal with the screen font-- grand staves are poorly spaced and the resolution leaves much to be desired. It also suffers from some of the same note display anomalies that QuickScribe does.

Because it's so similar in function to the MIDI Graphic Editor, I've been wondering why the GE doesn't just have a display button to change the window from piano roll to staff line display. I also wonder if there is any downside to having this option in the Sequence Editor MIDI tracks as a possible display from the way MIDI notes are currently displayed.

(How people are using the MIDI tracks in the Sequence Editor is probably another topic for another time.)

Okay-- end of fuss.

What has attracted me to the Notation Editor again is having to deal with VIs that fall flat without liberal and clever use of certain continuous data, namely orchestral instruments. I often work from a hard copy of an orchestral score or a notational cue sheet. Being able to draw in expressions using actual notes and real world barlines is revealing itself to be a genuine blessing.

I just wanted to know who here uses the Notation Editor, because no one ever talks about it.

Thanks.

[stiefelmusik]

Does anyone use the Notation Editor?

I think your question has pretty much been answered!

I rarely visit the Notation Editor because for me it falls way short of it's potential, which is disappointing. The idea is good, though. It reminds me of Edit vs. Page Layout in Cubase Score where you can quickly edit notes along a horizontal timeline using traditional notation without getting distracted by layout issues, detailed score markings, etc. as found in full page view. Like you, the biggest issue for me is the poor graphic display. It hurts my eyes, too. I might consider using this window more if I could figure out how to zoom it out (you mention there are plenty of zoom features, but I can't find one to actually make the score font larger. If you know how to do this, please let me know).

An update to the notational features of DP is long overdue, but I hesitate to add it to any DP 6 Wishlist because it just feels like a pipe dream at this point. Still, now that Avid has acquired Sibelius, and tighter integration with Pro Tools is eminent , maybe MOTU will be motivated to remove Quickscribe from the back burner (where it is starting to blacken and stick to the bottom of the pot).

Unfortunately, I feel MOTU has focused too much energy lately on playing catch up with other DAWs in areas like bundled VIs, etc. instead of focusing on improving the core foundation of DP which has set it apart from the other DAWs all these years. Truly professional scoring features would be a MOST welcome addition to DP.

[Frodo]

Does anyone use the Notation Editor?

I think your question has pretty much been answered!

I think you're right!!

MOTU will be motivated to remove Quickscribe from the back burner (where it is starting to blacken and stick to the bottom of the pot).

Unfortunately, I feel MOTU has focused too much energy lately on playing catch up with other DAWs in areas like bundled VIs, etc. instead of focusing on improving the core foundation of DP which has set it apart from the other DAWs all these years. Truly professional scoring features would be a MOST welcome addition to DP.

I think you are right again!!

One rhetorical question: is it possible to spend too much time playing catch-up and still be behind? In a way, I wish they could spend *more* time getting caught up to eventually get ahead of the curve, so to speak. And if QS and the Notation Editor UI will ever live up to its potential, MOTU will continue playing catch-up for a while.

[stiefelmusik]

One rhetorical question: is it possible to spend too much time playing catch-up and still be behind?

Yes! Absolutely! DP is certainly not the only one guilty of playing catch-up, of course, but some folks seem to be more successful at the game than others. For example, Abelton Live has slowly been evolving from a cult dance music and DJ tool into a full-fledged DAW, with great success (IMO)... and Pro Tools, long scoffed at by hardcore MIDI geeks such as myself for it's somewhat snobbish neglect of MIDI, has turned the corner with version 7 (and now 7.3). I believe Pro Tools has become a viable alternative now to the more traditional MIDI composer friendly DAWs such as DP, Cubase and Logic.

The key is to decide which areas are most important to play catch-up. I don't believe marginally useful bundled virtual instruments is the way to go. Now, were they to perhaps bundle DP with full versions of Mach5, etc., a la Logic Pro with the EXS Sampler, etc., that would be a different story. The price would no doubt need to go up, but you'd at least be getting something useful, and not something gimmicky just to satisfy those magazine reviewers who were constantly talking about DP's lack of bundled instruments when compared to the competition. MOTU should know better than to bow to the critics!

To stand out against the competition, you have to offer something the others don't have -- and I'm not just talking about "features" here. There are other things to consider, like quality, stabilty, elegance, work flow, refinement.

In any case, the software industry as a whole is totally infected with the "feature bug." Always new features... new features... more new features... but, same old bugs! Hate to get cynical, but... well, it's how I feel at the moment. I'm kinda sick of "features." I hardly use the "features" I have. I'd so much rather have stability and refinement in my DAW than new features.

I hate features.

[Frodo]

In any case, the software industry as a whole is totally infected with the "feature bug." Always new features... new features... more new features... but, same old bugs! Hate to get cynical, but... well, it's how I feel at the moment. I'm kinda sick of "features." I hardly use the "features" I have. I'd so much rather have stability and refinement in my DAW than new features.

I hate features.

Sales. It's about selling to new customers at a glance, unfortunately. New customers don't have the advantage of digging into the finer points or developing a workflow even with software that has a free trial version. They get a basic understanding of the layout, and with a general sense of comfort (and with features) they make their decision to purchase or continue searching for the platform that best suits them.

In the early stages, it appears to be about the quantity and not the quality, sadly.

It's those who have used software for a period of time who discover where things such as menu organization, descriptive terminology, and facility of use can be improved.

Returning to the Notation Editor, it puzzles me why:

1. There's no vertical zoom feature
2. The font display is cluttered; notes, beams and accidentals too often overlap-- what an eye sore.
3. When using the subdivision settings in the upper right hand corner, all the notes resolve themselves to the nearest subdivision. This is a useless feature. If one wanted to edit notes in this window, I can understand the subdivision feature coming in handy-- except there is no note entry palate!!! If you change the subdivision from 16ths to half notes, all the notes in a measure of 16ths form a cluster on the nearest half note. It's hardly an accurate representation of the musical events one has worked so hard to create.
4. The track list is not accessible from the NE
5. The bar lines in the staff display do not align with the timeline display. This is among the most serious offenses of all.

But, this unique editor really could be an ideal environment for those who NEED to read actual notes while drawing in controller data. It appears to be a concept created by someone with a great deal of musical insight in the earlier days of DP but was forgotten later by others.

To stand out against the competition, you have to offer something the others don't have..

Genau!!

It's understandable that not every feature can be updated at once-- it is a gradual process. But how long does it take to add a track list to all the editors-- especially the Notation Editor which only displays one track at a time? It has been added to all other edit windows-- except for the Notation Window and the Event List Editor.

Consistency with workflow, stability, refinement-- and "elegance"-- nice choice of words.

Wie das alte Sprichwort lautet: "Ein blindes Huhn findet auch mal ein Korn."

This is simply to say that one never knows where their treasure is buried. This Notation Editor has really got me going because it holds so much promise-- even if it is a promise yet to be fulfilled.

[stiefelmusik]

It appears to be a concept created by someone with a great deal of musical insight in the earlier days of DP but was forgotten later by others.

Indeed! And I fully agree that in its "current" state the Notation Editor is practically useless.

Again, I really wish MOTU would revitalize the scoring features of DP. That would certainly change my feelings towards "new features" ! Either revitalize or pull a move like Avid did with Sibelius and buy out a notation software company. And whatever happened to Mosaic?

(Your German is great by the way!)

[Frodo]

Indeed! And I fully agree that in its "current" state the Notation Editor is practically useless.

It just makes me so sad to such great features going to waste.

Again, I really wish MOTU would revitalize the scoring features of DP. That would certainly change my feelings towards "new features" ! Either revitalize or pull a move like Avid did with Sibelius and buy out a notation software company. And whatever happened to Mosaic?

Something akin to Mosaic would be wonderful. There are also some nice features in Steinberg's integrated DAW notation. It's still not Finale or Sibelius, but at least we've seen that such features are possible. The choice of tools are much more appealing:

(Your German is great by the way!)

Not nearly as good as your English!

You have seen my entire German vocabulary right here on this forum!

[stiefelmusik]

Not nearly as good as your English!

Well, it should be. I'm American! I've been living in Germany for over 15 years though. Still, my German should be better than it is. My six year old daughter already speaks better German than I ever will at this point.

Anyway, back to notation. For a long time I've felt Cubase has had the best integrated notation program of any of the major DAWs. If you'll allow me to indulge in a little of my own personal DAW history, I started out with Cubase 2 on the Atari, then moved to Cubase VST Score 3.7 on Windows, then cross-graded to Cubase VST Score 5 on the Mac. Though true, it wasn't Finale or Sibelius, it was good enough for my needs, and surprisingly complete. (Actually, I shouldn't even be using the past tense, as it's still the best notation editor I own, and one of the main reasons I still keep an OS 9 workstation up and running). I was very happy with Cubase 5 up until Steinberg left us with a buggy public beta version 5.2, promised to make a final release, and never delivered. Cubase SX was the sorriest excuse for an "upgrade" you can imagine. Sure it might have sounded a bit better, and it ran on OS X, but it was missing tons of features. It wasn't an upgrade at all. It was a switch. So switch I did: to DP!

I also started getting into Pro Tools around the same time. These days most of my projects start out in DP then eventually get moved to Pro Tools for mixing and mastering. I still don't have a decent notation program for OS X. Sibelius is looking a lot more attractive these days, given the recent takeover by Avid/Digidesign. But I dread having to learn yet another massive program. My head is starting to hurt just thinking about it. Oh, the countless hours.... Why do we do this to ourselves?

If only DP had a full-featured score editor like Cubase. That would be so sweet. But I'll never go back to Steinberg, even if their integrated notation editor IS better than Quickscribe. Never, ever.

[blue]

Sibelius is looking a lot more attractive these days, given the recent takeover by Avid/Digidesign. But I dread having to learn yet another massive program. My head is starting to hurt just thinking about it.

Yea, I hear you. But Sibelius is surprisingly "easy" to learn, at least in terms of basic notation. I admit I never became super proficient in it, but only because I never needed to. My point being, you can do a lot with it without investing tons of time. The deeper features are there, for sure, but the app is set up to cater to all levels of need. That is what all software should do, IMO. Just doesn't happen often enough.

[Frodo]

I agree with blue- Sibelius has a great deal of user-intuition on its very suface. It's not so daunting as a lot of apps.

On that same note, Stiefmeister, sounds like our DAW history is pretty similar (with a few minor differences). I started out with SMPTE Track-- or Master Tracks Pro, switched to Creator/Notator, then to Cubase (all on the Atari). Decided to get a Mac and stayed with Cubase until Steinberg screwed everything up. Told me to install a new version with new software-- but the new authorization number they gave me was invalid on their system. Once they insisted that I buy a new copy of Cubase, I was done with them forever. But I do recall at least liking the notation section. This is in the days before I really needed Finale-- which was $1100 at the time anyway. Ugh.

Once my Steinberg days were over, I went with both DP and Finale-- the latter being one of the most unintuitive applications I've ever encountered in my entire life. The manuals were not in PDF form at the time and weighed about 15 pounds. I twiddled with it for a while and put it away. Fortunately, they updated the interface later and it all made sense at last.

However, had I been aware of Sibelius during my Finale 'eclipse' I might have gone for it. I think Sibelius got better and easier to use since then, anyway. Way back when, it seemed like just another medicore app, but within the past 5 years or so, it's really come into its own-- to the extent that it's attracted a lot of Finale pros.

I would strongly encourage you to pick up Sibelius if a serious notation app is on your list of things to get.

On a whole other note---

For reasons I'll not get into at this time--- (ahem)

I had to install the big gray 'L' - (you know which DAW I mean) on my MacPro just in case my problems with DP shut me down completely. I discovered that 'L' let's one choose their desired notation font!!

So, it IS possible and IS being done. It makes so much sense when an app makes basic good usage of the OS's features this way. I mean-- we have Core Audio, Core MIDI, Core everything else-- why no access to music fonts in DP?

[stiefelmusik]

On that same note, Stiefmeister...

That's so ironic, Frodo. I've been called that before. So you were a former Cubase user? Sounds like we do have a lot in common. I just read in another thread that you studied piano in college. So did I, with secondary studies in theory, composition and electronic music. I took one semester of conducting and had my a** kicked. What really got me was the score reading at the piano, having to deal with alto clef, transpositions, etc. on multiple staffs. Just too much for my brain to handle, so my conducting studies ended there. And I thought conducting was just about waving a little stick around in the air and making passionate gestures!

Anyway, back to the Notation Editor. No, forget the Notation Editor. It's useless. I will check out Sibelius. Thanks for the recommendations (everyone). I 'm still wondering what happened to Composers Mosaic. Wasn't that a MOTU product? Why couldn't they just incorprate that into DP? Anything, please, to keep my wandering eyes off Cubase!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Two plus years later and here I am lagging behind Frodo again And after MANY years working in DP and using the Quickscribe window for all things notation in DP, I "discovered" the Notation Window. And Frodo is right again, it's a great feature that has gone undeveloped in DP.

It took me about 5 minutes to find out how to open it and that was 3 minutes with the manual (hard copy and PDF ) and a couple of minutes looking all over the place to see how the heck to do it with a drop down mini menu in the graphic editor. The manual seemed to indicate there would be a button in the control panel draw (I'm working in DP 5 at the moment). No button was to be found. <sigh>

So I hopped on MOTUNation and did a search of all topics with Notation Editor in the title and how many did I find? THREE! 31447 topics on the board, and only 3 are specifically about the Notation Editor! That's 0.009539860718033517% of ALL posts! And damn it kids, the potential here is great, especially for us score reading types.

I won't repeat Frodo's concerns above as he has hit the mark quite center. Better graphics would help a lot to improve this little gem. But I know I will be using this a lot now that I've found it and I hope and pray that MOTU will realize the lost potential here. It's the kind of thing that can make a big difference, IMO, and the kind of thing that Apple puts into their programs that I love: a simple, elegant solution to a potentially complex problem, specifically, a nice, easy, quickly customizable (i.e. - in terms of quantizing complex passages for simplicity, for example) window that one can pull up fast (if they could find it) and examine the actual notes while editing controllers and other important data.

Truly a "DUH!" moment for me today. Thanks Frodo, for your observations. Perhaps the echo of this thread will resurrect interest in this apparently forgotten and ignored feature. This would have saved me many hours of editing over the years. Maybe days of editing and score printing from Quickscribe and Finale ports. <sigh>. So much to learn.

[mhschmieder]

I'm going to have to "try this at home" later this week, as I have had some confusion in 6.0.2 as to the circumstances that each of the various notation tools comes up. I am often surprised as to which one launches when it is done contextually vs. directly.

And based on this feedback, I will of course focus on how to bias towards launching the Notation Window vs. QuickScribe.

I bought Notion a year or two ago and have only used it once. Great tool, but I'm too busy recording anymore to have time for strict notation. I'll get around to it eventually, and consider it a lifetime investment as they've been good with free updates. But right now I'm working much faster in the context of a DAW, even while composing, so learning more about the nuances of the Notation Editor is bound to further help productivity.

[Frodo]

OMG-- this was two years ago?

Same old hobbit, same old typos!

Isn't that odd-- just three topics on the Notation Editor.

LOL---before I could even submit a reply mhschmieder has chimed in and has inspired another observation:

Two years ago, there was no DP6--- To be honest, I haven't looked at the NE in DP6 at all. Yikes.

Honestly, though-- it would be nice to be able to work from a printed score or sketch and to draw in automation dynamics and expression using the NE so that automation can be more accurately applied to the MIDI by using notes as the reference..... if they wouldn't scrunch and overlap while changing the resolution.

I realize that not everyone reads music, and among those who do, some would rather not if they didn't have to. So, I guess I'm a little confused by the way NE treats note display... and for whom this editor was created.

Quick Scribe is good for editing MIDI notes on non-adjacent tracks, thanks to the track list, but while that's about the extent of my use of QS, being able to do just that has saved TONS of time.

Thanks to MLC and MHS for the reminders!

[mhschmieder]

Yeah, it's funny, sometimes I'm more active on the forum when I'm at my busiest, depending on the nature of that busy-ness.

I'm doing lots of time-consuming installs this week (both at home and at work), and that means lots of little gaps of waiting time in between install steps. This also gives me more opportunities than usual to search topics, manuals, etc.