# Piano roll vs notation



## Johnny22 (Aug 30, 2009)

Hey fellow composers, i am a new member, i'm just started using a daw to record my music, i do have some questions, hoping you could help :D 

Cheers

1th question,

My old composition teacher always wanted me to write on paper, he was very strict on that, so i am used to write on paper, but now i own cubase sequencer, and writing music on it, is very strange to me, my keyboard skills isn't that great, so I have to do a lot of editing in piano roll, but i just can't seem to get the hang out of it.

I become lost every time on which bar I am or which beat, should I use the quantize or not etc.

Writing on finale notepad, you knew which bar you're in, which note lengths you are using etc, but with the piano roll in cubase, after playing in with my keyboard, everything is a mess, some notes are recorded in bar 3 instead of bar 2, so i have to move everything etc etc

my question is, how to become good with writing/editing on the piano roll, what is the main difference you've experienced when you changed from notation to piano roll?

thanks o-[][]-o


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## Johnny22 (Aug 30, 2009)

please ????????


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## Przemek K. (Aug 30, 2009)

Since you are used to write on paper, why not use the built in notation feature of cubase ? Afterwards it probably would be easier for you to make the final changes in the pianoroll editor.


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## Johnny22 (Aug 30, 2009)

I've tried, many times but the built in notation feature of cubase is very very badly organized :? 

and I know after visiting many forums, reading a lot members post's that most people play their pieces in with their midi keyboard and edit them afterwards in pianoroll for example Mike from cinesamples on his youtube tutorials.

Or they just draw their piece in piano roll, for example ''Pietro with his great Lass piece''

To me the piano roll looks like a bunch of ''SECRET horizontal CODES'' which I can't seem to understand well :? 

The notation is SOO MUCH easier to understand, than those small horizontal blocks of different sizes :? I mean the piano roll :D


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## Przemek K. (Aug 30, 2009)

Hope that helps.


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## Przemek K. (Aug 30, 2009)

> after playing in with my keyboard, everything is a mess, some notes are recorded in bar 3 instead of bar 2, so i have to move everything etc etc



In that case you should move the notes to the right position either by quantizing (if they are not too far off) or by hand.


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## Johnny22 (Aug 30, 2009)

That image explains a lot about the duration of the notes, thanks a lot o-[][]-o 

but still you don't see right away which notes there are, for example when you have a chord progression going on with your strings, and you want to compose the melody on a flute on track 4, you open the piano roll and start recording, you see the piano roll, but you don't see right away on which chord you arrived, i hope i can explain this a bit to you?? so you have to guess with your melody, i whis my english was better than this, i can't seem to explain these the way I want it to :? 

I think I have to transcribe a couple of small notation scores, just to get familiar with the piano roll, that would help, right?


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## rJames (Aug 30, 2009)

Johnny,

take a look at the left side of the screen. Its a piano...hence the name piano roll. Think of a music box playing or an old player piano roll.

In the above score, I can see that on the first bar we have an F in bass, a C above and another C an octave above. This is your "chord". You can see it anywhere on the timeline by looking at the piano roll.

On beat 2 of the first bar the high C moves down a chromatic to a B on beat 2 1/2 the B goes away , resting for an eighth and then (on the third beat) the fifth drops out but the top note comes back in as an A for one eighth.

This is the easiest way for me to see music in motion.


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## careyford (Aug 30, 2009)

And you no longer have to "notate" rests.


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## germancomponist (Aug 30, 2009)

Johnny22 @ Sun Aug 30 said:


> ... but with the piano roll in cubase, after playing in with my keyboard, everything is a mess, some notes are recorded in bar 3 instead of bar 2, so i have to move everything etc etc ...



Hi Johnny22,

check your audio card settings. What you describe seems to be a result of a big latency. Have you an Audio Card with an Asio driver and selected it also in Cubase?

Best,

Gunther


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## musicpete (Aug 30, 2009)

In Cubase you can select the option of enabling "use MIDI Timestamp" somewhere in your MIDI device setup screens. Try turning it on for your input device. That should improve the recording accuracy.

Other than that: Cubases notation "features" can't even be called that way. Don't get me started on that. Try searching the forums, there are a lot of threads in which people shared their working procedures. Mine still includes writing a score in Sibelius, importing the MIDI to Cubase, cleaning it up, splitting into sections, working on each section as a separate project file (My Q6600 is not fast enough to play a full orchestra), export stems, mix, master.


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## Johnny22 (Aug 31, 2009)

I am very happy with all these comments, really helpful, thanks guys.

Gunther, my latency isn't that bad, something like 12ms or so. yes Asio driver enabled.

I think that I got a bit overwelmd by this new way of viewing notes and so, I was used to notation, so in time it will work fine for me too, none of you complain about it :D

I have to get used to it, like everything is awkard at first, like asking a girl for a date o 

Thanks a lot and cheers!


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## mathis (Aug 31, 2009)

Johnny, I compose directly in Sibelius for that reason...


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## Johnny22 (Aug 31, 2009)

So i'm not the only one who finds it difficult, welcome to the club, no just joking :wink: 

Can I ask you, How do you compose your ''*non orchestral percussion tracks*'' (e.g. drums of war or tonehammer stuff), you can't find some of those instruments in Sibelius instruments, right?

Sibelius got the strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion instruments commen in the orchestra, but still you would sometimes want to use ''alien drum'' for example.

Do you first sketch your piece in sibelius, and afterwards adding the ''extra'' stuff in your sequencer?

o-[][]-o cheers


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## lee (Aug 31, 2009)

Sorry for being OT, but, I´m still wondering why there are no modern daws with a piano roll like Sweet Sixteen:







It´s easy to see rhytms, timings etc with the regular pianorolls, but IMO chords and melodic things benefit alot from a piano roll that "flows" vertically, where the keys of pianoroll are positioned the same way your midikeyboard is.

The best solution would be an option to choose vertical or horizontal piano roll I think. 

Ok, back to discussion.

/Johnny


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## germancomponist (Aug 31, 2009)

lee @ Mon Aug 31 said:


> ...
> 
> The best solution would be an option to choose vertical or horizontal piano roll I think.
> 
> ...



I asked Steinberg years ago about this. 

Yes, that would be great.


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## Johnny22 (Aug 31, 2009)

Maybe that would be an good idea for DAW developers, my iphone can do it too :lol:


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## Przemek K. (Aug 31, 2009)

lee @ Mon Aug 31 said:


> Sorry for being OT, but, I´m still wondering why there are no modern daws with a piano roll like Sweet Sixteen:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Hey, thats cool. If Steinberg could only implement this as an option... but there's a big "but"


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## lee (Aug 31, 2009)

Yeah!! I will send steinberg a mail too. Maybe if there are enough people requesting it, they will implement it? Maybe..

/Johnny


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## mathis (Aug 31, 2009)

Johnny22 @ Mon Aug 31 said:


> Do you first sketch your piece in sibelius, and afterwards adding the ''extra'' stuff in your sequencer?



Exactly. But Sibelius 6 now supports rewire mode so it can run inside the sequencer. I'll check this out the next days.


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## musicpete (Aug 31, 2009)

Yep, that's similar to what what I've spent the past 2 months on getting to work. In my first piece of music after 10 months of writers block I managed to integrate Sibelius' own sounds with multiple instances of FM8 and Massive, plus drums from "Taiko" and other instruments loaded into a jbridged Kontakt 2.2.4. Worked like a charm, even though I still use S6!


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## dcoscina (Aug 31, 2009)

Some other DAWs handle notation more elegantly. I find Logic and even Logic Express to be pretty solid where notation is concerned. Digital Performer is also good. Even Pro Tools LE8 has upped the ante for notation. in fact, it's great to be able to extend note legnths right in the notation window as opposed to going into the piano roll to do so.


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## Johnny22 (Aug 31, 2009)

musicpete 10 months writers block really?

Thats a very long time without music, what did you do to overcome it? 

sorry for being too curious, but you never know


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## musicpete (Aug 31, 2009)

Johnny22 @ 31.8.2009 said:


> what did you do to overcome it?


Tried to force myself to write music, which of course didn't produce anything even remotely useful and increased my frustration. So instead I practiced on the piano more than usual, went back to study composition/harmony/structure/counterpoint/score analysis, set up a new DAW, read a lot about audio production and practiced quite a bit, ... I tried to keep myself busy with many of the countless other creative aspects around music. 

And then, one day while I was sitting in the tramway, I suddenly felt like getting hit by an electric charge. I suddenly knew how to solve a musical problem that kept my head busy for many months. I ripped out a page of my calendar and frantically scribbled a sketch score right there onto the paper. Later I fired up Sibelius, tinkered around on the piano for some time and suddenly I had a complete sketch to flesh out. I am still not in my old form but it is getting better now... Still a little slow.

To stay on topic: Did the timestamp feature help a little with the MIDI timing?


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