13 posts
Page 1 of 1
Hello all:

I'm not a musician, don't play any instrument (maybe a little guitar), don't read or write musical notation, and don't know what notes or chords I'm using in Studio One 5, or anything related to music theory. Pretty sad huh? Oh well.

I compose music completely by sound alone with pretty nice results (thanks to Studio one 5 and MIDI). I compose music by adding every note one by one using the mouse and edit as I go along for what I like to hear. A friend of mine asked if I could export my song in notation format so I looked into that and watched a few YouTube videos on the subject. Needless to say, I'm pretty lost about how to go about this correctly so that a real musician can read the results and interpret what I composed.

I have a melody with three MIDI tracks. To start with, I would like to export only the piano track, learn the procedure from that, and then proceed with the other two tracks. I can already Print to PDF and it looks OK as far as I can tell, but I'm not sure if I have set things up correctly (treble clef, bass cleff, what else? etc). Also, how would I add the name of the song and the author to the PDF document? I'm posting my song here so that anyone that might venture to help me can get an idea what I'm starting with.

Any guidance will be very much appreciated.

Attachments
Bluesy piano song FINAL version by Alfredo Huerta.mp3
(4.51 MiB) Downloaded 74 times
Last edited by alfredohuerta on Fri Jul 15, 2022 5:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Dell Latitude E6530, 16 GB Ram, Two 1-TB SSD
Windows 10/64
Novation LaunchKey 49 USB Keyboard
Studio One 6.5.2.97444 Win x64
User avatar
by SwitchBack on Thu Jul 14, 2022 4:46 pm
No one responded yet? “Where to start??” is probably as far as we got I’m afraid.

I’m no expert myself, so we may be talking the same language here :) What I do know is that music notation is like painting by numbers: Every note must be fitted ‘in a box’ for pitch, length, timing and in a coarse way for velocity too, and something will be lost going from an actual performance to a music score of it. The boxes can be made extremely small and the spacing extremely fine to a point where technically it’s a better approximation, but in a practical sense that will make the score illegible.

So most scores are a bit of a caricature of the composer’s thoughts, and side-notes like ‘forceful’ or ‘play with swing’ have to hint at what’s missing. Back to your piece I would say that sending your friend the audio file is probably better than any notation version you could make of it. If he’s into music notation let him write it out, complete with side-notes that work for him ;)

On the other hand music notation can help you to order your thoughts, but only if you can make it work for you. Study at least the basics if only to understand what it can and can’t do. And experiment with playing to a click (i.e. Studio One's metronome) or a basic drum loop as that will help to order your thoughts too.

Hope this is somewhat helpful :)
User avatar
by alfredohuerta on Fri Jul 15, 2022 6:55 am
Hello SwitchBack:

Well, at least I got one response! Thank you! So, this morning I went ahead and tried to export a PDF of my score (whether it is correct or not). It seems as if though something is not working correctly.

The piano score does not go all the way through the full track. For example, one of my songs is 138 bars long but the score sheet that is produced ends at bar 62. I can verify that the track is one single track (no splits) and that the start and end markers are at 0 and 138 respectively.

Maybe one has to pay extra money to Presonus to get the full track. Is this true?

Dell Latitude E6530, 16 GB Ram, Two 1-TB SSD
Windows 10/64
Novation LaunchKey 49 USB Keyboard
Studio One 6.5.2.97444 Win x64
User avatar
by alfredohuerta on Fri Jul 15, 2022 10:50 am
OK, I figured it out. I was not aware of the Start and End "Markers" that can be displayed after clicking on the "Global Track Visibility" tab in Studio One. I thought that the score sheet output range depended on the beginning and ending of the "active" track area that plays when you hit the space bar. The Start and End markers for the Score Sheet need to be placed where they belong and one must hit the "Rebuild Score" thing if needed after moving the Start and End markers.

Lastly, I will assume that no help to check the correctness of my score output will be available.

Thanks anyway

Attachments
Markers in Studio One 5.JPG

Dell Latitude E6530, 16 GB Ram, Two 1-TB SSD
Windows 10/64
Novation LaunchKey 49 USB Keyboard
Studio One 6.5.2.97444 Win x64
User avatar
by SwitchBack on Fri Jul 15, 2022 1:09 pm
Yeah, the end marker can trip you up.

Not sure about the results you got but I had a quick stab at it and the score came out pretty awful. If your's looks anything like this then rework is needed by someone who's got the skill (as in: not me :) )
alfredo.png
User avatar
by alfredohuerta on Fri Jul 15, 2022 1:58 pm
Yes, my score does look like that, but then I don't know whether it looks good or bad. That is my problem :roll: :roll: :roll:

Dell Latitude E6530, 16 GB Ram, Two 1-TB SSD
Windows 10/64
Novation LaunchKey 49 USB Keyboard
Studio One 6.5.2.97444 Win x64
User avatar
by SwitchBack on Fri Jul 15, 2022 3:20 pm
One thing most scores have to make them playable is grouping of notes that make a chord, even if the notes should not be struck at the same time (which is then something to put in the 'sidenotes'). Here's a piece of music by an Austrian chap to show what I mean (the left hand 'stacked' notes).
Waltz.png
Studio One can't do that grouping for you. It will simply put every single note in the box closest to where it was struck. You need someone to tidy up your score, to nudge the notes in the right boxes (to make them stack), and to add the sidenotes for the correct interpretation.
User avatar
by davidlarson6 on Fri Jul 15, 2022 4:01 pm
I think quantizing to 16th note would help.

DKLarson

Windows 10, i9, 64GB, 3X 1TB SSDs; Macbook Pro M1 Pro, 32GB, 1TB SSD
Audient iD14, Atom SQ, Keystep 37, Studiologic SL88, Moog Sub Phatty, Kawai MP11SE, Roli Seaboard.
User avatar
by alfredohuerta on Fri Jul 15, 2022 5:25 pm
Well, here is the first part of the score (piano only) for another song (Autumn Colors) that I composed, and a short MP3 of the first 17 bars. Based on how it sounds and what the score looks like, would a real musician recognize this and play it correctly just like it sounds? If not, then what is it missing or how should it be changed?

Am I on the right track? (no pun intended :roll: :D )

Attachments
Autumn Colors_first 17 bars__ by Alfredo Huerta.mp3
(1.11 MiB) Downloaded 44 times
Autumn Colors screen shot first page only.JPG

Dell Latitude E6530, 16 GB Ram, Two 1-TB SSD
Windows 10/64
Novation LaunchKey 49 USB Keyboard
Studio One 6.5.2.97444 Win x64
User avatar
by davidlarson6 on Fri Jul 15, 2022 9:58 pm
A musician would be able to read it, and play it approximately. The MIDI is not quantizing to the beat in (for example) measures 6 and 8, with the result that it is breaking the first chord in each of those measures in a way that isn't normal notation. But anybody who reads music would be able to figure it out.

DKLarson

Windows 10, i9, 64GB, 3X 1TB SSDs; Macbook Pro M1 Pro, 32GB, 1TB SSD
Audient iD14, Atom SQ, Keystep 37, Studiologic SL88, Moog Sub Phatty, Kawai MP11SE, Roli Seaboard.
User avatar
by wibem on Sat Jul 16, 2022 12:18 am
SO 5 isn't very good for note representation, because unfortunately there is no display quantization. That means you get a lot of short notes and notes with strange lengths, which makes it quite unreadable and unplayable. Perhaps you export the song as midifile to a noteeditor like Musescore ( which is free), in which you have much more options to make the notes and the music readable.

SO 1 ver. 5.5, Macbook Pro OS 10.13
User avatar
by alfredohuerta on Sat Jul 16, 2022 5:53 am
OK, maybe part of the problem is the MIDI notes themselves. As I mentioned earlier, I add them using the mouse since I don't play the piano. I don't use sustain pedal so I just adjust the length of each MIDI note to what sounds best to my ear. I'm wondering if I could do something to the length of those MIDI notes to make it so that the score sheet that Studio One interprets from those notes is "more correct". I'm attaching a screen shot of the first 17 bars of my composition (Autumn Colors). I note that some notes creep into the next bar and maybe that's part of the problem. However, when I composed the melody that is what sounded best to me (the notes creeping into the next bar).

There MUST be some guidelines on putting down MIDI notes so that the score sheet works better. So, in a nutshell, what are those guidelines and where might they be written so that I can study them?


Any suggestions will be welcome. I will also download and play around with the Musescore software as suggested. However, I don't expect to get very far since as I mentioned earlier, I don't read or write music. I have no idea what to do to create a score sheet that reads correctly since I don't know what "correct" looks like. :roll:

Attachments
Autumn Colors first 17 bars MIDI screen capture.JPG

Dell Latitude E6530, 16 GB Ram, Two 1-TB SSD
Windows 10/64
Novation LaunchKey 49 USB Keyboard
Studio One 6.5.2.97444 Win x64
User avatar
by alfredohuerta on Sat Jul 16, 2022 6:35 am
So now, thanks to the input of several members here, I think I may be getting closer to the desired results. I went into the MIDI notes in Studio One 5 and shortened some of the notes so that they don't extend into the beginning of the next bar. It sounds a bit different because those longer notes mixed with the notes in the next bar resulted in an interesting sound combination to my ear. Oh well.

Anyway, I am attaching a a short video of the actual MIDI notes while playing and another short video of the chord sheet while playing. I do admit that the chord sheet looks cleaner, especially in the area of the bars that were mentioned earlier as not being quantized correctly.

So, according to the music pros in this group, does this score sheet look OK based on the MIDI notes that you see and what you hear playing?

Again, thanks for your comments.


Dell Latitude E6530, 16 GB Ram, Two 1-TB SSD
Windows 10/64
Novation LaunchKey 49 USB Keyboard
Studio One 6.5.2.97444 Win x64

13 posts
Page 1 of 1

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 56 guests