Discuss Notion Music Composition Software here.
6 posts
Page 1 of 1
I can't find any mention of quantizing in Notion's docs, at least record in real time quantizing. Surely it has record quantization? I can't find it.

If the solution is to record everything in Studio One then transfer it to Notion, I just don't see the point in using Notion for any recording, real time entry or step entry. Isn't quantize the most basic element of any sequence/notation package?

Apologies also for bringing up the usual request: How can anyone produce a music app like this that doesn't recognise a sustain pedal? The cheapest, most basic midi app from 30 years ago recognised a sustain pedal!!

The one thing I find Notion useful for is using Ntempo to enter and even record realtime tempo variations. If Notion can achieve this relatively sophisticated feature then how can it not achieve two infinitely easier implementable features like quantize and sustain?

StudioOne Pro 5.1 - Notion 6 - Cubase - Win10 - i7 Intel 6 core -16 gigs RAM - Behringer 2x2 audio interface + Focusrite 2x2
User avatar
by Surf.Whammy on Sun Sep 05, 2021 3:46 am
"Quantize To Notation" is found on the NOTION "Tools" menu . . . :)

THOUGHTS

I like the pedal that sustains only the notes being held at the time the pedal is pushed--the sostenuto pedal . . .

Yet, like all dynamics and sustaining actions, the other pedals are useless and are a complete and total waste of time and engraving ink . . .

My perspective on dynamics is that they are an evil way to mess with people's ability to hear music by making it either inaudible or painfully loud . . .

In fact, the rule here in the sound isolation begins by compressing everything and then determining if it can be heard . . .

If it cannot be heard, then it's noise and serves no purpose--although in some instances there is merit to using various types of noise for textures . . .

In fact, I do not use dynamics and pedals--other than guitar pedals (DigiTech Whammy, Dunlop Cry Baby, and Budda Budwah), and then only when I actually am playing a real guitar rather than doing it via music notation . . .

This is the quantization information . . .

Image

It is grayed until you select some notes . . .

Lots of FUN! :)

Surf.Whammy's YouTube Channel

The Surf Whammys

Sinkhorn's Dilemma: Every paradox has at least one non-trivial solution!
User avatar
by leonardyoung on Sun Sep 05, 2021 5:34 am
Thanks for that info. Not quite with you on the sustain pedal. It is an intrinsic part of any piano. Not having one, virtually or not, is like having a sailboat without a rudder ;)

A sustain pedal is not a dynamic tool. It's a sustain tool so a difficult passage with legato passages are easier to play, and that applies to anyone whether a beginner or virtuoso. It doesn't make the music louder, it just makes notes ring for longer!

I'm aware of quantize to notation, but what does it mean? If it means quantize the pace/value of playback notes to whatever is notated, that's not what I am after. I mean quantize so that even if you take the greatest care when recording live, there will be notes slightly off (for example triplet notes when you mean straight notes). Any notation app should have midi note correction as to place and note quantize as to length, like every single other notation or sequencing software on the planet.

Maybe that's what quantize to notation means in Notion but it doesn't appear so. Is there a plain simple Notion quantize that corrects the placement of notes on the staff in a live recording via midi so that if you set it to, say, quavers in 4/4 time it does not present dotted notes, triplets or 16th notes? Even when playing with very accurate timing it is impossible to get it perfect, and I've been doing this for several decades, am a professional pianist, and have used midi as a pro also for decades.

StudioOne Pro 5.1 - Notion 6 - Cubase - Win10 - i7 Intel 6 core -16 gigs RAM - Behringer 2x2 audio interface + Focusrite 2x2
User avatar
by Surf.Whammy on Sun Sep 05, 2021 4:59 pm
"Quantize To Notation" does not do what you would like it to do . . . :(

THOUGHTS

This is what the NOTION User Guide says about it:

Clearing your custom changes: Whether you’ve used the sequencer overlay, performed it with a MIDI keyboard, or used the Randomize Events feature, you may want to strip these tweaks away.

Quantize to Notation: To reset the duration of your Sequencer Overlay events:, make a selection, then Tools>Quantize to Notation.

Clear Velocities: To remove all velocities, highlight a section of music and click Tools>Clear Velocities.

As I read it, instead of actually quantizing, it simply undoes or rolls-back any manual or random changes you have made . . .

It's basically like "Undo" for editing, which from my perspective makes it completely and totally useless . . .

If I understand what you would like to have, then (a) it's an excellent idea but (b) NOTION does not do it and (c) to the best of my knowledge no application does it , , ,

BACKGROUND

I am not a keyboard player, but I have a KORG Triton Music Workstation with 88 weighted piano-style keys, which makes it like a grand piano, at least for the ways the individual keys feel and respond, although they also are velocity sensitive if desired . . .

When I was a child, we always had a piano; and as I recall I had a few piano lessons as a young child and at one time probably could play "Mary Had A Little Lamb" . . .

I was in a liturgical boys choir, and this is the way I learned to sight-sign soprano treble clef in Bach, Mozart, and other liturgical pieces, which is the reason today that I do everything on treble clef--something NOTION allows by being able to set transposition for staves, where for electric bass I set the transposition to play notes two octaves lower than notated, but for electric guitar I set the transposition to play noes one octave lower than notated . . .

Among my many apparently unusual rules here in the sound isolation, there are 12 notes and 10 or so octaves, two of which octaves are reserved to annoy or to entertain bats, birds, cats, dogs, dolphins, porpoises, sea turtles, and whales, since they are the only biologicals that can hear them . . .

I think this perspective is mathematically elegant, and it certainly simplifies the way one views Western music . . .

Instead of needing to create mental maps of 88 or more distinct and separate note, this way there are only 12 notes that differ solely by octave--hence I only need to remember one set of 12 things and another set of 10 things, which for me is much easier conceptually and in every other respect . . .

By doing everything on treble staves, I only need to have an intuitive sense and understanding of one clef and it's corresponding staff . . .

Starting around junior high school, I began teaching myself how to play string bass and then two years later, electric bass . . .

I was playing electric bass in nightclubs when I was in high school and making a good bit of money for a teenager and in some instances for an adult . . .

Later, I taught myself how to play rhythm guitar and then a decade or so later, I taught myself how to play lead guitar by playing vinyl records at half-speed, which made the notes sound like bass notes and was something I already knew--just not being able initially to play the notes rapidly an octave higher, but so what . . .

For me, the key to playing lead guitar was playing phrases over-and-over until I could play the notes rapidly--something I would do for hours and days at a time . . .

[NOTE: When I write "over-and-over" for "hours, days, and weeks", I am being precise. When I was working in a grocery warehouse to pay for my university education, I put individual sticky price tags on approximately 25 million tubes of Crest® toothpaste--this was before bar codes and scanners--and I mention this because it is consistent with my ability to do the same thing over-and-over without becoming bored or not being able to do it anymore. Consider the phrases in Ace Frehley's stellar lead guitar solo for "Love Gun" (KISS), which borrows a lot from some of Jimmy Page's lead guitar solos (Led Zeppelin). I can play this note-for note, but learning how to do it required me to play short phrases of perhaps three to five notes over-and-over for hours at a time over several days and weeks to commit it to muscle memory. Jimi Hendris played a lot of phrases like this, and it's not so difficult to do after you work on it for a few hundred hours per lead guitar solo, which Is what they all did at one time or another. Nobody is "born knowing" how to play lead guitar; and even when it's easy to do, such folks need to develop fingertip callouses and to enhance the neural wiring of their brains and muscles required to play notes rapidly and accurately, which no matter how it is done always takes a while. In fact, playing notes very rapidly requires enhancing the neural connections between the Frontal Eye Fields and the Auditory Cortex, since it's only the Frontal Eye Fields that increase the ability to play notes extremely rapidly, with the Auditory Cortex having a response time of perhaps 60 milliseconds, wile the Frontal Eye Fields have response times as low as approximately 25 milliseconds. If you play 10 notes per second, then each note needs to appear in 100 milliseconds, hence is possible when you allow for intermediate processing, although most phrases like this need to be practiced and perfected over-and-over in advance. It's too much stuff to do with only one second to do it . . . ]

phpBB [video]


Consider the lead guitar solo in my homage to First Lady Laura Bush . . .

For the most part, it's three half-steps played over-and-over, which due to the timing and synchronization is considerably more difficult than it might appear . . .

I was able to do this in real-time on the fly because I had practiced it for hours, days, and weeks until it became a "muscle memory" type of thing, which is fabulous. . .

phpBB [video]


Fabulous! :P

GRAND PIANO AND DIRECTED-DREAMING

Jump back a decade, and I had the idea that I could teach myself how to play grand piano without actually playing a grand piano; and I did this via what I call "directed dreaming", which basically is a matter of dreaming that one is playing grand piano . . .

It sounds stupid--and to some degree it probably is stupid--but I focused on it steadily for about 20 years with no apparent success or failure . . .

Then two events coincided:

(1) After completely misunderstanding an audio engineer who told me "On the 'R.A.M.' album, Paul McCartney did everything on the first or second take", I decided this was what I should do and embarked on a decade-long plan to make it happen. A few years ago, I discovered that the audio engineer actually was referring specifically to some vocal harmony overdubs--not to everything--but so what . . .

At first, it was a bit frightening, much like the first time I created a magazine advertisement for one of my technical programming books and declared myself to be an "internationally recognized expert", which was based entirely on two people in Germany and Japan purchasing copies of my technical software engineering book, which included a chapter from what later became part my science fiction radio play . . .

I did not know about "puffery" at the time, and for months I lived in terror that there would be a loud knock on the door by two FBI Special Agents who were there to arrest me for being less than honest in declaring myself to be an "internationally recognized expert" . . .

Eventually, with no FBI Special Agents knocking on the door, I did some research and discovered "puffery" is allowed in advertising, mostly because it's so absurd that people recognize it as not actually being true . . .

Something similar happened when I was teaching myself how to compose and play lead guitar solos in real-time on the fly on the first take, which to make it all the more frightening I would imagine myself and my Stratocaster, Marshall stack, and pedal rig beamed onto a stage in a far-away galaxy where Elvis Presley was performing, at which instant a spotlight would shine on me and Elvis would say "Take it!", indicating I was to play a lead guitar solo for a song about which I had heard perhaps one measure and didn't even know the key . . .

Most people probably would think this was beyond stupid, but for me it was the most terrifying thing I could imagine, hence was the reason I imagined it . . .

I only could do this in the sound isolation studio with all the doors locked, late a night, when I was certain there were no FBI Special Agents or officials from ASCAP, BMI, or NASCAR in the area attempting to surveil me . . .

My thinking is that if this actually happened, most folks would have a panic attack and wet their pants; but I persevered and eventually discovered (a) it was easy to do and (b) there were no adverse consequences, especially when I had DigiTech Whammy pedals, Dunlop Cry Baby pedals, and a Budda Budwah pedal . . .

RULE: When you have no idea what to do, play any note and go to town with a foot pedal., observing it helps to run everything through cascading distortion and echo units.

Fast forward a bit, and I got my first drum kit, which along with the "compose and play everything in real-time on the fly" strategy led to success on the grand piano scheme . . .

Specifically, I realized (a) that the keys on a grand piano are like tiny percussion instruments (drums, cymbals, tambourines, guiros, shakers, maracas, and so forth) and (b) that when properly trained over a few decades, your unconscious mind knows how to do things . . .

Connecting the dots and having developed excellent body, arms, and hands dexterity from playing bass, guitar, and drums, playing grand piano was just a matter of doing two things:

(1) not thinking about it

(2) playing the miniature "drum kit"

For reference, during the 20 years, I watched videos of Liberace, Floyd Cramer, Chico Marx, and John Lennon, which was the way I learned the various body and hand motions . . .

it is customary at such times to have an recital, and this is the recital where everything is composed and played in real-time on the fly on the first take with no overdubbing. It sounds like a lot of pianos, because I ran it through two sets of effects pedals, including cascading echo units to create what I call a "Wall of Grand Pianos" . . . .

phpBB [video]


This is the same song but is the lead guitar solo, again composed and played in real-time on the first take with no overdubbing . . .

phpBB [video]


I already had composed the rhythm guitar chord pattern in advance, and for doing things like this in real-time on the fly, all I need to know Is the chord pattern, although without knowing the chord pattern I have other techniques for playing something while I am frantically attempting to discover the key and chords . . .

If I ever am beamed onto a stage in a far-away galaxy and Elvis looks at me and says "Take it!", then I will be well prepared! :+1

For a while, I thought my spontaneous grand piano composing and playing was a bit strange; but then I discovered Arnold Schönberg's Twelve-Tone Technique and realized my self-defined and quite immense talent . . . :P

phpBB [video]


WHAT YOU AND PROBABLY EVERY KEYBOARD PLAYER ON THE PLANET WANTS

Consider the grand piano and lead guitar solos for "Starlight" (provided above), and I think it's obvious there Is no way this can be transcribed to music notation in what one might call a "clean" way absent of tuplets and truly odd sequences and combinations of notes involving 1/128th notes tied to 1/64th notes and dotted 1/16th notes that nobody possibly can read or play . . .

This is what happens because of the fact that there is no accurate and precise one-to-one mapping of (a) MIDI to (b) music notation . . .

MIDI is decimal, and it keeps times in ticks which are based on units of time that do not appear in music notation. At another level, MIDI focus on Pulses Per Quarter Note (PPN) and other such units, which can be specified differently in various MIDI strategies and data sets, hence overall is not so consistent . . .

On the other hand, music notation is mostly binary in the sense that note durations are multiples of two, although with dots and tuplets one can introduce a bit of syncopation for such things as percussion, at least to a practical extent . . .

In other words, mapping MIDI to music notation and vice-versa is more of an art than a science; and the results vary by application depending on how much attention software engineers give to the concept of producing music notation that "looks pretty" and is human in every respect . . .

I think this is what you want, and if so then it's something I want, too . . .

Consider this example of a keyboard part I played on a Behringer 25-key MIDI keyboard as accompaniment to a Reason demo song by the Techno Squirrels . . .

[NOTE: This is exactly what I played and it produces the sounds I played, but (a) I am an idiot who can write but not read music notation--except when singing soprano--and (b) this is not what I thought I was playing, since I thought I was being all precise, steady, metered, and generally elegant . . . ]

Image

[NOTE: This was when I was exploring the idea of doing a ReWire session where both NOTION and Reason (Reason Studios) were ReWire helper devices for the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) program acting as the ReWIre host controller. It's a bit absurd, but I was able to prove that it's possible. I started with the Reason demo song by the Techno Squirrels and then added electric bass, Hammond B-3 ordain, a horn section, and a FabFilter Software Instruments "Twin 2" synthesizer, which is playing the aforementioned notes shown in music notation. I did experiments with several DAW applications, and this is one of the experiments I did with Logic Pro (Apple). While it is a bit absurd, there are things Reason can do that make it a very useful type of "synthesizer", in which case at least for a while it actually makes sense to use Reason this way. Once the audio is generated and recorded to Audio Tracks in Studio One Professional, the related Instrument Tracks and so forth can be removed, hence in the next layer fo the song there only are Audio Tracks (and no Reason), which then makes it possible to add a new set of Instrument Tracks, always being careful to save intermediate versions of each layer in case it's necessary or useful to revisit the way earlier layers were created and recorded. This is the way I create songs, and it's a good system for composing, arranging, recording, producing, and audio engineering . . . ]

phpBB [video]


There should be a way to make music notation like this look as if it was done by an intelligent, proficient, human with perfect timing and all that stuff . . .

Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there is no application that does this . . .

Some applications have better algorithms for doing MIDI to music notation mapping, but the more it involves smoothing, the more it fails . . .

I think there is a way to do this, but it requires significantly more artificial intelligence, hence more software engineering resources and time, which makes it expensive . . .

STUDIO ONE PROFESSIONAL

Studio One has what I consider to be true quantization capabilities, at least in terms of "snapping" starts and ends of notes to a well-defined "grid"; so this looks to be a productive solution when it's just a matter of being a tiny bit off-time by small amounts . . .

SUMMARY AND OBSERVATIONS

I think a group of skilled musicians--perhaps including myself--can look at a section of music notation converted from MIDI and determine how it should look . . .

For the human mind, this is not difficult to do . . .

The problem is that when it's done by computer algorithms, (a) it's a matter of knowledge engineering and (b) it's not a trivial software engineering activity . . .

Now that I think about this for a while, it's possible the Melodyne Editor (Celemony) can do the type of "quantizing" you desire; and while it might not be perfect when done automagically, you can do a bit of fine-tuning to make it better and more precise . . .

[NOTE: I use Melodyne Editor 5, but (a) PreSonus works closely with Celemony and (b) Melodyne Essential is included with Studio One Professional 5. The included Studio One Professional license for Melodyne Essential can be used to get a discount when upgrading to Melodyne Editor 5, but Melodyne Essential does a lot without needing to upgrade. Whether it supports the advanced timing and export to MIDI capabilities is another matter about which I do not know at the moment. For practical purposes, Melodyne Editor 5 does everything; and the primary difference with Melodyne Studio is that Melodyne Studio lets you work with more than one instrument or voice at a time, and there are some other capabilities but none of them are useful for what I need to do. There is a version comparison chart near the end of the webpage at the following link . . . ]

What Melodyne Does (Celemony)

[NOTE: This works a different way in the sense that it begins with the audio generated by the MIDI you played and recorded. Melodyne analyzes the audio and represents it by "blobs"; and it is blobs that you adjust for timing, pitch, and so forth. Then you select the blobs and export them as MIDI, which you import to NOTION and convert to music notation. It might appear to be a bit complex, but when you work with it a while, it becomes intuitive. Melodyne might provide the best true quantization, but it's not completely automagical in every instance. You probably will need to do some manual adjusting, but it's not so difficult to do . . . ]

phpBB [video]


Regarding piano pedals, I was browsing some of the information on the current version of Dorico (Steinberg), and it supports pedals . . .

The problem from my perspective is that the music playing part of the graphic user interface (GUI) for Dorico is a mess and to the best of my knowledge does not do music notation for playing, instead requiring a piano roll, sequencer style interface . . .

In some respects, it's like Steinberg took the worst of the Sibelius and Finale playing interfaces and made it even worse . . .

If your goal is to produce elegantly engraved sheet music, then you might be happy with Dorico; but if you want to play your music using virtual instruments and effects plug-ins, then Studio One Professional and NOTION are the best way to do this . . .

There are settings in NOTION that make MIDI recording more accurate, so this also is something to explore . . .

Lots of FUN! :)
Last edited by Surf.Whammy on Tue Sep 07, 2021 7:22 am, edited 3 times in total.

Surf.Whammy's YouTube Channel

The Surf Whammys

Sinkhorn's Dilemma: Every paradox has at least one non-trivial solution!
User avatar
by leonardyoung on Mon Sep 06, 2021 8:06 pm
Thanks very much for your stories and approach descriptions. I enjoyed them!

Quantize of the kind I described IS available in every single DAW that I know of. Studio One does it fine, as long as the quantizing is in the piano roll editor, not the score editor. It corrects small playing mistakes and places each note precisely on the beats/grid where you tell it to.

After some digging, I see that "Quantize to notation" in Notion is the precise opposite to what 99% of live midi note input players want. Instead of correcting one's playing it adjusts the placing of notes so they fit to Notion's interpretation of one's playing. ie: it inserts unwanted triplets or dotted notes into the score then the Quantize to Notation alters the desired timing of your perforrnance/recording to fit its notation.

This is honestly the DIAMETRIC opposite of what is required by the vast majority of people who enter midi in real time. After experimenting I did many test recordings, playing at a slow tempo and being as precise as I could possibly be, so that listening even without quantizing reveals almost 100% precise timing. But on opening the score there are many notes that are shifted to semiquavers or demisemiquaver values outside what was intended, and then any quantize command did NOT correct the notation. It is physically impossible to play so accurately that either Studio One or Notion notation keeps precisely to the desired quantizing as far as the score is concerned. Studio One's piano roll is not the same. it will quantize precisely as commanded.

Now, if I open piano roll editor and either re-quantize or manually place each note PRECISELY on the grids (using the snap to grid function in Studio One) then open the score editor Studio One still shows the notes as being NOT precisely on the beat. The only way to correct this is to delete the note and manually place another one, or less successfully click on the correctly timed note and place it exactly on top of the existing note with the right value.

Studio One's score editor has more or less the same interpretation of notes as Notion does. They are now based broadly on the Notion protocols as far as notation placement is concerned.

The result is that quantizing precisely in Studio One's score editor and in Notion generally is not reflected by the score. In programs like Cubase you can quantize the score in two ways, either by commanding the score editor to follow the piano roll/edited and quantized notes, or you can impose a note quantize on the score without affecting the performance. Thus Cubase, and other DAW apps, are flexible where score editing is concerned.

I'm pretty sure neither Notion or Studio One (latest versions) are capable of properly quantizing in score edit so as to reflect accurately the ACTUAL quantized notes of a live recording. They will only keep notation accurate if you enter notes via the mouse or via step time recording. This means that real time recording in Notion is often useless, thereby defeating the whole point of it. Sibelius will accurately quantize real time playing and give you the option of the score also quantizing in the same way.

StudioOne Pro 5.1 - Notion 6 - Cubase - Win10 - i7 Intel 6 core -16 gigs RAM - Behringer 2x2 audio interface + Focusrite 2x2
User avatar
by acequantum on Sat Oct 23, 2021 12:53 am
Hi,

A new Notion 6 user here. It doesn't seem like there is quantizing. Notion takes its best guess at what you are playing and will divide it into measures and so forth, but it doesn't have a "snap-to" function that will clean up ones playing/recording. The closest it seems to come is when you can set the Minimum duration under the Sensitivity section of MIDI record under preferences.

6 posts
Page 1 of 1

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 12 guests