help with notation editing

[Jared-42]

Hello, everyone.  I'm a new Rosegarden user, and I'm having some trouble
getting notes laid out correctly in the editor.

Here's what I'm trying to do (mock-up made with GIMP):
http://www.legroom.net/public/desired.png

With Rosegarden, here's the best I've been able to get so far:
http://www.legroom.net/public/current.png

The problem, as you can see, is with the notes in the bottom staff.
Actually, there are two problems:

1. I couldn't figure out how to add these notes in the notation editor at
all.  Everytime I tried to add the eight note, it kept trying to overwrite
the quarter note.  I tried using the shift key as I'd seen mentioned
elsewhere, but that didn't help.  How can I add overlapping notes like this
in the notation editor?

2. I was finally able to get what you see in current.png done using the
matrix editor.  When I play it back it *sounds* correct, but *looks* very
wrong.  How can I edit this so that the two overlapping notes on the bottom
staff are placed in the correct location?

Thanks.  I should also probably mention that I'm fairly new to this kind of
editing, with my only other experience coming from Cakewalk Pro Audio many
years ago, so please forgive me if some of my terminology is off.  :-)

--
Jared

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[D. Michael McIntyre]

On Thursday 01 October 2009, Jared wrote:

> Hello, everyone.  I'm a new Rosegarden user, and I'm having some trouble
> getting notes laid out correctly in the editor.

All I have time for at the moment is the briefest of notes, but I can say your
answer is demonstrated in (although it isn't entirely the subject of) this
tutorial:

http://rosegardenmusic.com/tutorials/supplemental/piano/index.html

--
D. Michael McIntyre

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[lorenzosu]

Hi Jared,

As far as I know Rosegarden notation editor is not particularly suited
for multi-voice scores (nor has it a concept of layers and levels like
other score editors): that for example also applies to piano where one
usually uses 2 tracks for right and left hand).

If some fine notation is your final goal you could consider exporting to
lilypond which does support multi-voice.

Kind regards,
Lorenzo

Jared wrote:

> Hello, everyone.  I'm a new Rosegarden user, and I'm having some trouble
> getting notes laid out correctly in the editor.
>
> Here's what I'm trying to do (mock-up made with GIMP):
> http://www.legroom.net/public/desired.png
>
> With Rosegarden, here's the best I've been able to get so far:
> http://www.legroom.net/public/current.png
>
> The problem, as you can see, is with the notes in the bottom staff.
> Actually, there are two problems:
>
> 1. I couldn't figure out how to add these notes in the notation editor at
> all.  Everytime I tried to add the eight note, it kept trying to overwrite
> the quarter note.  I tried using the shift key as I'd seen mentioned
> elsewhere, but that didn't help.  How can I add overlapping notes like this
> in the notation editor?
>
> 2. I was finally able to get what you see in current.png done using the
> matrix editor.  When I play it back it *sounds* correct, but *looks* very
> wrong.  How can I edit this so that the two overlapping notes on the bottom
> staff are placed in the correct location?
>
> Thanks.  I should also probably mention that I'm fairly new to this kind of
> editing, with my only other experience coming from Cakewalk Pro Audio many
> years ago, so please forgive me if some of my terminology is off.  :-)
>
> --
> Jared
>
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>  

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[D. Michael McIntyre]

On Thursday 01 October 2009, Lorenzo wrote:

> As far as I know Rosegarden notation editor is not particularly suited
> for multi-voice scores

I'd agree that doing multi-voice scores doesn't function in the conventional
way notation users have come to expect, but it works just fine for the most
part.  The one thing I can think of off the top of my head that's not possible
with Rosegarden is having a quarter note in one voice at the same pitch as a
half note in another voice.  The half note is there, but it occupies the same
space as the quarter note, and so the half note appears filled, and this
exports to LilyPond coming out the same way.

Rests in alternate voices are another thing that isn't terribly pleasant,
because no effort is made to try to draw them anywhere other than dead center
in the staff, and it would be helpful if there were much better invisible rest
management to avoid drawing unwanted rests in the other voices.  This is one
of those things where LilyPond usually sorts it out a lot better, so even if
our on-screen representation is messy, the printed version looks nice.
--
D. Michael McIntyre

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[Jared-42]

Thanks for the responses.  Few points of my own:

1. I did read through the suggested tutorial.  I don't recall seeing
anything specifically addressing this, but I very well may have overlooked
it (it's pretty overwhelming on first read).  I'll take another look.

2. I understand that Rosegarden doesn't handle multi-voice scores very well
(assuming I'm using that term the same way as you).  That's why I have the
treble clef and bass clef staffs broken into separate tracks, whereas in
Cakewalk I would've had them share a track (which, honestly, I'd prefer).  I
just couldn't figure out any way to work around that.  What I'm trying to do
here, on the bottom staff in my example, should all be played with the left
hand.  I'm just sustaining one note while playing a couple others.  Maybe
that's what you mean by multi-voice?

3. The rest thing is purely cosmetic, because that's how it's printed in the
source I'm working with.  I'm not terribly concerned about that part.  :-)

4. I ran into another problem with positioning that's not specifically
related to this, but a solution to one would probably help the other.  It
seems to be impossible to have a quarter placed to start playing after an
8th note rest  Ie., have it start on the "and" of a 4/4 count.  I eventually
got something halfway working after about 15 min. of messing around, but is
there no straightforward way to place any arbitrary note on the off beat?

Thanks again, and sorry if these are some n00b-ish questions.  It's taking
me a little while to get up to speed on this.


--
Jared

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[D. Michael McIntyre]

On Thursday 01 October 2009, Jared wrote:

> 1. I did read through the suggested tutorial.  I don't recall seeing
> anything specifically addressing this, but I very well may have overlooked
> it (it's pretty overwhelming on first read).  I'll take another look.

It's there.  It's just part of the whole tutorial, and not the subject of one
by itself.  The whole thing is a bit muddy, too, because it was one of those
things where new features emerged during the course of writing it, and I
didn't follow the same game plan from top to bottom, because my plan adapted
as I went.  (We got "move to staff below" and expanding height tracks during
the course of writing that, for example.)

It all needs updating for Thorn too, once Thorn is actually capable of doing
everything I demonstrated there.  (Not yet, I'm afraid.  Notably the "move to
staff above/below" and "next/previous segment" bits are not only not there but
don't even have anything to hook into really, and are a bit of a head
scratcher to get working in the new framework.  On the up side of that, the
solution should port to the matrix, which will finally be able to handle
multiple segments itself.)

Anyway, the relevant bit is from "The Bad Thing About Voices" on down.  
Basically you have to draw your two parts in separate overlapping segments.
>
> 2. I understand that Rosegarden doesn't handle multi-voice scores very well
> (assuming I'm using that term the same way as you).  That's why I have the
> treble clef and bass clef staffs broken into separate tracks, whereas in
> Cakewalk I would've had them share a track (which, honestly, I'd prefer).

I'd prefer to have some kind of grand staff too, although the grand staff
itself is the worst possible kind of conflicting voice problem.  The two lines
are all but guaranteed to be different, and we can't resolve multiple
overlapping voices, so you have to do them in separate voices, which means
separate segments.  We could have some kind of smart staff that split itself
in half and drew the segments with clef A on one part of itself, and the
segments with clef B on another part of itself, but it would be complicated,
error prone, and it t really wouldn't solve all that much of the problem for
dealing with piano notation.

Moreover, there are precedents in the commercial world for editors that
require you to work with the two parts separately, so what we're doing is
inconvenient, but not uniquely so.  I'd say we're on the most inconvenient of
all end of the spectrum, because all of this is extremely fiddly, but the
usual paradigm in notation editors is to do the hands on explicitly separate
staffs and to do explicit voices using the 1 2 3 4 layer buttons.

> I just couldn't figure out any way to work around that.  What I'm trying to
> do here, on the bottom staff in my example, should all be played with the
> left hand.  I'm just sustaining one note while playing a couple others.
> Maybe that's what you mean by multi-voice?

Right.  You have two different rhythms in the same hand.  Two different
voices.  It's the same thing as if you had the tenor and bass parts on one
staff or the horn II and IV parts, etc.  They're separate parts with separate
rhythms, and Rosegarden cannot resolve conflicting voices.  (This kind of
thing comes up a great deal in music for polyphonic instruments like piano or
guitar.)

I grew up with Cakewalk, so I know what you're talking about when you say this
sort of thing just isn't a problem there.  It's true.  It's also true that we
simply don't know how their algorithm works, and don't know how to write
something similar.  You can't exactly find this stuff written out for you on
Wikipedia.  There aren't that many people in the world who work on software
like this at all, and within the open source realm, just a tiny handful of us.

> 4. I ran into another problem with positioning that's not specifically
> related to this, but a solution to one would probably help the other.  It
> seems to be impossible to have a quarter placed to start playing after an
> 8th note rest  Ie., have it start on the "and" of a 4/4 count.  I
> eventually got something halfway working after about 15 min. of messing
> around, but is there no straightforward way to place any arbitrary note on
> the off beat?

No, this isn't related to your first problem, but this one is easy.  Stick in
an explicit 8th rest first.  Then place the quarter note.  No problem.

--
D. Michael McIntyre

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[Jared-42]

Thank you very much for the detailed response.  I also appreciate you
taking the time to share some of the development issues.  I just need to
spend some more time working with Rosegarden and learning it's, err,
idiosyncrasies.  :-)

--
Jared Breland
jbreland@...
http://www.legroom.net/

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