SongTrellis
Music and Musical Know-how For You

Author:  David Luebbert Posted:  9/26/00; 5:20:05 AM Topic:  Comments on SongTrellis Editor Msg#:  727 (in response to 726) Prev/Next:  726/728 Reads:  808

Here's my response to Andy's beta report:

Andy,

I really appreciate your report. Most beta testers are telling me thatthey're having pretty good luck with 0.63. After I fix some problems I know about I may try to broaden my pool of beta users. I am also working on a Viewer onlyversion which lets the user view scores, play them, and study them and allows using the editing features but which blocks saving and printing.

There are definitely many MIDI files that are available on the Web that will cause SongTrellis to screw up royally. If the MIDI file is in type 0 (a single multi-channel track) or type 2 (contains one or more sequentially independent track patterns), SongTrellis will refuse to read them. It will try to read type 1 files (contans 1 or more simultaneous tracks) but almost always messes up when the file has been saved by sequencers which jitterthe note attacks and durations for expressive purposes. If they make notes staccato by shaving time off the end of the note or alter the initial attackby a tick or two to improve the human feel of the track, the MIDI reader will almost always produce an unreadable score. There are also scores that get misinterpreted for reasons I haven't tracked down yet.

My first goal with the MIDI reader is to make it so that scores thatare entered with SongTrellis and saved with MIDI make the roundtrip back into SongTrellis with little or no information loss. Most of the MIDI sequences on the SongTrellis site are handled pretty well. I do know that occasionally a chord will be left out of the chord track improperly. Also,dynamic information is not properly handled when a sequence is read. You can especially hear that when you read one of the rhythm tracks from The Rhythms on the site. Some of the sequences (a few of those whose names begin with A and B) won't read because I saved them after running them through aQuickTime player which apparently converted them into type 0 sequences.

After I fix the problems which immediately affect ST generated MIDI files, I will write the code necessary to handle type 0 files and files thatwere written expressively. I will get to the point that I can read 90% ofavailable files adequately in a few months. It may take a year or two to get to the point where I handle 99.99% of the cases.

When chords are first entered, they enter by default with a propertywhich directs that any chord which is entered in the chord voice should be revoiced every time the score is played. The idea is that the user enters a chord sequence by name and lets ST revoice the chords till they fall into voicings that the user likes. When the user likes the way part of the sequence sounds, he freezes the chords that are properly voiced by selecting them and then executing Freeze Chord Voicings on the Edit menu. If the user wants to voice the chords by hand, he can press the mouse button while the mouse is hovering over one of the constituant notes of the chord and drag it an octave lower or higher by dragging the note above or below its currentposition. As soon as he does that, the chord voicing is frozen. If the user wants to unfreeze the voicing for one or more chords, he select that and execute the Thaw Chord Voicing command. The user can revoice a selected chord by going into the Revoice Chord dialog and choosing which register to place the notes of the chord. In this dialog, he can also extend a voicing by adding notes that are not in the definition of that chord type. There is also the Enter Chord As Tone Collection command on the Enter menu which allows the user to enter the chord by specifying the names of the notes thatwill be placed in the different registers on the staff. Once the chord is entered, SongTrellis will attempt to name the chord. If you wanted to enter an F in octave 3, an A in octave 4, and a C and an Eb in octave 5, you would type "3,f,4,a,5,c,eb" in the dialog and hit return. SongTrellis would recognize that you've entered an F7 chord and ask if you would like to name it that name. If you enter a chord in a melody voice, it is entered in closed root position and you have to voice it yourelf.

Nothing in the Mac software limits the number of notes that can be played. If the stack of notes that is requested uses up too many hardware cycles QucikTime will decide that it should not play some of the notes in the interest of playing the sounds on time. ST can currently handle 64 voice at once. If it needs to be larger, I can make it larger fairly easily. A new score actually opens with two voice, one melody voice and one chord voice. I distinguish a chord voice from melody voices, because the chord and scale wizard and the chord revoicing stuff needs to know which track has the chord information that should be in control for their functions.

If you need more than these voices, you run New Voice from the Enter menu. This adds a new empty voice to score every time it's executed. If you show Orchestra score using View/Orchestra Score, you'll see that an empty staff has been added to the staff system for the score. If you change the voice that is selected, you can enter notes into the new voice. If you want to control which voices show onscreen, or control which are selected for Play Selection or for copy/paste, you can run Edit/Create New Voice Combination. Using this you can create custom entries on the Show and Select menus that allow you to Show or Select only the specified combination of voices.

> Is there a way to have a note play when you enter it? When I use the > typewriter keyboard, I type a key and see the note appear, but have to play > the song or make a selection and play the selection to hear it. I guess I > am thinking of having the typewriter keyboard function as a mini-organ. I > assume that when you have been entering the different songs on the > SongTrellis site, you are using an external synthesizer keyboard to enter > the chords and tunes.

I don't yet have a feature that plays a note momentarily when it's entered. I very rarely use an external synth with ST. I usually enter a few notes,select them, do a Cmd-E to extend theselection to accompanying voices and then Play Selection to listen to them. I'll think about adding an option that does audio feedback when you enter notes with the keyboard. I would not do this by default because there are times when I'm type a lot of notes as though I'm using a word processor and trust that I'm typing the score properly.

When you enter notes and chords via the control bar, you can preview the effect of using that control by selecting the background of a control box so that it is selected in black, and then pressing the Hear Idea button that replaces Play Score on the control bar while the control box is selected.

> Is there a way to do articulation of notes in SongTrellis? I am thinking of legato and staccato type articulation (as a minimum). In the small amount > of sequencer work I have done, I always had to adjust the note length > manually, so I almost never did it because it was a lot of work.

This is work that still needs to be done.

> I have noticed in my SongTrellis directory that there seem to be a number > of temporary files there. They may have been created by program crashes, > but is this something that SongTrellis does normally?

When you save a score with ST, it renames the last version of the score by adding a unique sequence number to the name of the score and then saves the new version using the original name. I'm doing this as a stopgap until I write Undo. Right now it is possible to do catastrophic damage to a score accidently that would blow away all of your work if you do a Cmd-S to force save at the wrong time. If I always save previous versions you get some of the benefit of undo at the cost of having versions accumulate. If you can do without them , you can trash them at any time. Saving versions does have the advantage that while you're composing you can go back and get ideas that you momentarily discard from the score.

> One last thing for this note: are you open to feature requests? To me, > SongTrellis seems to be a almost-complete application, so if you are > limiting the feature set to the current set right now, I understand. Using > SongTrellis has renewed my interest in composition, and in the work of > Joseph Schillinger, who developed a mathematically-based system of musical > composition. I am trying to see how I can use SongTrellis with the > Schillinger method. One feature that I would be interested in is if > SongTrellis is a scriptable application (via AppleScript or Frontier). That > would open some possibilities for applications that could work with > SongTrellis. Anyway, I am not trying to pressure you in any way, just > trying to find out where you are.

I am totally open to feature requests, but have a preference for those that have big payback for small work in this phase of development. I think scriptibility will have to wait till I have more folks working on the app. I also share your interest in music generation. Have you had a chance to play with Create New Phrase (Cmd-D) on the Enter menu or Improvise on the Play menu? Cmd-D will automagically create a bar or two of melody using the currently selected Rhythm or Duration that fits the underlying chord progression. I have composed entire tunes using only this feature. The Improvise dialog lets you choose several rhythm patterns which will be invoked in the order specified by a rhyme scheme, and will generate a chordal accompaniment track.

If you'd like to chat about composition techniques, it would be fun to do that using the discussion groups on the SongTrellis site.

I've explained so many things in this message, would you mind if I posted a copy on the site so other beta testers can read it there or else emailed a copy to them?

They probably have similar questions to yours.

Thanks again for your report. Hope to hear from you soon.

Dave Luebbert
SongTrellis. Inc.

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