Displaying Piano Roll Notation

One of the main ways you can give "feeling" to the performance of notes, that you have previously entered with the mouse and keyboard, is to adjust the exact as-performed timing of the notes. That is, you can adjust the as-performed attack and release times of the notes.

Composer's Piano Roll Notation helps you visualize the as-performed timing of notes:

The rectangles drawn on top of the notes show the actual performed timing of the notes. These rectangles are called "Piano Roll Notation" becase they resemble the hole cutouts for notes in piano rolls of mechanical player pianos that were popular in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The left and right edges of the rectangles indicate the as-performed timing of the notes. Because normal spacing of notes in a score is not exactly proportional to actual note durations, the lengths of the rectangles are not totally precise. Nevertheless, the rectangles serve to clearly show you where notes start and stop.

The color of rectangles may be yellow (below) instead of white (above):

Whether the color of the a piano roll rectangle is white or yellow depends on whether (1) the performed timing of the note is locked, or (2) the performed timing of the note is temporarily unlocked for editing. When the performed timing of a note is locked, then normally, any changes to the location or duration of the note affects only the notation, and not the as-performed attack or release of the note. However, if the performed timing of a note is locked, you can still temporarily edit its timing. Or, conversely, if the performed timing of a note is unlocked, you can still temporarily edit just its notated location and duration without affecting its as-performed timing.

Here's a way to help remember the meaning of the yellow versus white rectangle. The yellow rectangle standards out more prominently than the white, and this is a clue that if you change the location or duration of the note, the rectangle will change. When the left or right edge of the yellow rectangle changes, the as-heard timing of the note changes. Therefore, if the rectangle is yellow, a command such as D+ will change the as-performed duration of the note. Conversely, if the rectangle is white, then the rectangle "in the background" is not affected by a command such as D+. That is, if the rectangle is white, then D+ affects only the notated duration of the note, not the as-performed (as-heard) duration.

What determines whether the performed timing of a note is locked? Here are the rules:

     The performed timings are locked for all notes of an imported MIDI .mid or Karaoke .kar file.

     The performed timings are locked for all notes that you record real-time at your MIDI keyboard.

     The performed timings are unlocked for all notes that you add with mouse clicks, or add with the Step-Time Recording Method.

     The performed timings are locked or unlocked if you explicitly lock or unlock the timings with the Lock Performance command.

To display the Piano Roll Notation:

     Press the Piano Roll Notation button down in the toolbar, so that it looks like this:

-- OR --

Type SHIFT+Y for Piano Roll Palette. (Unlike most SHIFT+Letter commands, the letter "Y" is arbitrary here. "P" is already used for the Page Text and Page Layout Palettes.)

     Composer will display rectangles on top of notes, as shown below The left and right edges of the rectangles indicate the as-performed timing of the notes. Because normal spacing of notes in a score is not exactly proportional to actual note durations, the lengths of the rectangles are not totally precise. Nevertheless, the rectangles are a good representation of where notes start and stop.

     If you need to see the rectangles more closely, then choose the Zoom In command in the View menu.

     -- OR --

     Click the Zoom In button.

     -- OR --

     While holding down the "Z" key, hit the key.

At the same time Composer displays the Piano Roll Notation, it also displays the Piano Roll Palette, as described in the next topic. If you do not want to edit the Piano Roll Notation, but only view it, you can navigate to other palettes and edit any type of notation. For example, you might want to display the Piano Roll Notation so that you can see the phrasing of notes, and then add slurs:

Note that for an even more accurate view of the timing of notes, you can display the as-performed attack and release offset data in the status bar.

To turn off the display of Piano Roll Notation:

     Toggle off the Piano Roll button in the main toolbar. If you are currently working in another palette, then the first time you hit the Piano Roll button, the Piano Roll Palette will be displayed. If so, then hit the Piano Roll button a second time to turn off the Piano Roll Notation.

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