Quantization

[ralpheo]

Hi, I'm trying out Composer, and I like what I've seen. I've been looking in menus, but haven't seen anything to address quantization. I'm importing my midi compositions from Cakewalk Sonar and a hardware sequencer, and invariably, no two programs are ever going to line up completely.
When I originally wrote the songs on the Kawai sequencer I had to physically offset the note data, because there was no "chase" operation. Plus a few were never quantized to begin with, so in Sonar's staff view, what are beautifully seq'd and looped patterns, show up as a long , snake-like string of notes.
A few things I'd like to see: 1)define the position of a note with the "note choice" function (i.e.: line up an eigth by choosing "eigth" and clicking the note to be affected). 2) Overall quantization for a motif, chord, passage, etc... where if I select a group of notes that is not quite lined up, I can drag them to the nearest appropriate starting point. 3)account for offset ---- When I repositioned a track in Sonar to align the notes with the beginning of a measure and then set an offset to actually play the notes where they originally sound, saved it to midi, and imported it into Composer to print it out, the notes were lined up exactly where they were before I had made the changes.
The last is not something I really expect to see corrected or even addressed, as every sequencer and notation program has its own way of accounting for issues like this.
Now that I think about, I've been working inside sequencers so long, that I've almost forgotten what it's like to write pickups and repeat symbols. Well I guess I answered at least one of my own questions.
BTW, Composer is a quite beautiful-looking program and I love the fact that it addresses grace notes quite nicely. That alone might sell me completely on this program. Now all I need to do is convince my wife that we really need it.
Thanks,
ralpheo

[Sherry C]

Howdy Ralpheo,

It sounds like you're quite adept at moving around in sequencers, and you're right that Composer is set up to deal with issues such as quantization in a different way than a sequencer does. You'll probably find the Piano Roll feature to be more familiar territory for adjusting attacks and durations of performance.

In Piano Roll, you can

1. edit the performance in conjunction with the notation (select the "Edit both" button on the second palette),

2. edit only the notation and keep the performance "as is" (select the "edit as notated", to keep the "feel" of a performance but clean up the notation) or

3. edit the performance and leave the notation as it is (select the "Edit as performed"), so you can add specific "feel" to a performance without affecting the sheet music notation.

There are also tools for "snapping" the performance to the notation (eg. snapping the attacks of selected notes to their notated attack locations, or snapping the durations) that you'll probably find helpful as well.

You can also shift the performance (or notation) of selected notes to give the feel of being "on top" of the beat, or a more laid-back "behind the beat" feel.

You can jump in and just try out this feature, or you can read more about it in Help/Users Guide, and use the Index to look up "piano roll."

Have fun!
Sherry

[dj]

Hi, Ralpheo and Sherry:

You can, of course, also adjust "rest" quantization in the Setup/Transcription Options dialogue box, allowing you to adjust how Composer interprets the ending of notes when importing midi files.

Not quite full "note" quantization, but effectively very close and saves a lot of work when importing midi files.

David