NOTION Music Forum

hi, does Notion have a "capture idea" feature, like it is included in Sibelius 7 ? This feature allows to select any range in a score (=the idea, e.g. a short motion, a melody, a pattern) and to add the selection to a "global" score independant library, so that it can be accessed and used from/by every score. Also, every idea can be tagged with bpm, style,...so that you can easily find them.

muno wrote:hi, does Notion have a "capture idea" feature, like it is included in Sibelius 7 ? This feature allows to select any range in a score (=the idea, e.g. a short motion, a melody, a pattern) and to add the selection to a "global" score independant library, so that it can be accessed and used from/by every score. Also, every idea can be tagged with bpm, style,...so that you can easily find them.

I am reasonably certain that this is not possible in NOTION 3, but it certainly is a feature that I would like to have in NOTION 4, except that I would expand the idea and add considerable "smarts", as explained in the topic I started on NOTION 4 in this FORUM . . .

NOTION 4: Vision for the Future (Notion Music FORUM)

From the perspective of software engineering it is not such a difficult thing to do, and there are several ways to do it . . .

The key bit of information is that Notion Music has the foundation perfected, which makes extending and enhancing it easier . . .

Basically, I think that there are two primary strategies:

(1) Create a NOTION 4 Software Development Kit (SDK) and Application Programming Interface (API) and make it available to third-party developers, who then can create add-on tools and so forth, where one of the keys is to have access to the currently proprietary Clipboard format for stuff, as well as to be able to initiate simple Clipboard actions, although there probably is some other programming stuff that needs to be available for use by third-party developers. I am intrigued by this strategy for several reasons, but perhaps the most important reason is that it is a way for Notion Music effectively to "own" digital music notation in the same way that Steinberg "owns" virtual instruments via its industry standard VST and VSTi SDK and API . . .

I am a registered Apple developer for Mac OS X applications and iOS apps, and I am proficient in SQLite database programming using low-level C/API and so forth, including designing SQLite databases, queries, and all that stuff, so designing a SQLite database to store, retrieve, and update different things that are useful when one is composing in NOTION is virtually trivial, as is providing a simple graphic user interface (GUI) in a style similar to a standalone user interface for a VST effects plug-in or a VSTi virtual instrument . . .

It is important to be able to add an item to a NOTION application menu or a context menu (which is what I call the pop-up menu that appears when you right-click the mouse), and this is used to launch the "helper" application . . .

And once something is selected in the "helper" application, it is important to be able to format everything correctly so that it can be inserted into the NOTION score at the indicated entry point, which is where knowing the proprietary Clipboard format becomes important . . .

For example, consider that I have a predefined drumkit rhythm pattern stored in a SQLite database and I want to insert the notes at a specific location on a drumkit staff in a NOTION score . . .

I would like to be able to right-click to launch the "helper" tool which I use to navigate to drumkit rhythm patterns and to select a specific drumkit rhythm pattern, at which time I can click on an "Insert" button and the drumkit rhythm pattern is inserted into the NOTION score on the staff I selected at the specified location . . .

The "helper" tool can be used to create the various drumkit rhythm patterns in a variety of ways, including by mathematical algorithm, geometry, and anything else that makes sense or is useful, but all that stuff is done by the "helper" tool . . .

This also can be used for melodies and a lot of other stuff, and for some genres the reality is that there are not so many distinct patterns, really . . .

Really!

While I have no idea regarding the way formally trained music theorists conceptualize songs, I know how "play by ear" musicians do this, and the fact of the matter is that by the time you learn perhaps 50 to 100 songs in certain genres, every other song in the same genres is just a variation of patterns that you already know . . .

As an example, these three songs essentially are variations of the same song, although there are more variations, since the primary musical phrase is so common that it is a bit mind-boggling . . .

"The Pusher" (Steppenwolf) -- YouTube music video

"Billie Jean" (Michael Jackson) -- YouTube music video

"Like A Virgin" (Madonna) -- YouTube music video

Once you understand this fact about Pop, Rock, and Heavy Metal songs, if you have the intuitive ability to have a bit of FUN with mathematical and geometric patterns, then composing derivative songs and doing variations is easy, but currently it is not so easy to input all the stuff in NOTION 3, although there are strategies which can make it somewhat easier . . .

On the Classical side, an example is Amadeus Mozart's "12 Variations 'Ah, vous dirai-je, maman'" . . .

Mozart's "12 Variations 'Ah, vous dirai-je, maman'" KV 265 (Clara Haskil) -- YouTube music video

(2) Notion Music can design and program all this stuff and then make it a new set of advanced features in NOTION 4 . . .

COMMENTS

NOTION 3 is excellent for composing songs using music notation and VSTi virtual instruments, but its current focus is on doing everything essentially at a primitive "one note at a time" level, which is fine with me, since (a) it works and (b) nothing else does it, but I would like to have some higher level tools for doing advanced composing, which certainly need to include the ability to create, modify, and use a deep and rich catalog of user-defined and perhaps third-party libraries of musical phrases, which from a practical perspective suggests the possibility of a Notion Music App and Library Store where third-party developers can sell "helper" apps and libraries of useful stuff, where in this context "third-party developers" certainly includes composers and music theorists, where for example someone might want to create a library of arpeggios, musical scales, and so forth and so on, with the general idea being that some of the third-party stuff is more in the realm of software engineering ("helper" apps) but other stuff is in the realm of the expertise of composers and music theorists . . .

When I taught myself how to play electric bass, for the most part I learned Rhythm and Blues songs note-for-note from records and then learned Beatles songs from records, and after a while it became obvious that there was a set of patterns which covered pretty much everything in one way or another, which also is the way I taught myself how to play lead guitar . . .

After a while, you discover how to vary the patterns and to combine musical phrases from different patterns to create something different, which is the way it works in popular music, often in ways which are so surreal that it is vastly amusing, where these two songs provide a clue to depth of the ability essentially to "clone" great ideas to produce new songs . . .

"In The Hall Of The Mountain King" (Edvard Grieg) -- YouTube music video

"Purple Haze" (The Jimi Hendrix) -- YouTube music video

There is a lot more stuff that NOTION can do, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous! :D