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total neophyte

A Forum to Discuss NOTION

total neophyte

Postby philip » Wed May 14, 2014 10:03 pm

I just received notion 4 software---I have not used anything like this before.
I uploaded a midi file I created and noticed it wasn't scored accurately (it plays correctly but it doesn't get scored correctly)
what can I do to correct that?
(the E and F should not be played together---in fact, the F should come first, then the E)
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Re: total neophyte

Postby Surfwhammy » Sat May 17, 2014 12:17 pm

philip wrote:I just received notion 4 software---I have not used anything like this before.
I uploaded a midi file I created and noticed it wasn't scored accurately (it plays correctly but it doesn't get scored correctly)
what can I do to correct that?
(the E and F should not be played together---in fact, the F should come first, then the E)


This happens in some scenarios, and you can control it by the various parameters of the MIDI Recording panel . . .

[NOTE: You probably have the "Multi-voice" parameter checked, so try it unchecked. Depending on your keyboard and playing style, it will require doing some experiments to determine the parameter values and settings that work best, which is an expected behavior, since it is a bit like adjusting and fine-tuning the action and intonation of a guitar or piano . . . ]

Image

You can see the various voice colors by checking the "Show Voice Colors" menu item found on the NOTION 4 "View" menu. This needs to be checked each time you open a NOTION 4 if you want to see the voice colors, because it gets reset to the default when you close NOTION 4 or a NOTION 4 score . . .

Image

Most likely, the E and F will be different colors, since this is the best explanation . . .

Lots of FUN! :)
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Re: total neophyte

Postby Surfwhammy » Thu May 22, 2014 4:15 pm

philip wrote:I uploaded a midi file I created and noticed it wasn't scored accurately (it plays correctly but it doesn't get scored correctly)
what can I do to correct that?


This is a follow-up to my first reply . . .


I read your post again and noticed that you "uploaded" the already created MIDI rather than recorded it in NOTION 4 in real-time . . .

The answer is similar, but there is not so much you can do, other than a bit of editing . . .

When recording MIDI in real-time in NOTION 4, you can adjust the various parameters, as I explained in my first reply, but importing already created MIDI is different, since importing MIDI is handled automagically by NOTION 4, as it is by every application that makes it possible to convert MIDI notes to music notation . . .

THOUGHTS

The key bit of information is that there is no one-to-one mapping of MIDI to music notation . . .

This is an example of a series of MIDI notes, and it is my interpretation of start of the electric piano for "You LIke Me Too Much" (Beatles), which I played in real-time on a Behringer UMA25S mini-MIDI keyboard and recorded in NOTION 4 . . .

[NOTE: The numbers inside the red vertical rectangle are the durations of the MIDI notes in MIDI ticks, and you can see that they vary by a tiny amount. The notes with values "22" or thereabout are 16th notes. You can see the full image by right-clicking and then selecting "View Image" if you are using the Firefox web browser . . . ]

Image

"You Like Me Too Much" (Beatles) ~ YouTube music video

Converting from MIDI to music notation requires an algorithm that includes presumptions and decisions regarding how best to represent certain aspects of MIDI with music notation . . .

If you play the MIDI on a MIDI keyboard or MIDI guitar and record it directly to NOTION 4, then you can make adjustments using the various options and parameters for Recording MIDI (see my previous post) . . .

For reference, importing the performance when it is in MusicXML format will produce a better mapping to music notation, and usually will be exact . . .

The aspects that do not map so precisely will involve note duration . . .

In MIDI, tempo uses microsecond units, and there are rules for what generally defines a quarter note, but there are variations, while in music notation a quarter note is defined very precisely . . .

In MIDI, each note has a duration which is specified as a number, and the number can be odd or even . . .

In music notation, each note also has a duration, but it is represented by different types of notes (whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, and so forth), and these notes additionally can be dotted . . .

[NOTE: A single dot increases the duration of a note by half (1.50), and a double-dot increases the duration by 0.875 (1.875), where a dotted quarter note is like a quarter note plus an eighth note, and a double-dotted quarter note is like a quarter note plus an eight note and a sixteenth note . . .)

Consider a 4/4 time signature and a tempo of 100 beats per minute (BPM), where a quarter note has a duration of 1 beat . . .

There are 100 beats per minute, and 1 minute is 60 seconds . . .

60 seconds divided into 100 equal parts maps to each part having a duration of 0.60 seconds . . .

In the music notation universe, this is fine, but in the MIDI universe a note can have a duration of 0.57 seconds, 0.60 seconds, or 0.62 seconds, which is also fine until the MIDI note needs to be converted to music notation . . .

Do you convert all three to quarter notes?

What about a MIDI note with a duration of 0.55 seconds?

When a quarter note is 0.60 seconds, an eighth note will be 0.30 seconds, and a sixteenth note will be 0.15 seconds . . .

So what about a MIDI note with a duration of 0.50 seconds?

It is closer to a dotted eighth (0.30 + 0.15 = 0.45) than to a quarter note (0.60 seconds), so the MIDI note probably is best represented by a dotted eighth note . . .

What about a MIDI note with a duration of 0.55 seconds?

It is closer to a double-dotted eighth note (0.5625 seconds) . . .

Explained another way using an analogy, metaphor, or simile, consider that you have a measuring cup with divisions for eighths of a cup (0, 1/8, 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 5/8, 3/4, 7/8, 1} . . .

How do you measure 1/7th of a cup? 1/3rd of a cup? 1/5th of a cup? 1/2 of a cup? 1/8th of a cup?

[NOTE: 1/2 of a cup and 1/8th of a cup are easy and will be exact, because the divisions are 1/8ths, but this is not the case for the fractions with odd denominators; and this is the one of the dilemmas that make analyzing and converting MIDI to music notation as much an art as a science, where two more examples are "slurs" and "ties", since music notation has these but they are not part of the MIDI specification, which also is the case with tuplets . . . ]

The divisions of the measuring cup are like music notation, but all the fractional values are like the durations of MIDI notes, where some of the MIDI note durations are an exact fit, but other MIDI note durations are not exact fits, hence the need to make decisions regarding the "best fit" approximations . . .

At some point, there needs to be an arbitrary decision, and this is where two notes like the "E" and "F" in your example can be played correctly, because even though they are converted to music notation the MIDI note information is there, but they might be nearly one on top of the other or visually merged to be nearly a single note, although in this instances they sound be different colors and probably will be assigned to different voices . . .

[NOTE: There are some excellent examples at the following link that help in understanding (a) the difficulties of mapping MIDI to music notation and (b) the reason that arbitrary decisions are required . . . ]

Reading and Writing MIDI Files (Arpege Music)

Nevertheless, you can edit the duration and velocity for notes in Sequence Overlay, and this is explained on page 56 (3.15) of the NOTION 4 Help Guide, but this does not change the music notation notes, so the music notation will look the same, but the MIDI note duration and velocity are adjusted . . .

Summarizing, the way MIDI notes convert to music notation depends on several factors, and at some point doing the conversions requires making arbitrary decisions, and this is the way it is, because (a) MIDI and music notation are two different formats and (b) there is no one-to-one mapping of MIDI notes to music notation . . .

Lots of FUN! :)
Last edited by Surfwhammy on Wed May 28, 2014 9:59 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: total neophyte

Postby philip » Tue May 27, 2014 10:49 pm

wow that is a lot of info---that you for spending the time with the answer -going to take me a bit to get through all that!
maybe I should make some sound engineer friends :D
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