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Step Entry (Pencil) for Chords

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Step Entry (Pencil) for Chords

Postby b13 » Wed Feb 27, 2013 11:22 am

As i told you in different mails, it should be possible to enter Guitar-Chords in the way as it is told in the users manual: With step-entry on the virtual fretboard. (Choosing the tones, then choosing the note value, and finally click to the pencil as often as the chords is needed) This is discribed in users-manual and the way it is discribed for me is a good sounding way. Why doesn´t it work?

And why Notion prefers to change the users manual instead making Notion better? Repair the function of entering Chords! Please.

I want to enter the enable tones to fretboard one time, then choose the note value (Whole, half, quater, eights or so on) and then finally ENTER-ENTER-ENTER, changing the value to lets say sixteenth WITHOUT LOOSING THE CHORD and ENTER-ENTER-ENTER (if it is always the same strumming-Chord). This would be a way to enter fast, just as i want.

The „copy and paste“-Version, which i have to use today, is not as flexible and fast as it should be.
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Re: Step Entry (Pencil) for Chords

Postby Admin » Wed Feb 27, 2013 12:24 pm

It seems this is a bug. Thanks for finding this problem. I have submitted a ticket for the fix.

In the meantime, I wil suggest that instead of using copy/paste, try the duplicate function. This works like this:

1. Select the Chord that you would like to duplicate
2.Press "Command Mac (CTRL PC) + D"
2a. If needed, you can select the notes that need to change in duration and press "= (duration)" eg., "= q" for quarter or "= ed" for dotted eighths and so on.

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Re: Step Entry (Pencil) for Chords

Postby Surfwhammy » Thu Feb 28, 2013 7:11 pm

I use this feature on the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro (early-2008) with 20GB of memory running Mac OS X 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion) here in the sound isolation studio, and it works very nicely . . .

I did not read the NOTION 4 User Manual, and it took me a while to make sense of how it works, but after a bit of experimenting and observing I discovered the correct technique . . .

[NOTE: Due primarily to being a degreed Computer Scientist and doing advanced GUI and SQL database designing and software engineering for several decades, I nearly never read user manuals, because the information contained in user manuals tends to be the way a relatively normal and typically highly literate person translates the usually cryptic and non-human utterances and explanations of software designers and engineers, who as a group are quite fond of jargon, abstruse colloquialisms, and buzzwords that nearly never have anything to do with what the application does, especially when it is programmed in a language that uses class libraries which allow multiple inheritance and do stuff automagically, which is the way everything works at the dawn of the early-21st century in Windows and Mac OS X unless you do stuff in low-level C/API, and even then stuff can happen automagically, which is made all the more confusing by Microsoft and Apple constantly tweaking everything so that doing application programming always is a moving target, at best. In other words, the first thing I try is the way I would do it based entirely on intuition, and if that way does not work, then I use the insights I gain from constantly psychoanalyzing the behaviors of the application to make educated guesses regarding the way the various software designers and engineers think and translate their ideas into code, which nearly always maps to discovering how stuff actually works, as well as discovering an occasionally undocumented feature, since especially with NOTION 3 and NOTION 4 stuff works very reliably once you develop a sense of the application and essentially personify or anthropomorphize it, and it works all the better in NOTION 4 . . . :ugeek: ]

(1) INITIAL SCORE CONFIGURATION: Create a NOTION 4 bundled Electric Guitar or Acoustic Guitar staff . . .

(2) Show the guitar fretboard . . .

(3) Select the chord option (the three note icon, as shown in the image capture below) . . .

(4) Select a guitar staff by clicking on it in a measure, and then using the tool palette, select a note duration but do not actually enter a note with the mouse. Just select a note duration (for example a quaver or quarter note) . . .

(5) Click one time on the pencil icon in the fretboard control area (see the image capture below) . . .

(6) Using the mouse, enter the notes for the chord on the fretboard by clicking where you want a note . . .

(7) When the chord is input--all the dots are in the correct locations--press the Return key, and the chord is written at the current input location of the cursor on the selected guitar tab or bass tab staff in the score (see image below), where if there is a confusing aspect it is that there are multiple focal points or cursor locations, where (a) there a focal point or cursor location on the staff at a particular beat of a measure in the score but (b) at the same time there are different focal points on the fretboard when you clicking and making dots for the notes of a chord, but so what. It works, and once you understand what is happening, it is elegant . . .

(8) Continue with (6) and (7) as desired . . .

(9) When finished with chord inputting via the fretboard, click one time on the pencil icon to return to regular input . . .

[NOTE: If you need to change the note duration, you can do this later or whatever, and there are keyboard shortcuts for doing this, but you need to exit fretboard chord input mode . . . ]

Image

Image

This works like a champ, and if you play guitar, then you can transcribe chords very quickly, which is stellar for doing chord charts when you have an idea or are working on a new song, and it also works for the NOTION 4 bundled Electric Bass and Acoustic Bass, where by default a bass clef is used, but if you prefer doing everything with soprano treble clef you can insert a soprano treble clef and then via the staff configuration parameters can cause the notes to be played two octaves lower, which is fabulous . . .

Image

Image

Image

[NOTE: I find it much easier to do everything with a soprano treble clef, since (a) it is the only clef I learned as a child and (b) it lets me work with a grand total of 12 notes and 8 or 9 octaves, which is vastly simpler mathematically and every other way, since it lets me work with two very simple and small sets of integers, as well as maps to the way I remember stuff for electric guitar and electric bass, which is based on a simplified version of Nashville Notation, where you just need to know the name of a song and where the index finger goes for the first note, with an example being "Sleepwalk", which is {C, Am, F, G) and the first finger is on the third fret of the low-pitch "A" string for bass, which in practice maps more correctly to what one might call the "James Brown & The Famous Flames" version of Nashville Notation, where everything is done "on the one" and only makes sense if you and all the other musicians happened to be in the same garage band and never took the time to read books or to do anything that was not directly and intimately related to learning how to play songs by listening to them on the radio or on records, really . . . :P ]

"I'll Go Crazy" (James Brown & The Famous Flames) -- Live At The Apollo -- YouTube music video

[NOTE: "Bewildered" is the "Sleepwalk" (Santo & Johnny) pattern, but it is {F, Dm, B♭, C}, and this version of "Sleepwalk" actually is C#, A#m, F#, G#}, but most people play it {C, Am, F, G}, where the logic for recording is that by playing it a half-note higher, the electric guitar and electric bass are using frets that usually are not worn as much as the more commonly used frets, hence you get more accurate notes, which is important when recording, but with songs that has singing, the vocal range of the singer determines the actual keys . . . :ugeek: ]

"Bewildered" ((James Brown & The Famous Flames) -- YouTube music video

"Sleepwalk" (Santo & Johnny) -- YouTube music video

Image

Fender Online Guitar Tuner (Fender.com)

Fabulous! :)

P. S. As shown in the following video tutorial, this works in NOTION 4 on the Mac, and you can change the note values using the tool palette, where the only caveat is that the area of focus for the tool palette needs to be kept sufficiently far from the fretboard, otherwise the tool palette gets the mouse input rather than the fretboard, really . . .

[NOTE: This is higher resolution, so it might take a while to download, but so what. Also, there is no spoken word dialogue for the video, so when the notes for a chord appear on the relevant staff, this is due to pressing the Return key, which is what causes the note(s) on the fretboard to be written. So, instead of clicking the pencil icon to enter notes on the respective clef, you click on the pencil icon only to switch to fretboard input mode or to exit fretboard input mode, which you can verify visually by the relevant staff becoming highlighted in yellow or becoming un-highlighted if you are turning-off fretboard input mode. You enter notes by pressing the Return Key. And the way to make the tool palette disappear to click on "Text", followed by pressing the Esc key (a.k.a., escape). To make note input stop, where the cursor is a note based on selecting a note duration from the tool palette, you press the Esc key,which is important because otherwise if there is a note type specified, then clicking on a staff causes a note to be input, which is not what you want to do in this scenario. Instead, you only want to select the staff and to establish an input location within the score. The note duration is done after you have switched to fretboard input mode. And if I have time, I will do a version with spoken word annotation, but at present I am listening to "Bewildered" to make sense of the vocal timing, which I think is key to understanding how James Brown had the epiphany that soon led to changing his vocal style and becoming a Rhythm and Blues legend, even though he obviously had natural vibrato like Lady Gaga and Elvis . . . ]

NOTION 4 Fretboard Input Mode Tutorial (Mac OS X 10.8.2 [Mountain Lion]) -- QuickTIme Movie -- MP4 (36MB, approximately 5 minutes and 9 seconds)

Really! :ugeek:
Last edited by Surfwhammy on Fri Mar 01, 2013 5:02 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Step Entry (Pencil) for Chords

Postby b13 » Fri Mar 01, 2013 4:01 am

Really a lot to read. :?

Thank you.

Well, i also don´t like to read users manuals, but if a function doesn´t work as i think it could, then i read about a solution.

The problem only exists in entering chords on fretboard or keyboard. If i created a chord on the fretboard and have taken it with the right (or false ;-) ) notevalue with activated "Pencil" into the score (maybe with "ENTER"), notion FORGETS this chord instead holding it for further entries without changings (strumming) or for changing the dots on the fretboard. That´s my problem. And therefor i read in the manual. The procedure which is described there, doesn´t work.

Meanwhile i mailed the problem to the hotline. Instead taken this information an repairing it they wrote back, that they have to change the users manual. But i think, this funktion is a very important and good tool. It has to work and i am shure, therefore they have to repair it. Sorry.

Much less text, but nothing else i want to tell. This function doesn´t work as written in users manual. It doesn´t work for a quick and proper score-entering-method.
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Re: Step Entry (Pencil) for Chords

Postby Surfwhammy » Fri Mar 01, 2013 5:49 am

b13 wrote:notion FORGETS this chord instead holding it for further entries without changings (strumming) or for changing the dots on the fretboard.


In some respects, it is a bit annoying that the dots for the chord disappear when you press the Return key (a.k.a., "Enter" key) to write the notes for the chord onto the guitar tab or bass tab, such that to enter four quarter note strums of the same chord, you have to use the mouse to click on the fretboard to do the dots for each strum, when you should need to do it only one time to establish the current chord, followed by pressing the Return key four times, but stuff happens, and there are other ways to do it if you think about it for a while, where instead of doing repeated strums via fretboard chord input mode, you can use the copy and paste strategy . . .

[NOTE: Whether this is a bug is another matter, because if the dots for a chord are not cleared every time the Return key is pressed, then you have to remember to set or to clear the dots for each string when you switch to a different chord, which is a bit awkward at best, and as explained later in this post I think that guitar players who use guitar tabs nearly always primarily are "play by ear" folks, hence will input the music notation using a faster technique, where they use fretboard chord input mode only to create the first instance of a chord, since once established as music notation and guitar tab, it is easier and faster to switch to the copy and paste strategy, where the key bit of information about "play by ear" musicians is that they use a lot of mnemonics and shortcuts to remember stuff, because they do not use sheet music and generally would not know what to do with sheet music other than to get the lyrics and chord names, if there are chord names . . . ]

Reflecting on this for a moment, I think it depends on the way one composes chord patterns, where the way I do it is to use a real guitar and to fiddle with the chord pattern until I am satisfied with it. Then I switch to NOTION 4 and begin inputting the chord pattern, where since at this point I know the chord pattern I also know how many chords there are in the pattern, and all I need to input via fretboard chord input mode is one quarter note chord for each chord in the pattern, where for example if the chords for the song are the set {C, Am, F, G, G7}, then I only need to input five chords, at which point (a) I have all the chords or shapes and (b) I then can switch out of fretboard chord input mode and copy and paste the chords to the respective measures, making adjustments to the note durations to match the strumming pattern I want to use, which is the way "play by ear" guitar players remember songs, which is important because they do not use sheet music, hence need to have a mnemonic system for remembering perhaps four hours of songs and to be able to recall what to play at the correct times virtually instantly, where using "Bewildered" (James Brown & The Famous Flames) as an example, all I need to know is (C, Am, F, G, G7}, but I condense it to "Sleepwalk" and depending on the singer map it to F, which is the key of the "Bewildered" as it was originally recorded, where the mnemonic is {"Sleepwalk" in F, kind of peppy with a bit of intentional ritardando to accent the one}, which condenses to ("Sleepwalk", F, JB}, where "JB" refers to "James Brown", and with that simple mnemonic I can play all the instruments in the song on a real drumkit, Hammond B3 organ with a Leslie cabinet at medium speed, an electric guitar with a bit of reverb, and an electric bass (either a Fender Jazz Bass or a Fender Precision Bass), which is close enough for government work, because the horns are extraordinarily subtle in this song, if there are horns, which at present I think there are, although perhaps not . . .

[NOTE: I checked wikipedia, and it says there are drumkit, electric guitar, electric bass, alto saxophone, and tenor saxophone on the 1958 version, but there is a Hammond B3 organ with a Leslie cabinet on this version, and I hear horns, although mostly just doing textured accents in the background . . . ]

It also depends on the types of songs, but for the types of songs one typically hears on the radio or whatever, (a) there are distinct patterns (verse, chorus, bridge, interlude, and so forth) and (b) the high-level patterns nearly always repeat, which makes the copy and paste technique considerably faster, but it requires planning the structure of the song in advance, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous! :)
Last edited by Surfwhammy on Fri Mar 01, 2013 6:34 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Step Entry (Pencil) for Chords

Postby b13 » Fri Mar 01, 2013 6:26 am

:?:

I know "Copy & Paste" and til now there is no other chance to enter a few chords one after another.

It would be nice, if the tool, from whitch i write here, would do the thing for what it was made.
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Re: Step Entry (Pencil) for Chords

Postby Admin » Fri Mar 01, 2013 2:15 pm

As stated above, this is a bug that I have tested and logged. It is true that it is not working properly, and it will be resolved. Thanks for the find.

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Re: Step Entry (Pencil) for Chords

Postby tsindt » Mon May 19, 2014 5:03 am

Admin wrote:As stated above, this is a bug that I have tested and logged. It is true that it is not working properly, and it will be resolved. Thanks for the find.

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I have the same Problem with the actual version of Progression. Maybe this is the same bug. Is this bug in Notion fixed?
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