score editor is sad

[rjawad001]

this is what i think:

 

i think the score view in logic is useless. raise your hand if you use the score view. to be honest, i've never really tried to use it. i'm too scared of it. look at all those n-tuplets and bizarre dotted syncopated (albeit accurate) madness. -that's- what my music looks like?? that's terrible. get me out of here.

 

you know what would make it way better, is if instead of trying to figured out the rhythm for you, logic just displayed the piano roll >on the staff< . that would be awesome. it would just use notes with no stems. wherever a note begins in the piano roll, there would be a corresponding notehead on the staff. you could choose how many staves per system, and how many systems per page. and it would color the notes, just like in the piano roll. it would keep the spacing and you could zoom in and out and slide notes around just like on the piano roll.

 

here's some other features it should have:

let you draw your own stems. you could draw bar lines wherever you wanted and you could put however many notes in a measure that you wanted. you could put 5 quarters in a 4/4 measure. the way i see it, the score view should give you another way to organize and work with the music, not try to give you something to send to the printing press.

 

does anyone use logic to print out music?

 

tell me you can do some of this already and i just haven't found it.

[ski]

While other people use Finale or Sibelius, I use Logic's score editor exclusively to prepare scores. Been doing so for nearly 15 years. It does have a few shortcomings, but on the whole it's pretty fantastic. And most everything you mentioned (including 5 in the time of 4, etc.) can be done in the score editor (that's what the -n- tuplet tool is used for, amongst other things). Suggest you RTM and explore its feature set some more before complaining about how "sad" the score editor is.

 

[rjawad001]

well that's good to know that someone has been able to use it successfully. i'll take a look at the manual.

 

do you know of a way to get rid of the barlines and rhythmic elements?

 

a lot of times, the score shows the notes as being played at the same time, even though they are clearly separated. do i need to lower the quantization factor or something?

[ski]

To get the most out of the score editor, suggest you put in some good time studying the manual and experiment with its different features. And there are tons of score editor-related threads here on LPH.

 

The score editor is actually really really really good at taking live-played parts (unquantized at the region level) and turning it into readable notation. Here's a link to a thread here on LPH where I played in a rhythmically complex part, unquantized, and it notated it nearly perfectly (in a classical context) without my having to do any work at all.

 

viewtopic.php?p=452211#p452211

 

To your question, where notes appear as chords instead of a sequence of notes... that can be fixed by raising the score editor's quantize value.

 

Getting rid of barlines? Yes, use replace them by dragging the dashed barline symbol over them. They will still appear in the score editor display, but will not print out.

 

Not sure what you mean about getting rid of rhythmic elements though. Which ones? And why would you want to get rid of them?

[ski]

Add'l information added above regarding removing barlines.

[rjawad001]

ok, thank you, that's helpful

 

well, the main problem i'm having with these computer programs is that they all want to declare a time signature and arrange the music into a regular meter. that can be helpful if you are writing a dance or something similar. but if it is something more free, the meter and the rhythms just make things confusing and unnatural. i have the same problem in finale. the piano roll does what i want in many respects, but their is no staff representation. sometimes it is nice to see the staff, you know?

 

in the score editor, i want to be able to choose where the bar lines go (like you can by splitting a midi region). the bar lines can serve as a division, like a comma or a period, rather than a rhythmic cell. you said i can hide the bar lines, which is nice. i suppose you can hide the time signature, too. that's part of the problem solved.

 

however, i want the noteheads to appear on the staff without rhythmic value (8th notes or quarter notes, etc). but they should keep their spacing relative to each other, like in the piano roll. later, if i choose, i can turn them into 8th notes or whatever. i want to be able to choose the notation, even if it is tradionally not correct. it sounds kind of weird, but often it is helpful to just use long and short notes, rather than define their exact duration.

 

essentially, i want the piano roll to have a staff representation. i guess that is what i'm trying to say. to me, it seems like a really simple thing, compared to the complexities that the score editor does.

[Doug Z]

I too am a long time Logic score editor user, and think it's good enough that I don't use anything else. As ski mentions, RTM and see what it can do...... Below are some ideas on what might work - some covered by ski already.

 

in the score editor, i want to be able to choose where the bar lines go

 

You can do this by a combination of time signatures and hiding bar lines (and ultimately hiding time signatures.) Also the Layout tool can help with this and the placement of notes. You can color notes. You can remove stems in note attributes or staff styles.

 

i want the noteheads to appear on the staff without rhythmic value

 

This won't work AFAIK. You can make them all the same value, move them around with the Layout tool, etc., but I don't think Logic will give you what you want.

 

Explore, enjoy and then go ahead and slam the program again once you know it better. It does have its faults. You've uncovered one of them - it's not easy to do non-conventional notation with Logic (and I'd guess with other notation programs as well). Most likely not enough people want those features to make them a high demand add -on.

[FlowerPower]

i want the noteheads to appear on the staff without rhythmic value

 

Use Cmd-A to select all, and then Attributes>Stems>Hide. Choose any notehead you want if the default notehead is confusing....

 

To get a proportinal placing of the notes, in order to get the distances between the notes match the time lapse between each note:

Project Settings>Score>Global. Look for the parameters called Constant Spacing and Proportional Spacing. You want a high number on the proportional value, and a low number on the other one.

 

essentially, i want the piano roll to have a staff representation.

The Score editor has Piano Roll representation: View>Duration Bars>All Notes. (If you want the lenght beams to appear on print, you probably need to take a screen shot of your score window...)

[FlowerPower]

PS - you can hide rests too if you want...

[ski]

To get a proportinal placing of the notes, in order to get the distances between the notes match the time lapse between each note: Project Settings>Score>Global. Look for the parameters called Constant Spacing and Proportional Spacing. You want a high number on the proportional value, and a low number on the other one.

 

 

OMG, this guy's new to the score editor and you're sending him.... There??!?

 

[FlowerPower]

I know. But he wrote "it would keep the spacing " in his first post...

[FlowerPower]

 

i think the score view in logic is useless. [...] to be honest, i've never really tried to use it.

It can only get better from here, mate!

 

 

 

you know what would make it way better, is if instead of trying to figured out the rhythm for you, logic just displayed the piano roll >on the staff< . that would be awesome. it would just use notes with no stems. wherever a note begins in the piano roll, there would be a corresponding notehead on the staff. you could choose how many staves per system, and how many systems per page. and it would color the notes, just like in the piano roll. it would keep the spacing and you could zoom in and out and slide notes around just like on the piano roll.

 

here's some other features it should have:

 

[...]

you could draw bar lines wherever you wanted and you could put however many notes in a measure that you wanted. you could put 5 quarters in a 4/4 measure. the way i see it, the score view should give you another way to organize and work with the music, not try to give you something to send to the printing press.

 

[...]

 

tell me you can do some of this already and i just haven't found it.

You can do all of this already!

 

let you draw your own stems.

You can't draw each stem manually, but define stems's length, direction, thickness and position (side/center).

 

does anyone use logic to print out music?

Lots of us are. The score editor needs an update, but is already extremely good.

 

 

 

you said i can hide the bar lines, which is nice. i suppose you can hide the time signature, too. that's part of the problem solved.

Yes, you can hide Time Signatures too. For the bar lines, just enable Hide Barlines, and enter barlines manually by dragging them into the score from the partbox in the Inspector. You can choose between different types of barlines, inluding one which is visible on the screen but invisble on paper. Alternatively, you can add a vertical line - which doesn't behave like a bar line, but which looks like one.

[rjawad001]

flowerpower,

 

thanks for all the help. i really appreciate that. when i get some time i will explore your suggestions. you're awesome.

[Ashermusic]

I think some guy recently wrote a book on the Score Editor that Ski tech edited, correct ?