Posted
I would love to see more text in the phrase editor, attached to segments symbols etc. This would be a display that could toggle on and off with a hot key.Nice small medium gray unobtrusive font...
There are a myriad of signals that could help keep the details of the composition in mind.
When mousing over the lines of segments, the intervals between the currently rendered notes could be displayed.
The current articulation could be displayed so that the segments dont have to be selected one at a time to determine their playing style.
different kinds of dashed lines could display a segment-attached-harmonic-layer parameter.
the variation parameter could be displayed near the segment.
Giving toggleable color scheme variations to the symbols/segments, in the same way that harmonies have fragility etc... A few idea could be:
symbols whose currently rendered interval is different from the original take could be highlighted with a color.
velocity could be displayed as a color -- just for a momentary reference.
Specific rendered intervals could be highlighted; all of the Aug4th get highlighted...
Hiding segments that are "paused"
Highlighting symbols that reinforce the harmony and dimming the ones that obscure it
using outline colors to designate the segments instrument in a far off multi instrument phrase editor.
Most of these revolve around the discrepancy between the abstract melodic segments and the rendered notes to give a interval based glance at the actual music with out focusing too much on the specific notes.
Tue, 2009-09-29 - 15:10 Permalink
The ideas sound quite reasonable where they are showing inherent properties of the figure.
Concerning the coloring of symbol-pitch relations however, I'm afraid that is impossible. Why? This would only work if there was a 1:1 correlation of Harmony and Figure (side-by-side full length physical vectors, sort of global automation tracks), but that is not the case.
The same figure is in effect at very different places (loops, aliases, container nesting) that are governed by different progressions and influenced by many other parameters. Therefore a figure symbol can not be uniquely associated with a single generated pitch. In fact it generates many different pitches over the course of the arrangement.
This is not a limitation. It's the main reason why figure rendering is so powerful. If there was a simple relation between symbols and pitch that could be visualized/colorized, we would be back in the days of literal sequencing/notation and probably not need any symbols anymore.
Tue, 2009-09-29 - 22:20 Permalink
Yes you are very right about the color issue.
Despite its time shift, or repetition in another part of the score a segment line between two connected symbols does imply a interval that will be sounded as a result of those two notes and will always be the same so long as the conditions of the score remain the same -- at least for that first iteration.
The possibility that that segment will generate more than the visualized tones is there.
Hovering over the segment line could display an unique element array [aug4, m3, p4] (like a (0,1,3) or (0,1,4) pitch set in jazz or what have you) of all of the non repeated intervals the two symbols are creating throughout the current iteration of the score, with the first being the visualized symbols interval--the aug4.
This would give the graphic interval as well as the degree of its variance at a glance.
A quick toggle of the Note names could work in a similar way, for that first note, which may be shifted in a new context other than the one in its visual location, or set to look ahead, but simply selecting the note plays a specific pitch, so why not display it-- when requested -- as well?
In any event, these are just some ideas to get more information infront of our eyes so we can quickly translate the abstract to what needs to be played on the concrete musical keyboard in front of us.