The piano roll

I've noticed a certain attitude here and amongst other people that the piano roll isn't seen as a real complement to notation, and I wonder why?

I understand that notation is and old standard so it is the ideal form of recording when you for example want your piece to be played in a real orchestra. But most of the pieces submitted here will never be played in a real orchestra so why does it matter?

I've learned how to use the piano roll, I know the system of notation too but I've never felt that it would do me any good. I really like piano roll as a way to compose, it's logic is like the keyboard, fantastic. The way I see it, the piano roll offers a better way to compose, but that's just my taste of course.

I can also play from the piano roll, I can download any midifile, load it into Logic or even print it and play from it.

Truly, no one cares how you compose as long as your final product given to real musicians is professionally done. There's nothing wrong with using your piano roll. Use MSPaint for all I care, *shrug*

That said, I am not going to waste my time here looking at pieces that I have to "decipher". If there's no score, or if the score is just a bloody mess, I'll move on to the next piece. Why should I put in all the effort to review it when you've barely put in the effort to present it? The job of the composer does NOT stop at the composition of the music; not everyone can be, say, Andrew L.W., and scraggy on a piece of staff paper and hand it to orchestrators and copyists to do the "real work".

Most people on this board are not professionals who can outsource, they are students still learning the craft of composition. Producing a correct put together score (and by extension eventually producing useable parts) is part of the process.

So... use your piano roll. But also use a real notation program.

Yes, but my point was that the piano roll works just as well for reviewing music as a score, if you have experience with it. Of course you who are experienced with notation instead of the piano roll will move on and so will a lot of people here.

But my point wasn't weather or not people used to reading the score will review works created with the piano roll or not, but the general attitude towards it. As demonstrated by your last sentence in your post "But also use a real notation program."

Will a score provide a perfect midi file? If not, why should I put in the effort to review it when you've barely put in the effort to present it?

Of course I'm not skilled enough in music theory to review music but I was making a point that you assume the way you write music is the correct one and the way I create music is something that needs to be translated into a good score.

Having said that, it doesn't take a genious to figure out that a good score gives you a greater chance for a good review since the skilled composers here probably use notation. But the practical ramifications weren't really the the point of this debate...

Your attitude was basically "yeah use whatever you want, as long as you translate it the correct language when you present it in this forum" right? I just think that's a bit peculiar.

Well, let me put it to you this way... if you're only concerned about sound output from a machine, do whatever the hell you like. If you want actual musicians to appreciate your work, notation is the way.

Will a score provide a perfect midi file? If not, why should I put in the effort to review it when you've barely put in the effort to present it?

Perhaps a lot of "general attitude" you may be perceiving from people "experienced with notation" may just be from musicians/composers/people tired of seeing real, tangible, live music disappearing or replaced with disassociative, effects-laden-but-content-free, background music from electronic sources.

I can only speak for myself, of course.

If you choose to post a piano roll along with graphic representations of all of your envelopes, timings, velocities, patch changes, and filter changes (i'm assuming you use either a formula control or humanize everything), then maybe I can look at it and see it as an actual "performance map". Otherwise, to me, a piano roll that just shows note and durations is just like a poorly assembled score - thoughtless. I have no problems with graphic notation, but that graphic notation had better damn well give the necessary details.

Yes, but my point was that the piano roll works just as well for reviewing music as a score, if you have experience with it. Of course you who are experienced with notation instead of the piano roll will move on and so will a lot of people here.

A piano roll is not near as informative as a score. I can't imagine analysing something the least bit complex when all i get are blocks and lines. Sure, I could probably imagine a piano piece or something.. but what about something big like a symphony.. even with a simple one.. its not gonna happen.

I remember using piano roll before i know theory, Piano roll should be used as a primitive form of notation, i dislike piano roll now i have grade 8 theory and i can NOT STAND graphic staves at all!! lol they drive me mad... These metods leave to much to the players interpriation... and lack basic skill.. to be a composer is to show your art to the musician... and without a unified form of showing this its not art its a doodle... to some people they can read and play it but for all people its just gibberish... the only think i can compare this to is how the evolution of electionic symbols... in the last 100 years a unified method has been created which is used today. people have there own way. but this is not understood by others :D i don't know if this helped peoples arguments here but this is my opinion :D

Will a score provide a perfect midi file? If not, why should I put in the effort to review it when you've barely put in the effort to present it?

Do you understand the difference between rendering and notating a musical work?

I think the key here is that electronic music can contain a lot of subtleties unable to be conveyed through traditional notation. The notes and their features (dynamics, articulation etc.) are only half the puzzle.

I would not agree that a piano roll representation suffices for the notation of purely acoustic works. You'd still need to fall back on traditional dynamic markings and such, unless you incorporated a separate track for controller automation, which would just get messy. Also, any performers not playing a keyboard-based instrument (i.e. almost everyone) would not necessarily appreciate the logic behind it all.

But I would say that the piano roll is a faster and more intuitive way of performing certain operations as compared with traditional notation. Moving notes around, altering their values, drawing curves to represent dynamics (if you count that as part of the roll itself).

Seriously, different strokes for different folks. The tools you use should be geared towards your compositional aims, not based on ideology.

flint-wwrr: I understand that you need to have a score if you want professional musicians to play your music. But having the computer play your music and play around with it's capabilities can produce awesome music as well, a skilled composer of electronic music can for example create very interesting art that nor notation or the piano roll can explain.

I'm a huge Bach fan my self and nothing beats a live perfromance from professional musicians, but that doesn't mean I don't respect people making electronic music, which you don't seem to do? Correct me if I'm wrong, that's just how I enterpreted your post.

The computer can never replace acoustic instruments, but the computer can do a lot of things which the acoustic instruments can't do.

Back to the piano roll, thanks for all the great input on the matter. I think of it this way:

Notation is the unified method, and the most dynamic method of writing down music.

The piano roll is a complement to notation which can be used to analyze music if represented in detailed way. Note length is reprecented with well... length and note velocity in color. You can get far with just two of those facts.

"dan-j-b1" wrote "Piano roll should be used as a primitive form of notation", I'd rephrase it to "Piano roll should be used as a basic form of notation". And that's awesome because the logic behind is so simple that anyone can just start using it.

I think that the piano roll should at least gain respect as a great start for new composers, the computer is making it easy to write music and I think that's great. Nobody is saying that it's better than notation but it is a great complement, and I think it deserves more respect for what it is, not disrespect because notation is better and a more professional form of composing.

...nothing beats a live perfromance from professional musicians, but that doesn't mean I don't respect people making electronic music, which you don't seem to do? Correct me if I'm wrong, that's just how I enterpreted your post.

But hey, after 150 years, the saxophone has almost been begrudgingly accepted by a small section of the "classical snobs" as possibly being an instrument. Not within an orchestra, of course, though.

So who knows where electronic music may go?

I'm certain that there may be electronic music I may actually like, but on principle alone I have to despise it as a job stealer and compositional/performance gimmick. So far, the vast majority of electronic music I've heard has been of poor quality or taste, and until I hear otherwise it will continue to get short shrift from me.

Feel free to argue, but you're not going to change my opinion. Just keep in mind I am far from the most musically conservative person you'll meet, so get used to hearing opinions like mine! (particularly on a board where a major 9th chord suddenly has other composers clawing at their ears because of the "avant garde" dissonance...)

I'm certain that there may be electronic music I may actually like, but on principle alone I have to despise it as a job stealer and compositional/performance gimmick. So far, the vast majority of electronic music I've heard has been of poor quality or taste, and until I hear otherwise it will continue to get short shrift from me.

It's interesting how you say you disagree with electronic music on principle, because it "steals" the jobs of live musicians. To an extent, samples have reduced the value of live performance, but they've also made a lot of media composers' jobs easier.

Just about any one particular thing gets partially or even completely usurped at some stage. I'm sure horse and cart makers still curse Ford to this day.

But it's not like live performance is ever going to go completely out of fashion. You always need to have something happening on stage at live events, for starters, even if it's "non-real" musicians twiddling knobs and tapping laptop keyboards. ;)

Oh, Mike, I agree... there will always be an audience for live music.

Media composers trouble me slightly because I can't help feeling that they are commoditizing and therefore lowering the value of the music experience in general. The previous sentence should be taken not as "OMG media composers kill puppies" but rather that I feel as an art form music has "suffered" (for want of a better phrase) from that commoditization.

Eh, I'm too scattered to effectively make my point right now, but let me think about it and possibly re-visit and clarify. Maybe I'm just having a bad day. ;)

I usually agree with you, Mike, but I think media composition has increased the availability and accessibility of music, which isn't a bad thing. I think that, in general, media composers spend less time studying the actual craft of composition and simply rely on "this sounds pretty", which may work for commercial music, but it also starts to creep into the concert music setting, lowering the general expectation of concert music. I also see more and more people that write FOR their software instead of for performance, which I really don't get, but w/e. As long as there are people skillfully practicing the art of composition for real players for the concert hall, I think we'll be okay.

MattGSX has effectively summed up what I was unable to put together in my previous post. Thanks, Matt! :)

I think that, in general, media composers spend less time studying the actual craft of composition and simply rely on "this sounds pretty", which may work for commercial music, but it also starts to creep into the concert music setting, lowering the general expectation of concert music.

Media music is not supposed to sound like concert music and vice versa.

If you're writing music for a TV program, it shouldn't be too attention-grabbing. The scoring for Lost is often extremely sparse, and that's part of the reason it's so effective. "Less is more" is actually quite a difficult compositional approach to master, because of the difficulty involved in getting the balance right. That's the "craft" aspect right there - not for better or worse, just different.

I don't personally think of these things as ideology A versus ideology B, but I can appreciate why others might feel that way if they make their money from music or otherwise have some vested interest. However, if that is the case, the problem then becomes that the dividing lines at the heart of the issue just become further entrenched into everyone's thought processes. Either that, or they are created from scratch having started off as imaginary.

Obviously, most people have their own musical preferences, which are sometimes quite strong. But when you start branding composers who use electronics as "non-musicians", it's clear there is an agenda at work. Having said that, Brian Eno touts himself as a "non-musician", and it's sort of true in the traditional sense. That's the case also for people who make their livings as recording/mixing/mastering engineers...or is it? I think those occupations can be highly musical, but then again, I happen to know a bit about what they involve. I am a classically trained musician, but I've been exposed to a lot outside that world too.

Right, I don't think of film/commercial music as non-music. I think the use of short hooks and color over form is very important for commercial music.

I don't, however, think it translates over to the concert stage, and what I was trying to say is that many people who grow up listening to only film music, or who spend lots of time just writing commercial music, have a hard time writing concert music that doesn't come out sounding like commercial music. Obviously, it doesn't translate over very well.

I don't think electronic musicians and composers are any less musical or less of a musician than someone who uses only manuscript and ink. I just think that the finished product should fit the setting, and Flint and I seem to agree that there are many composers who write music inappropriate for the stage but don't understand why, as it is better suited for a commercial setting. That's not to say it's not good, but it's like trying to wear a parka in Jamaica - it just doesn't work well.

One more thing that would be helpful:

If you compose your music in a program like Reason, Protools, CoolEdit, FL Studio, etc, etc, you should zip and upload project files as well. This helps see automation, filter settings, a graphical playlist, etc, etc.

I usually agree with you, Mike, but I think media composition has increased the availability and accessibility of music, which isn't a bad thing. I think that, in general, media composers spend less time studying the actual craft of composition and simply rely on "this sounds pretty", which may work for commercial music, but it also starts to creep into the concert music setting, lowering the general expectation of concert music. I also see more and more people that write FOR their software instead of for performance, which I really don't get, but w/e. As long as there are people skillfully practicing the art of composition for real players for the concert hall, I think we'll be okay.

But isn't the "this sounds pretty" the important thing in music? What else do you want? It is a free art form after all.

Some music are meant for a live performance while other music are meant to be played with a computer, both styles has their advantages.

[skips diatribe]

Feel free to argue, but you're not going to change my opinion. Just keep in mind I am far from the most musically conservative person you'll meet, so get used to hearing opinions like mine! (particularly on a board where a major 9th chord suddenly has other composers clawing at their ears because of the "avant garde" dissonance...)

LOL! Who are these people you speak of?

School boards, many community orchestra boards, etc, etc. I know musical directors that refer to Copland as atonal music.

Music is not just about sounding pretty, or is visual art just about looking pretty. Art is a product of culture (not social rank, either; I mean culture where some people mistakingly use the word society), and good art has the form, balance, clarity, and taste necessary to reflect culture. I strongly recommend reading the book "Noise" if you're wondering about it.

The "sound in space", pitch without reason, etc, etc thinking about music mostly faded in the 60s and 70s.

"Pretty isn't beautiful."

School boards, many community orchestra boards, etc, etc. I know musical directors that refer to Copland as atonal music.

Wait, wasn't Copland mad atonal in much of his works? I mean, I haven't heard them, but I have heard of them...

Music is not just about sounding pretty, or is visual art just about looking pretty. Art is a product of culture (not social rank, either; I mean culture where some people mistakingly use the word society), and good art has the form, balance, clarity, and taste necessary to reflect culture. I strongly recommend reading the book "Noise" if you're wondering about it.

The "sound in space", pitch without reason, etc, etc thinking about music mostly faded in the 60s and 70s.

Woo! Someone other than me has read a book that has little bearing on the reality of music history :) Most of what Attali was talking about was more the mode of production, not the content of the music itself. By the 60s and 70s (and, if you take the reading I did, really anything post 1900 or so, coinciding with the rise of Civilization in another not-history book by Spengler), the mode of production was repetition. Remember that 1960 is post-star system and is therefore lesser by definition, regardless of musical content. Plus post 1960, (and certainly earlier) you're dealing with non-Western ideals becoming wholly accepted within Western music and the breakdown of solitary cultures of music.

I'm really having trouble with this thread, though... If your compositional style suits using piano-roll notation for composing, then bully for you. But you have to realize that when it comes to putting music in front of someone, they have been taught in a certain way, and you have to provide something that they know how to play, regardless of which is better or worse...

Wait, wasn't Copland mad atonal in much of his works? I mean, I haven't heard them, but I have heard of them...

Yes, check out his Piano Variations and Connotations for Orchestra.