KVR :: Hosts (Sequencers, DAWs, Audio Editors, etc.) » Top-down piano rolls? [View Original Topic]
There are 26 posts in this topic.
braj - Sat Feb 11, 2012 8:26 pm
So piano rolls in sequencers typically are left to right, showing the piano on the left. I am curious if any sequencers have ever tried a top-down approach, which seems much more intuitive to me, so you can more easily see the notes in relation to a real keyboard. It seems at least a worthy option a DAW could have.
Shabdahbriah - Sat Feb 11, 2012 10:46 pm
braj wrote:
So piano rolls in sequencers typically are left to right, showing the piano on the left. I am curious if any sequencers have ever tried a top-down approach, which seems much more intuitive to me, so you can more easily see the notes in relation to a real keyboard. It seems at least a worthy option a DAW could have.
I agree. Been wanting this for ages. Like an old "player" piano basically...haven't seen it.
Bonteburg - Sun Feb 12, 2012 4:17 am
Top/down implies falling to me. Also I think it'd be awkward when it comes to automation. Bottom line for me would be that I'd rather have my western left/right reading paradigm than a keyboard that matches my real one I think.
It's hard to verify, but I even seem to remember imagining computer sequencers going from left to right even before I had seen my first one, back in the day ca late 90s - probably having notation in mind.
Marco
No_Use - Sun Feb 12, 2012 4:39 am
Top-down piano roll seems also kinda intuitive to me and I'd like to try it as I've my Midi keyboard directly in front of me. With horizontal piano roll I always have the feeling I have to think 'around the corner'. I've never tried it though as my DAW doesn't have this option and I wouldn't switch just for this possibility alone.
Just stumbled across this (but it's a tracker, nothing for me):
http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?/topic/22107-anybody-seen-buzzs-new-piano-roll/
Jace-BeOS - Sun Feb 12, 2012 6:26 am
No_Use wrote:
Top-down piano roll seems also kinda intuitive to me and I'd like to try it as I've my Midi keyboard directly in front of me. With horizontal piano roll I always have the feeling I have to think 'around the corner'. I've never tried it though as my DAW doesn't have this option and I wouldn't switch just for this possibility alone.
Just stumbled across this (but it's a tracker, nothing for me):
http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?/topic/22107-anybody-seen-buzzs-new-piano-roll/
Just stumbled across this (but it's a tracker, nothing for me):
http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?/topic/22107-anybody-seen-buzzs-new-piano-roll/
Awesome. i'd love to try that in place of the horizontal version, especially if, like trackers, it separated the scrolling regions into patterns (in standard DAWs, i guess that would be measures). Click an arrow to move back & forth between measures, so that the scrolling area only shows the current one and makes for focusing in on that one area.
jancivil - Sun Feb 12, 2012 10:03 am
the timeline would go from top to bottom. I don't think that's going to work for too many people. as it is, pitch names go from top to bottom for low to high. 'intuitively' enough. what you want is a visual to accord with the keyboard in front of you at all costs here. it isn't thought through. the problems of automation, controller lanes, the very timeline, chronology, will have occured I would have thought to anyone that's worked with a piano roll beyond note entry.
braj - Sun Feb 12, 2012 10:59 am
I'm talking about an option, an alternate view, not something you would use all the time. But for arranging some things it could be helpful. I am just wondering 'why not'. And sure, I used Master Tracks back in the 80's and that was all left>right. Just with technology we can do things and present things in so many ways, and this seems like a useful way to me.
Bonteburg - Sun Feb 12, 2012 1:45 pm
Fair enough I guess - though I'm not sure what amount of bloat that would cause, seeing as you'd essentially have to give one sequencer two GUIs...
Andywanders - Tue Feb 14, 2012 12:45 am
Once-upon-a-time, in a land far,far away, there was a Creator who became a Notator...
Ahh... Those were the days...
braj - Tue Feb 14, 2012 12:51 am
Yes! Now all I need is an Atari ST (they had built-in midi ports!).
I was thinking if someone really wants this feature in any DAW there is a simple solution: get a second monitor and put it on its side. Then you can just open your piano roll there and viola! Actually some monitors/software will allow you to rotate your display. I did this for my Reason rack a long time ago, so the rack fit nearly perfectly, though the monitor itself was crap, it worked really well. I am surprised portrait displays are no longer common. My first Mac SE-30 had a nice big for the time portrait display.
drjohnny79 - Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:32 pm
I used this on an Atari back in the days. It's pattern based. Seems it's available for win now:
http://www.ronimusic.com/s16_win.htm
/Johnny
james0tucson - Fri Feb 17, 2012 2:00 pm
braj wrote:
I'm talking about an option, an alternate view, not something you would use all the time. But for arranging some things it could be helpful. I am just wondering 'why not'. And sure, I used Master Tracks back in the 80's and that was all left>right. Just with technology we can do things and present things in so many ways, and this seems like a useful way to me.
It's hard to think of the proposal as "alternative", since I don't know anyone who plays keyboard instruments by sitting with keys perpendicular to them. Even I, known to play the piano from above by laying lengthwise on the piano case, have never tried that. Standing with right up against the "low A" end, I can lean over and just barely reach to the high C. And this is exactly how I perceive the vertical orientation of the keyboard in piano roll sequencers...
On the other hand, I'm quite sure that the common arrangement we see derives from the convention of "X axis is the Time Domain in Cartesian systems" and also possibly from practical matters of screen graphics refresh performance and so forth.
braj - Fri Feb 17, 2012 2:59 pm
Imagine a sequencer that could show at the flick of a keystroke/button all the tracks vertically, you could see all of the notes that are played in sequence as they go by, not just some small representation of them. I may make a mock-up screenshot using Reaper, it seems like a really amazing feature no one has implemented to me, at least not recently based on the ST screenshots
braj - Fri Feb 17, 2012 3:18 pm
http://flic.kr/p/bvb2dg
The little mockup I threw together. But you could have shortcuts to show different views obviously, it cwould be a big help to me and almost like a visual aide to see everything that is playing in the mix. It is much easier to go 'oh, that is a c chord' and 'hear' what is onscreen. It would be just way more musical. Not instead of, but in addition to what is standard now.
himalaya - Fri Feb 17, 2012 3:49 pm
a big +1 from me. I also have wanted this for a long time. Make it as an option (DAW makers). This type of keyboard view is a god send when, for example, I need to check the chord progression of a long forgotten track. I'd rather be looking at a horizontal keyboard, than a vertical one in that situation.
This is software right? Nothing is set in stone. Have a button 'flip keyboard into horizontal view'. We have so many options in most hosts to show various view panels, resizing mixers, docking this, and docking that, which makes a simple option to 'flick the keyboard view' a simple affair. Even if it meant that once it is positioned into the horizontal view, some information (controller, etc) is gone. That's fine. In the horizontal view, I'd just check the notes, nothing else, then flip back to vertical to regain the rest of stuff normally displayed.
Hardware sequencers had this...mind
himalaya - Fri Feb 17, 2012 3:51 pm
braj wrote:
It is much easier to go 'oh, that is a c chord' and 'hear' what is onscreen. It would be just way more musical. Not instead of, but in addition to what is standard now.
Exactly!
(even though it is easy to spot a c chord in the vertical view 
but less easy to read abstract block chords I'd play at night after a few glasses of wine 
). Jace-BeOS - Fri Feb 17, 2012 5:09 pm
Why would controller lanes have to be lost on such a view? Rotate them too.
Really, as said before me, with all the ways in which we are able to slide and move screen elements around, this is a logical feature to have. The static quality of many current GUI components isn't exactly the best way, as many other GUI components show. We're seeing animation added where it assists in eye tracking and cognitive flow, so why not in a piano roll?
(The first DAW I expect to find this will not be Sonar, I can tell you that - Sonar has prettied the buttons and window dressing a bit but the views are still clunky and jerky)
No_Use - Fri Feb 17, 2012 5:58 pm
There's an older article with some thoughts on this.
http://www.bikexprt.com/cakewalk/pianorol1.htm
Hink - Fri Feb 17, 2012 6:11 pm
james0tucson wrote:
braj wrote:
I'm talking about an option, an alternate view, not something you would use all the time. But for arranging some things it could be helpful. I am just wondering 'why not'. And sure, I used Master Tracks back in the 80's and that was all left>right. Just with technology we can do things and present things in so many ways, and this seems like a useful way to me.
It's hard to think of the proposal as "alternative", since I don't know anyone who plays keyboard instruments by sitting with keys perpendicular to them. Even I, known to play the piano from above by laying lengthwise on the piano case, have never tried that. Standing with right up against the "low A" end, I can lean over and just barely reach to the high C. And this is exactly how I perceive the vertical orientation of the keyboard in piano roll sequencers...
I would not want such a piano roll because I am use to what is the norm now, but I'm not getting the perpendicular reference. Like you said, a keyboard laid out in front of you has the keys going from left to right but on my piano rolls the keys from down to up while the timeline goes from left to right...
jancivil - Fri Feb 17, 2012 7:21 pm
well, for a Chinese reader chronology goes from top to bottom so, no problem I suppose.
I think no one said you'd lose the controller lanes, but the chronology is now from top to bottom. that isn't intuitive to me, YMMV I guess. I think of music in terms of sonority, in intervals, high = high, low = low, and left to right is the way I weigh intervals in chronology.
Has anyone here ever written automation/controller lanes top to bottom? left = less, right = more?
drjohnny79 - Sat Feb 18, 2012 12:19 pm
drjohnny79 wrote:
I used this... It's pattern based. Seems it's available for win now:
http://www.ronimusic.com/s16_win.htm
/Johnny
http://www.ronimusic.com/s16_win.htm
/Johnny
Just in case someone didnt see my post.
/Johnny
jancivil - Sat Feb 18, 2012 9:56 pm
90's stylee!
Hink - Sat Feb 18, 2012 9:59 pm
jancivil wrote:
90's stylee!
does it scare you half as much as it scares me that 90s is now retro?
VitaminD - Sat Feb 18, 2012 10:15 pm
Yeah we basically had this with MOD trackers in the 80s and 90s. Man I hated it. It is also the way Synthesia (http://synthesiagame.com/) works too. My eyes would still try to track up and down for awhile even after the music had stopped.
kippertoffee - Mon Feb 20, 2012 4:50 pm
Aodix (I seem to remember)
http://www.aodix.com/pageaodixv4.html
james0tucson - Sun Mar 04, 2012 10:29 pm
jancivil wrote:
well, for a Chinese reader chronology goes from top to bottom so, no problem I suppose.
I think no one said you'd lose the controller lanes, but the chronology is now from top to bottom. that isn't intuitive to me, YMMV I guess. I think of music in terms of sonority, in intervals, high = high, low = low, and left to right is the way I weigh intervals in chronology.
Has anyone here ever written automation/controller lanes top to bottom? left = less, right = more?
I think no one said you'd lose the controller lanes, but the chronology is now from top to bottom. that isn't intuitive to me, YMMV I guess. I think of music in terms of sonority, in intervals, high = high, low = low, and left to right is the way I weigh intervals in chronology.
Has anyone here ever written automation/controller lanes top to bottom? left = less, right = more?
It's because it's a "piano roll" idiom that the orientation shift bothers me. If it represented a transverse flute fingering, I'd be bothered if it wasn't vertical. On the other hand, I don't know many people who work with standard notation who would be very willing to tolerate the staff being rotated 90 degrees. I understand your point with respect to chronology and intervals, but as a piano player (old enough to have worked with piano rolls when they were 'merely antique' and not quite the historical artifact that they are today
, it bothers me a lot to see a piano keyboard represented as if I'm sitting to the left of it looking across the keys. I want it to be from the point of view of the performer, and anything else feels completely wrong and contrived. It would bother me a lot less if it didn't try to look like a piano keyboard. Maybe it's not the orientation that bothers me, as much as it's a piano keyboard in the wrong orientation. There are 26 posts in this topic.