Learning Rapidcomposer by printing examples in standard music notation

[robberg]

Here is a workflow that uses 2 monitors. Open RapidComposer (RC) on one screen, and Studio One (S1) on the other. You will also need Presonus' Notion software. You can take any "Song" in S1 and convert it to standard music notation with the simple command: "Song - send to notion"

In RC start a new composition and drag a 1 Bar "Chord Generator" phrase onto measure 1.
Select the phrase and right click to open the Magic Wand screen.
At the top left, to the right of "Rhythm" select "subdivision";
Length: phrase length
Subdivision: successive
at the bottom, click on the Auto-Apply box

OK - now we are ready to start changing just one key parameter, which is "number of subdivisions"
we will start with 1 subdivision - so drag the bar so it reads 1. You will see the phrase in the main composition window update (auto-apply) so that you have 2 half-notes. In other words, if you take a one bar phrase in 4/4 time, and divide it one time, you get 2 half notes.

Open a new blank song in S1 on the other screen. Drag-and-drop the track (which only contains the single "Chord Generator" phrase) onto the main window in S1 (which is blank); make sure to drag it to measure 1.

Go back to RC and change (increment) the subdivisions from 1 to 2. The phrase in the main window will update again. Now Drag-and-drop the track (which now contains the single "Chord Generator" phrase . . . but with the new setting of 2 subdivisions) onto the main window in S1.
BUT ................ when you drag the new phrase onto S1, make sure to drag it to measure 3. Don't drag it right next to the first phrase because it will make it difficult to see each example(permutation) separately.

Repeat this process (of incrementing the number of subdivisions) at least 10 times. I repeated it 17 times so you can really see and understand what is happening.

When you are done with dragging the examples from RC to S1 and under the "Song" menu, select "Send to Notion" A window will open - select "send note data of selected tracks" (you only have one track). Notion will open with all your example phrases beautifully printed out in standard notation.

Last step is to simply create a PDF of the score by going to the File menu and selecting "Print to PDF"
I think that seeing these examples in standard music notation is the key to really grasping how the hundreds of operations in RC work in a musical context, and how these operations and tools might apply to different genres and music composition. Scoring programs like Sibelius and Finale do contain some pretty powerful macros that are similar to RC (mirroring; apply rhythm, etc) but RC has literally hundreds and hundreds of more tools. The dream software would be RC combined with a scoring software but that's probably 5-10 years away. If it ever does materialize, you can bet that it will quickly become the gold standard for music composition among the music academies.

But here is the most exciting thing about RC - the more folks learn about using these tools the more we will hear new genres of music composition - styles of music that we haven't heard before.

My dream is to have an example sheet of music notation for the bulk of RC's operations. Imagine handing a manual like this to Mozart - he would be off to the races.

Subdivisons 1-17.png

Subdivisons 1-17.png

[robberg]

Sorry - here are the examples (phrases 1-14) that I tried to attach:

Subdivisons 1-17.png

[robberg]

Here are the remaining using 15, 16 and 17 subdivisions

Subdivisons 1-17(1).png

[robberg]

One last step is necessary if you are going to share your "music notation" examples by posting them in this forum:
Download / Install the free software: Universal Document Converter. It's totally free - it just adds a watermark to the bottom of the image (no biggy). This will let you print the pdf created by Notion into a png file, which you can attach to your post.

[robberg]

So what did I learn with this example using "subdivisions" - it creates some awesome duple type rhythms because it keeps dividing the duration of the notes by ONE-HALF. However (and this is key) it cannot create any type of dotted rhythm. I have to use a different tool for that. In other words, I am learning what tool to use for a particular composition task, and that is key.

[robberg]

So I looked around and found at least one way to create a dotted rhythm. I tried the "rest" variation but that doesn't work because most dotted rhythms don't use rests. The most common dotted rhythm for one beat (quarter note) is a dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth. Try this - start with 2 half notes by going to the top of the Magic Window (for the Chord Generator), and slecting "simple Intervals" ; division 2/4. That gives you 2 half notes.
Now select "Manual Editing" and set the snap&grid to 1/16. Under the snap/grid line you will see a dark bar divided into two equal parts representing 2 half notes. Double click in the middle of the 1st blue bar - that creates 2 quarter notes. Now double click about 2/3 of the way over the first quarter note. Voila - you have a dotted eighth-one sixteenth figure.

***** if you hover the mouse cursor over the blue bar - it will give all the ways you can manually edit the rhythm - dragging, changing velocity, etc. AWESOME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BluGenes]

very cool! This should be moved to the "tips and Tricks" thread.. Great idea for sure.. I don't use Presonus, but, I can do this with Reaper fairly easily..

thanks!

[robberg]

How do I move it to another thread???

[BluGenes]

How do I move it to another thread???

the moderator does that, Attila...

[musicdevelopments]

Hi robberg,

thank you for this tip! It is always interesting and inspiring for me to see how others work with RapidComposer.
When using a rhythm generator you will find the dotted notes option under "Rhythm Processing", even for Manual Editing:



I will move this thread to the Tips&Tricks sub-forum so that new users can easily find it.

Thanks!
Attila

[robberg]

I started work on creating some "music notation" examples for the "Apply Melody" phrase variation and discovered that Notion (Presonus) didn't accurately transcribe some fairly simply midi phrases that I had dragged into Studio One. So I tried dragging the same phrases into Reaper (which has a Music Notation Editor) and it worked perfectly. Someone else mentioned using Reaper earlier. Reaper let me save the score as a PDF so it looks like a good work flow. I will post the results for the "Apply Melody" variation soon, but I gotta say it's a bit hard for me to warp my head around it.