[Denemo-devel] Rhythm Entry

[Richard Shann]

I've been doing a bit more transcribing (& transposing) music using
Denemo. I've put the resulting movements of a suite by Philidor at
http://www.rshann.plus.com/Philidor/SuiteI/
What I noticed doing this is that when putting in the rhythm I find that
I put it in rhythmically - that is when typing 2 . 3 on the numeric
keypad for (quarter-note dot eighth-note) I type these in rhythmically.
This may seem a trifle, but I think it is significant - in effect you
are "playing" the music, albeit just the rhythm and on a rather strange
instrument that requires you switch keys for the different lengths of
notes.
The thing is, this turns the entering of the rhythms into a musical
activity - I can keep my place in the score because the I am reading and
playing the rhythms in time.
This, of course, was the big advantage that I noticed playing in the
pitches using a musical instrument - it is much easier to play in the
pitches rather than type note names because I can leverage my prior
knowledge of playing a musical instrument (besides being able to hear
the piece as I play, being able to specify the note, octave and
accidentals in one keypress etc etc).

One improvement comes out of this: when playing in the rhythm it is easy
to play the right rhythm with the wrong duration key. I did set about
getting the computer to watch the input and check for this - I've put a
tarball of this at
http://www.rshann.plus.com/denemo-timing.tar.gz

however, I think something simpler is better: I've made a formal Rhythm
mode which simply clicks when you reach the last note of a measure. This
matches the pitch entry mode which can also do this. So should you type
the wrong duration you get an end-of-measure click in the wrong place
and can correct. This matches what happens if you get an extra pitch
detected or a missed note while playing in, the click warns you that you
are starting a new measure.
I'm testing this code now.
Richard