Re: how to enter notes quickly (midi keyboard available)

[David Kastrup]

Klaus Föhl <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello,
>
> I like the lilypond notation using \relative being concise and readable.
> Entering on a computer keyboard is fairly quick, but still it feels
> that playing a melody line would be so much quicker. In particular
> if one does not have a typing c4 d e f g1 style but c4 d4. e8 f8. g16 c,1
>
> What "better" methods exist?
>
> For example I have looked into rosegarden output. 
> Minor issue:the output is not in relative notation.

There are several conversion tools.  Frescobaldi is likely one with a
low level of entry pain.

> What I am tempted is to take midi file information (i.e. gunzip a.rg),
> or the rosegarden ly output and reverse-engineer it into event lists.
> Whatever the detail: only piano-keyboard input and get both pitch and
> length.
>
> Then to apply some smart quantisation. For one thing notes like c1 are
> much more likely than c2... or alignment with bars is probable,
> aspects that require some adaptive rules, possibly some parameter
> training.  Also the routine should pick up and follow the meter as
> played, as opposed to techniques providing the rigid mentronome frame.
>
> Well, before I reinvent the wheel myself: are such things already out
> there?

midi2ly, obviously.  It sucks royally for human-created input.  Look up
Viterbi decoders and/or hidden Markov chains for a plan how to do
better.

My personal approach would be to let Emacs record notes and timings via
Midi, and display just the notes without duration.  You manually place
bar checks, and it then calculates the durations in between.  If you
have "typos" in between, you just delete them before quantizing the
measure, and they are taken out including the time they took.

That would seem like an efficient workflow to me, without much of a bad
impact of playing errors and uneven timing: the consequences are local.

Of course, this is purely hypothetical for now, but it seems like a good
plan for somebody (TM) to implement.

-- 
David Kastrup