I've now finished (I hope!) work on the pitches-first method of entering music in Denemo. Attached is an example created this way - it took 30 minutes to create this, which I don't think is faster for me than the rhythm-first method (given my years of experience with that method), but it brings a marked improvement to the experience of entering the music into the score - you hear the music both in the pitch entry stage and the rhythm entry stage. This makes the entering of the rhythm feel and sound like a performance of the piece. It is also much easier to avoid losing your place in the music as you can hear and see the pitches of the notes in both stages.
I've given a relatively comprehensive guide to the method in the manual - I've pasted the text below. Please test and report back, and if anyone could create a Demo that would be really good. Richard 21.2.1 Pitches-First Method This is new in version 2.6. The basic idea is to play in the pitches using the MIDI keyboard and then use the duration keys to actually enter the notes into the score. The Playback/Record->Recording menu gives the commands to start/pause recording pitches from your MIDI controller. First you position the Denemo cursor at place where you want to enter the notes into the score. Then you invoke Record from MIDI-in (Off/On) to start recording, Alt-r. A click track is created at the top of the score to act as a MIDI track. It has no clef because the recorded notes are displayed on the staff as belonging to the clef of the staff you are intending to enter the notes into, the one that contains the Denemo cursor. While you are recording the Denemo Display has a red cast to it to remind you that playing the MIDI keyboard will enter notes into the recording rather than into the score. Playing in the pitches Once you start playing on the MIDI keyboard headless notes are entered on the MIDI track staff with an indication of their start and end points on the blue line at the top of the display. If you leave a long gap between two notes (e.g. because of a long rest) the recorded track will not leave a big gap but resume directly after the last note - you can control the amount of rest time you want to allow in a recording via the Edit->Preferences->MIDI preference “MIDI-in recording timeout”. If you play a wrong note and you can delete it with Alt-Backspace and then continue playing the correct notes - it may help to make a mark on the source original that you are playing from at this stage by dragging a small line at the location where you have stopped. On the MIDI track the green MIDI headless note with the highlighted green circle is the currently marked MIDI note. You can play the recording from this note with Alt-p. To alter which note is currently marked MIDI note click on the note in the MIDI track which you want to be marked or use the Alt-Left/Right to move the marker. The currently marked MIDI note is the first one that will be entered into the score when you enter a duration. When playing the pitches augmented and diminished intervals are played on the pitch-spelling channel, so that you can easily detect enharmonic errors (e.g. D-sharp for E-flat). You can turn this off via the Edit- >Change Preferences->Audio tab, by making the pitch-spelling channel the same as the channel for the notes. When playing in the pitches you do not have to keep strict time, but it helps in keeping the display of the pitches nicely placed over the bars. For this reason it helps to set the movement tempo in the playback controls to a tempo you can comfortably play the notes at - you can change it afterwards to the intended tempo of the movement. As you record the pitches the staffs will have extra blank measures added so that the MIDI track can show the pitches in the tempo of the movement. There is no need to pause recording to go on to entering the rhythms - just start typing in the durations. Playing in the durations Pressing duration keys, including dotted rhythm, triplet and ties and slurred versions of those commands will insert the marked MIDI note into the score at the Denemo cursor and move the marked MIDI note forwards so you can continually enter the music mostly in music time and rhythm. Use the Ins key to enter the additional notes in a chord. You should enter any rests needed in between the notes via the usual shortcuts (Alt-0,1,2 ... ). Mostly you can enter the rhythm in music- time so that you hear the melody as you press the duration keys, but you can stop off at any moment to insert dynamics etc and resume entering durations without a problem. When you reach the end of the recorded notes a clash of cymbals sounds and the duration keys will revert to entering pure duations - by this time you will have reached the small red marker in the original source you are transcribing from (if you placed one as you finished playing the notes). While you are entering the rhythm the MIDI recording track re-synchronizes the marked MIDI note at every new bar you reach so that the recorded note that will be entered next in that bar is visible immediately above on the MIDI track. If you make a mistake while entering a duration you can delete the last duration(s) you entered using the Backspace key - the currently marked MIDI note will back up and you can continue with the correct duration(s). Alternatively you can alter the duration using the usual Shift-n shortcut and continue. If you want to delete a note without backing up you can use the other deletion methods (Del,Del, or Ctrl-X etc) or move the currently marked MIDI note forward using Alt-Right or by clicking on the note that you want to be the marked MIDI note. The shortcuts for entering triplets crash the sounding of the notes together - you can use the TAB shortcut to avoid this if you wish, though that, of course, breaks up the rhythm of your keystrokes. Otherwise you can just visually check that the right notes have been entered in the triplet. Mouse Operations Right-clicking on the MIDI track pops up the menu of the commands available in the Playback->Recording menu. Left clicking on a note on the MIDI track will make that note become the currently marked MIDI note. Other left click operations: You can alter the tempo of the MIDI recording by Ctrl-Left-Drag, moving to the right stretches the recording out, to the left compresses it. This is only needed if you want to play back the MIDI recording with your score, otherwise the recording will be automatically synchronized and stretched/compressed while entering the durations as you reach each new measure. A click sounds as this re-synchronization takes place - this provides a check that you have entered the correct rhythm to complete the measure. To reposition the recorded MIDI track relative to the score you can Shift-Left-Drag: drag from the MIDI track down to the place in your score where you want the currently marked MIDI note to be synchronized to and release. The MIDI track will be shifted so that the marked MIDI note appears above the place chosen. With Ctrl-Shift-Click you can set a note on the MIDI track as the currently marked MIDI note and start the recorded MIDI playing from there - clicking again stops the play. Composers For people who compose at the keyboard one possibility is to turn on recording (Alt-r) and then play around with musical ideas until you have found one you wish to transcribe. At this point you can “rewind” your recording (using Alt-Up arrow) by a specified interval from the end. The exact place to rewind to can be found by playing the recording from this point (use Alt-right to step through or Alt-p to play) and rewinding some more or stopping when you reach the right point. Once synchronized to this starting point you can proceeed to enter the durations as usual. Again Alt-Del, c will delete the unwanted blank measures at the end if you have created them. When finished The shortcut Alt-Del, Alt-Del deletes the current recording while Alt- Del, c deletes the recording, the MIDI click track and any trailing blank measures that may have been created if your recording tempo did not match the tempo of the movement. Miscellaneous points If you want to reset the marked MIDI note to the start of the recording you can use the Alt-Up shortcut and accept the default value given - this places the marked MIDI note at the start and synchronizes it to the current cursor position. The pitches-first entry method can be used even by unskilled keyboard players. As long as you can pick out the notes one after the other there is no need to play the music strictly in time - you can just enter one bar, or a line, or a short passage and then immediately switch to entering the durations with the number keys not even looking at the MIDI track created. Once you have used up the pitches you can just continue playing in another passage and so on until the piece is done. As mentioned above, the display of the pitches over the measures they belong to will not be perfect, but it is not critical. Another method, for skilled keyboard players, is to press Alt-r to start recording then Fn5 to start the click track playing and then play in the notes in time to the click track. Then the entered notes will appear in the bars they belong to and (if you are composing rather than transcribing) can give you an indication of the rhythm you need to enter to notate what you played.
Sonata6-Naudot.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document