Show Flats not Sharps???????

Discuss anything related to audio or music production.
dukeeastwood
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2016 11:38 pm

Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by dukeeastwood » Fri Mar 20, 2020 3:12 pm

Been looking around online and can't find a way to change the piano roll from always being sharps to being flats instead...

some people said they saw such a thing on an early version of an update but then... umm... where is this feature.

If it's not there yet they are beyond stupid...

side note... HOW THE FUCK do I see what version I'm running? I see I can click help and down to about live and see that it's version 10.1 ... ok but that's it? There's 10.1.7 and 10.1.9 that I know of and I WANT TO KNOW I AM UP TO DATE... people all over are saying their automatic update isn't working, well how the fuck can I know if it's not telling me the full version number.

Ableton really has me tilted today, if someone doesn't answer my posts soon I'm just calling to call them.. this is fucking ridiculous.

miyaru
Posts: 1267
Joined: Tue Jan 10, 2017 12:08 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by miyaru » Fri Mar 20, 2020 3:32 pm

First off all, less "fuck" will go a long way.......

You see the version number as live starts up. In the gray window on the normal versions and pink for the beta's.

The sharps and flats: I do not know about that.........
Greetings from Miyaru.
Prodaw i7-7700, 16Gb Ram, Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 3rd gen, ESI M4U eX, Reason 12, Live Suit 10, Push2, Presonus Eris E8 and Monitor Station V2, Lexicon MPX1,
Korg N1, Yamaha RM1x :mrgreen:

dukeeastwood
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2016 11:38 pm

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by dukeeastwood » Fri Mar 20, 2020 4:03 pm

I'm not so sure about that one my friend... this is the first post someone has actually ANSWERED!! :P

but guess what? i have autoupdates on and it's version 10.1.1 ... omg, I might have to say the f word a few more times...


sooooooo... now what do i do????? :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

[erm]
Site Admin
Posts: 281
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2015 3:05 pm
Location: Ableton

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by [erm] » Sat Mar 21, 2020 2:19 am

I deleted the little insult war you guys have going on. Dukeeastwood, you've already received a warning, that kind of commenting won't be allowed here.

Jestermgee, if someone says something that annoys you, just ignore it and step back. You provide good advice here a lot of times, but don't ruin it please by stooping that low.
Ableton Forum Administrator

jestermgee
Posts: 4500
Joined: Mon Apr 26, 2010 6:38 am

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by jestermgee » Sat Mar 21, 2020 2:23 am

Yes I know, point taken. Stepping out of the lounge now as there's nothing more to see here...

fishmonkey
Posts: 4478
Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2007 4:50 am

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by fishmonkey » Sat Mar 21, 2020 6:36 am

i feel you dukeeastwood!

i'm really concerned about this issue too.

with this COVID-19 business going on, lots of my friends are worried about being kicked out of their flats too!

stringtapper
Posts: 6302
Joined: Sat Aug 28, 2004 6:21 pm

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by stringtapper » Wed Mar 25, 2020 3:37 pm

As far as I know every DAW that displays pitch names uses sharps exclusively. Its a limitation with the original MIDI spec itself and just a fact of life in computer music because there are contextual intricacies when it comes to accidentals and key signatures that can be tough to program.

For instance, if you're in the key of G minor the key signature has two flats. But if the V chord happens as a true dominant (i.e. with a major 3rd, derived from the harmonic minor scale) then all of a sudden you're going to have an F# if you're spelling the 3rd of the V chord correctly. Start introducing things like secondary dominants into the mix and all of a sudden you've got mixtures of sharps, flats, naturals, and maybe even double flats or double sharps if you're being enharmonically correct. Programming a display system that correctly parses contextual issues like that is a lot more difficult than you might imagine.

Who knows why the originators of the MIDI spec chose sharps? Maybe there were no wind players on the team? Maybe it was as simple as they figured that the pound symbol as a stand in for the sharp symbol was clearer than the use of the lower case letter 'b' as a stand in for the flat symbol?
Unsound Designer

HiThere
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat May 16, 2020 10:29 am

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by HiThere » Sat May 16, 2020 10:32 am

I have a feeling it's to keep the programing simple. You have to have a whole other sub routine to analyze which one to use and it would probably use a lot of horsepower to figure it out. It would also probably be glitchy as "f" ;).

Angstrom
Posts: 14921
Joined: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:22 pm
Contact:

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by Angstrom » Sat May 16, 2020 2:11 pm

unless you are staying firmly in one key (and modulating) how is the app to automatically know whether to show sharps or flats.

Example: If I'm in C major and decide I'm going to borrow the Eb I guess the app could work out what's happening there. But what if I'm on my way to F# major. That means in the next bar that Eb is now D#. How is the app to know that?

We'd require sig change markers in the clips themselves, and clips don't contain regions and markers

So until Ableton implement metaclips (clips which can contain other clips) it can't really happen.

I believe a forum user suggested metaclips as a genius solution around 15 years ago. But was far too handsome to be taken seriously. A modern tragedy. 🤔

ChiefNugget
Posts: 114
Joined: Thu Jan 13, 2011 4:55 am
Location: Chicago, IL

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by ChiefNugget » Sun Sep 06, 2020 6:41 am

Even simply being able to designate an entire set as flats instead of sharp would be incredibly helpful and vastly superior to the current situation, and that seems pretty trivial to implement.
I need a baby sit my boys and work the day job plug-in.

Angstrom
Posts: 14921
Joined: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:22 pm
Contact:

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by Angstrom » Sun Sep 06, 2020 1:18 pm

ChiefNugget wrote:
Sun Sep 06, 2020 6:41 am
Even simply being able to designate an entire set as flats instead of sharp would be incredibly helpful and vastly superior to the current situation, and that seems pretty trivial to implement.
as a professional half-baker I can say that anything which from the outside seems trivial to implement rarely is.

Probably the estimates look like this:

Estimate to implement Toggle flats / sharps per clip = 70 person hours (multiply all estimates by 3 for real hours).
User satisfaction estimate: 2 out of 10.
User opinions "this is worthless" / "better than nothing I suppose but no use in practice" / "waste of time"

Estimate to add real key signatures
to scenes/clips/arrangement timeline = 300 person hours (x3)
User satisfaction estimate: 6/10.
user opinions "could be better" / " I never use it" / "I don't get what its for"

So, the team could spend a couple of hundred hours on a simple outcome which will probably be adjudged a "waste of time", or they can assign 900 hours to a more comprehensive feature that most of their userbase have no clue about.

I mean, lets be honest 80% of Live users are just making dope beats with zero interest in key signatures.

Now, imagine the Ableton management team asking the question: Does it translate to many more units sold to the core market? Does it sell Push2 ? Are more wealthy media-composers going to use Live for scoring and so buy into Ableton as a media composing tool?
not really.

Could those development hours of effort be expended elsewhere more profitably for the company? Probably.
They could probably use that time to make features for the beat-maker market and sell more units.

In lighter news, death awaits us all.

Tarekith
Posts: 19065
Joined: Fri Jan 07, 2005 11:46 pm
Location: Ableton Forum Administrator
Contact:

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by Tarekith » Sun Sep 06, 2020 3:12 pm

Your ideas intrigue me and I would love to subscribe to your newsletter.
Tarekith
Ableton Forum Administrator
https://tarekith.com

ChiefNugget
Posts: 114
Joined: Thu Jan 13, 2011 4:55 am
Location: Chicago, IL

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by ChiefNugget » Sun Sep 06, 2020 4:34 pm

Looks like there was some form of this feature implemented then rolled back in the 10.2 betas, and you keep describing more sophisticated implementations than necessary. Why would anything need to be saved per clip? Why bother with programming logic to automate the designation of sharps and flats? That's not needed for a basic level of functionality.

I'm saying it should be switchable like a color scheme - one toggle, or menu option in preferences to call accidentals as flats or as sharps in the piano roll globally. It doesn't even need to be saved with the Live Set. It's soooooo frustrating to be writing in the keys of Eb, Ab, Bb, or Db while seeing nothing but sharps in the piano roll when editing MIDI clips.
I need a baby sit my boys and work the day job plug-in.

ChiefNugget
Posts: 114
Joined: Thu Jan 13, 2011 4:55 am
Location: Chicago, IL

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by ChiefNugget » Sun Sep 06, 2020 6:01 pm

Oh, man. I just searched for this topic on google and found some of my forum posts from like 7 years ago when I was mad about this haha! Based on the number of posts from users around the web, it seems that simply having the option to designate the notes as flats instead of sharps would be very well received.
I need a baby sit my boys and work the day job plug-in.

Angstrom
Posts: 14921
Joined: Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:22 pm
Contact:

Re: Show Flats not Sharps???????

Post by Angstrom » Mon Sep 07, 2020 1:19 pm

ChiefNugget wrote:
Sun Sep 06, 2020 4:34 pm
Why would anything need to be saved per clip? Why bother with programming logic to automate the designation of sharps and flats? That's not needed for a basic level of functionality.
Why? Well generally because any code has to both integrate with what came before, and what might come later.

But more specifically
Live operates in a non-standard way because there's a loose relationship between Session and Arrangement.

Think of the way that time signature is handled, on a per (session)clip level, then each (session)scene, then in Arrangment the sig can be automated from the timeline.

Why is that? Because session clips can be played and edited asynchronously from the absolute time (the song time). That means I can play "Sessionclip 1" at any time in the timeline regardless of the songs current tempo, time sig, or key sig.

So if "Sessionclip 1" is in 3/4 and I'm playing it back at bar 64 where the arrangement marker denotes 4/4 then I still need to see and edit the "Sessionclip 1" note markers in 3/4

Similarly if "Sessionclip 1" is in the key of Cminor. Now, I want to play it in a section of the song at bar 64 where the song is in C major. We'd still want to edit "Sessionclip 1" in Cmin. We wouldn't want it to change to show no sharps/flats, because in this example we'd be doing the borrowed flat / parallel keys thing. We'd want to see "Sessionclip 1" in Cmin, and we'd want everything else to respect their own keys.

Anyway, I am pissing in the wind here. I might as well talk about adding a robot mongoose for all the effect it will have on the implementation or not of any such feature. but this edition of my newsletter was just to explain Live's unusual UI requirements - they are based on this need for asynchronous clip storage and replay.

You are subscribed to cat facts. text unsubscribe to stop.

Post Reply