Ableton Forum

i just think it would be cool to have a piano roll to notation switch similar to the arrange to session switch... how hard would it be for ableton to implement this?

imagine this: a midi track in clip view.. a mary had a little lamb melody... it looks like little blocks on a grid... now you hit a button (perhaps on the top right of clip view)... now instead of blocks on a grid you see notes on a staff...

i'm not talking about replacing sibelius or whatever. i'm just talking about a simple translation: whether blocks on a grid or notes on a staff it's all music. one's not better than the other. it's just a translation. a different way of reading/understanding the same thing.

to be superfluously clear, i'm not talking about adding ANY new features to ableton... i'd be really happy if they would just give us the option of viewing WHAT THEY'VE ALREADY IMPLEMENTED (via the piano roll) as notation (i.e. time signatures and notes on a staff).

i just love working in Live, and pretty much loathe working in other programs. yeah we don't need another Logic... EXACTLY! I don't want to use logic at all, i'd love to stay in live... this feature would put me one step closer to keeping my music creation in one place... the good and right place where creativity reigns supreme: Ableton.

i really want a score editor in the next version. using finale wit live is a big hassle.

-1 don't want it, most electronic producers wouldn't even use it, keep live simple, cut the pork

-1 here too. Unless it's really good, that is.

photonicrecords wrote:logic, cubase, and pro tools all have this now!

also, mixing in ableton really needs to catch up to the competish...

just get finale.

Yes score in conjunction with piano roll style MIDI notation.

Many musicians DO still rely on conventional music notation for performing music (guitarists, violinists, tuba players etc...) so this would be a great way for Abletons electronics to be combined with these LIVE instruments.
Following a score would make it possible for more complex arrangements involving chord changes, movements and so on. Many a time I have wished I could have those kind of things in my music but I'm just not very good at counting beats and bars to know when to follow along with my guitar or whatever.

This might even make Ableton the perfect and only music production software only needing fine tuning over time. Hmmm?

NO to score editor.

YES to more advance MIDI editing features like multiple clips editing, doubled CC layers, etc.


Even if it would be nice, we have to agree that Live´s development cannot turn completely into becoming the major DAW on the market.

YES to score editor, for the same reasons people dump the majority, if not all of their third parties soft synths etc in favor of using one integrated system, Suite.

If you do not see a use for it personally, then there should be no opposition. Simply don't use it. If it is something I can use everyday that would save me time and provide yet another avenue for inspiration, (as well as income) then why deny me this.

Scoring/Notation just makes sense.

Would be nice, but since probably 95% of the user base cannot read music anyway I don't see it happening.

Also, to be really useful You'd want a score editor to to display more than one track at a time (to do voicing etc), which would require a major overhaul of the interface.

MrMoneypenny wrote:

photonicrecords wrote:logic, cubase, and pro tools all have this now!

also, mixing in ableton really needs to catch up to the competish...

-1

1) For Ableton it does not make sense to copy other DAW's, but well to make the difference. Musicians buy Live, as it is different to other DAW's.

2) If you have to share shortcuts - DAW and an implemented score editor-, working gets slower. Shortcuts for most of the functions makes working with Live and eg Sibelius much quicker.

3) eg Logic: If you have a complete midi arrangement and you want to write an easy to read sheet for a musician or an ensemble, you need to change a lot in the score arrangement. that probably means that you would mess up your midi-arrangement. Think of repeats (1st, 2nd, Coda, Segno and so on)

4) I work with Live and Sibelius, and I would never go and do things in only one of these programs: midiediting & scoring. Extracting single instruments from a score in eg in C into their natural key is an easy job in Sibelius or Finale. Not so easy to create, I guess.

5) I'm a classical trained musician. I want Live to show me the other world of music: electronical, loop based music!

6) If you are looking for a free solution, have a look at: noteflight.com
its possible to import midi-data via xml, they are working on a better solution.

Greez Bastian

I could imagine, to like a simple score view, must not have an edit function...

+1

$50 Guitar Pro has a score editor implemented - I started using Notator on the Atari before it became Logic and the score editor was great waaay back then. This shouldn't be that hard to do, and I would find it extremely useful.

If someone wants my song with notes, or wish to input notes in a collaboration, or if I simply wish to learn how to write and read notation within a familiar working space, or other reasons, a score editor would be great. It's been the way of writing music for centuries, while MIDI has only been around a couple of decades, and I'm quite sure notation isn't outdated quite yet

On the other hand, for personal needs, a MIDI editor with Sonar's features and then some wouldn't be bad at all!

Check the Mutopia Project http://www.mutopiaproject.org/ 1500 sheets made with LILYPOND (http://www.lilypond.org) that's real and beautiful (open source) score editing .

It would take far too much time for Ableton to make something like that. Let them concentrate on other things first, like multiple-miditrack-in-one-view-editing. That would streamline orchestral COMPOSING. SCORING can wait.

-1
There'd be a lot of programming involved and I don't imagine many Live users would want this.

If this was to come, I'd much rather see another collabration, a version of a well-working notation software for Live. For example Geniesoft's Overture is a notation program, that has a very good midi support, you can draw midi data envelopes directly into the score etc. So for example Overture for Live (or some other small and effective notation software) instead of a ground-up-built notation support that can't do much at the end.

In general I'd love to see many other softwares "for Live", since what they achieves with Max for Live seems to be pretty astounding. There's no reason to do everything yourself, if it already exists and in much better form.