left/right hand split point, third bar?

[FransK]

Hi,

Great program, I found it just at the right time. Unfortunately I've had no time yet to use it seriously.

But I do have a few questions, based on my (not so recent) experience with an electronic organ (2 keyboards and pedals, each having their own sound and channel(s), and midi).

a) low notes on the upper bar / for left hand seem to be displayed on the lower bar. the split point seems to be somewhere near C2.
Is there a way to make the right-hand part beeing shown in the upper bar only? An adjstable split point?


The next points should be regarded as request for future enhancemets.

b) choose a sound and track for each bar individually?

c) A third bar for the pedals of an organ?
And a control to switch listening to the (different, ajustable) pedal channel on or off.

Probably this can be solved by preparing different midi files with the left-hand, pedal, or both put in the same track. And some real-time midi filter to transform the notes coming from the pedal channel to the left-hand channel.

Regard,
Frans

[Louis B.]

At present the split point is fixed at middle C midi C4 for those channels that don't use left and right hand channels 3 + 4. I am not sure what you meant in your post. I think you where refering to the stave not the bar! Please post a screen shot and the midi file if you wish to report a bug.

Louis

[tango]

FransK:

I believe what you are referring to is that piano parts do not live in a world where left hand is only below middle C and right hand above middle C.  

I play pieces where a lot of the left hand is in a treble clef and may in fact move between Treble and Bass Staves in the left hand.  So in fact the left and right hands are determined by the individual piece being played and often float between staves!

This problem is something that I have been working on.

In an ideal world, notation programs would have to have the functionality to allow the entry of a breakpoint that is user controlled that contains the note that would separate left and right hands display.

example: breakpoint would be a midi f4

This would mean that the notation display can have three possibilities:
===========================================================
Treble.........................Bass................Treble.......................................

Bass.................................................................................................
===========================================================

===========================================================
Treble..................................................................................................

Treble.............................Bass.................Treble......................................
===========================================================
Bass..................Treble.................Bass..................................................

Bass...................................................................................................
===========================================================

Right now this separation is done using channels in midi in almost all notation programs.

To support the above setup then, the music can in fact be part of the same channel and the display split be determined by the breakpoint set by the player.  Even if the midi is multi channel, the actual stave display could be determined by the left/right  breakpoint.

I am working on a midi utility that would parse a midi file and based on the breakpoint change the stave or channel where it is to be displayed. But I'm in the initial stages.

[Louis B.]

this is exactly the type of thing I would like to be integrating into PB so if you do write a utility then perhaps you could write it so it could be integrated into PB one day. What languages do you write your code?

{look at for example examineMidiEvent(CMidiEvent event) in Tracklist.cpp line 64 from svn source code which writes to m_noteFrequency which is used to try and guess the key signature}.

I also wanted to add an -av8 feature to so that I could play the bass line. The bass lines are often quite easy and fun to play. Trying to get PB to guess where to put av8 markings may be possible but not ideal.

I'm on holiday until the 2nd Sept but we can talk about it more then.

Louis

[FransK]

Louis B. wrote:

I think you where refering to the stave not the bar!

You are absolutely correct, my mistake.

I was testing with a quite complicated midi file "eagles-hotel-california.mid" with a lot of instruments / tracks and loads of control events, (trying to) playing a solo fragment on a track set to channel 4 with the right hand.
Forget about this file, I will start with my own training files, to be made from my old music lessons books - "the complete organ player" series. And use the channels as you described.

Besides, "tango" gave a good explanation of the situation in his reply.

As example to my post, here are 2 fragments from pieces arranged for (electonic) organ :

* A line from the intro of Jealousy showing some low notes for the right hand, and both left hand and pedals are put together in a single bass stave . Pedals and left hand are of course played - and practiced - with different parts of the body, and normally pedals are on a separate midi channel.

* And the intro of Rhapsody in Blue also with low notes for the right hand but the pedal section written down in a separate stave.

I certainly would appreciate if the notes for the right hand always stay on the upper stave. If there is a change of key in any stave, show that in the stave.

Have a nice holyday.

[FransK]

Hi Louis,

I did some testing with a little midi file I created myself (the intro of Rhapsody in Blue, see my other post). I use the Myriad Harmony (version 9.4.7 on Windows Vista-64) program to enter music.

a) type-1 midi export from Myriad Harmony will not load (no warning given).
Type-0 export does load normally.
And older dump program stopped also, could not handle meta events.
I have included RiB-intro-v03-ch3%28typ0%29.zip both the type 0 and type 1 midi files and their ascii dumps.
(note: the notes in bar 3 and onward are not all correct)

b) the stave split of course: low right hand notes displayed in the bass stave.

c) the B-Flat (2 flats) signature is shown as B-Major (5 sharps) after loading the file.
Work-around: you can manually switch to B-flat after loading.

d) the sequence of short notes are shown on top of each other.
See the screen dump . For the original score see the RhapsodyInBlue image in my previous post.
After the first note there are seventeen 1/32-th notes in the time of 16.
In the dump I noticed that the next note begins before a note end. (I haven't yet tried to shorten the notes so that the don't overlap).

e) latency of the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth in Vista
When I installed the Vista drivers for my Yamaha KX61 keyboard (or Cubase AI 4 ?), there was also installed the "ASIO DiirectX Full duplex driver" This should have much less latency then the MS GS Synth (the latter cleary beeing designed for playback-only purposes).

n.b.  This driver does not show up in the selection list of PB, but I do not know if it should? Probably I should find a soft-synth that uses this ASIO driver.

Regards,

[Louis B.]

Hi

Thanks for the example midi files I am fixing some of these problems,

a) Fixed for next release.

b) I am not planning to do a third stave for bass peddles just yet. There are lots of imperfections on the score at the moment. Please read music from a printed version of the music score -- PB was always intended to be used this way.  Use MIDI channels 3 + 4 for LH + RH.  

c) Fixed for next release. (Most midi files do not include the key signature and so PB has too try and guess the key signature when not provided)

d) This is a quantising error (pb tries to guess what is a cord -- when a midi file is recorded live the musician does not press each note at exactly the same time) it currently hard coded to 10 ticks using 96 ppqn. it could perhaps be improved but a glissando is difficult to handle.

e) Midi Yoke may help you. PB just uses midi output that the OS makes available.

Louis

[FransK]

Thanks Louis,

I am working on switching over to Linux (openSuse-64 11.1), so I could use the new version as soon as you release the source.
After a lot of troubles the usb keyboard is working. Building PianoBooster went smoothly. Now my music editor Harmony (needs Wine).

[Louis B.]

OK the source is now available in svn type

svn co https://pianobooster.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/pianobooster/trunk/PianoBooster 

Please can you check that it fixes the bugs you reported

Louis

[ArtInvent]

Thanks for all the work on PianoBooster. It's pretty much exactly what I'm looking for as a piano learning tool. I've been using it only a short while. I'm on Ubuntu 9.04 (64). It's very clever.

Immediately about the only glaring shortfall I see is what you are discussing in this thread - the fact that the left hand part does not always confine itself to below middle C and likewise the right hand part not always being above middle C. But that this how PianoBooster seems to always treat left and right hand parts. Actually, it seems to me that most classical piano pieces do this quite a bit as a rule. And of course it's not just a matter of being able to adjust a fixed split point, as the actual split may change quite a bit during a piece, and in fact the hands may cross over each other quite fluidly. So yeah, it's a matter of having the left hand on one channel completely, and the right on the other. But it seems like you are already discussing this.

I am unclear as to whether this will improved in the upcoming release.

Right now I can actually get my wife to record just the left hand part on a midi piano, then use that midi file to learn just the left hand part, for instance. So in that way you can at least get around it a little bit, though it's not ideal.

But even then you have another problem which is purely visual: in PianoBooster right now, any note above middle C always appears in the treble staff, whereas on real sheet music, if it's left hard part it generally appears with extra ledger lines above the bass clef staff. So this means there is a quite a disconnect between learning the notes on piano booster, and then trying to sightread that same piece from the printed sheet music.

I realize that a lot of this depends on how the midi file is written/recorded/compiled/whatever, and that users would have to have a correctly formatted file to ever hope to get this to appear as desired even if pianobooster is capable of displaying it.

Finally, it would obviously be nice to have note duration and stems going either up or down. That would be icing on the cake, howerever.

Any improvements along these lines would make playing along with PianoBooster look a lot closer to reading actual sheet music. And I think that would make it extremely appealing to a lot of piano students and teachers who would have a free OSS tool that everyone could use.

Anyway, thanks for noting these suggestions, and I look forward to watching the continued development.

[Louis B.]

ArtInvent,

Please read my reply to this post:

http://n2.nabble.com/How-do-you-play-multiple-parts-tp3494114p3495233.html

You have to have the left and right-hand parts on different midi channels currently 3 & 4 the new version will take any two midi channels. I am now just tidying up ready for a new version. test version coming soon.

as for note durations it is in my long term plans put probably not coming any time soon. See

http://n2.nabble.com/Some-thoughts-on-the-scrolling-note-display-td2106262.html#a2106262

Louis