Inspector as a Substitute for Roll Editor

• Oct 17, 2020 - 14:23

Roll Editor's function is to edit the playback of notes put in the score. It is fine for some cases where you only have to change few notes, but what if you want to edit many notes at a time? Especially if you must change between parts to do so, in an orchestral score for example?

I think we should find a faster way. I mean, if you feel it :D

My idea would be to include the options that the roll editor gives us, into the inspector. BASICALLY, whenever we click a note we see extra settings about the note's playback, like changing velocity, duration and such, all the basic things you can change through the roll editor.

How would that be faster? This alone could not be faster. But imagine if it worked just like when selecting similar items in the score. You would quickly select all parts, instead of sitting down applying each change to one part at a time through roll editor. Also, maybe some people find it easier to handle than roll editor, which is quiet different than the score you usually look at. Is that just me? HmMm I don't know.

Am I the only one who finds roll editor a pain to look at and analyze?

Comments

• Oct 17, 2020 - 14:35

I don't use the PRE, I think when you say the roll editor you mean the piano roll editor. I agree that the graphic display is meaningless to me and I don't have enough desire to play with it and check out its capabilities so I'm not sure how easy it is to manipulate several notes at once. I understand its basic function.

The inspector allows you to select several items of the same type and manipulate them in limited ways. Changing velocity in the middle of a note like you can do in the PRE and the start and stop times and a few other thing the PRE can do would make the inspector a beast. The inspector is already intimidating to those unfamiliar with it. To add PRE capabilities, I don't think that would be a good idea. This is just me thinking out loud.

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• Oct 17, 2020 - 14:44

  1. Yes I know it's piano roll editor, I usually just call it roll editor sorry for the confusion.

    I WANT people to think out loud bruh, that's the point of my posts. Because I also speak out loudly my own selfish requests, like this one.

    I see, so you think that adding PRE's capabilities to the inspector would make inspector look too complicated? What if we had a special window for those? The point is that I want to be able to handle the note values in a way similar to handling stuff with the inspector. I mean that thing about "selecting similar items" and such. PRE opens an extra window which kind of annoys me, unlike the inspector which just stays on the far right, normally, and you can have quick access to it, without changing windows.

    So what about having an extra panel which reacts to selections similar to the inspector?

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• Oct 17, 2020 - 14:59

I do encourage you to keep thinking. I never want to make you think I'm discouraging you. Since the PRE is something I don't use I'm not sure about another window. I don't think it would hurt anything. It would be nice to get other's thoughts on it but the forum is not usually a good place to get opinions. Perhaps the Facebook page (which I don't use) would get more feedback.

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• Oct 17, 2020 - 17:21

I find the piano roll editor a bit tricky too but partly because I don't play any piano. An enhanced inspector sounds easier and faster. Maybe something along the lines of BSG's Articulation Plugin would be a starting point. I wouldn't see this replacing the PRE but as an alternative as I'm sure there will be times when the PRE view works better.

So, basically, I really like your suggestion, especially if it could work with the selection modes.

https://musescore.org/en/project/articulation-and-ornamentation-control

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• Oct 17, 2020 - 19:49

OnTime, Offtime and Length are PRE options. It's easy enough to add velocity or any other properties/methods which are exposed via the plugin API. "Selected" shows the note pitch, (also a PRE field), when a single note is selected; when more than 1 it shows how many notes are in the selection.

LET RING is essentially BSG's Articulation option renamed for guitar.

LEFT HAND FINGERING is guitar specific and makes it much easier to colour code notes by finger number.

It's a possible starting point for an extended inspector.

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• Oct 17, 2020 - 20:23

What I was thinking... That some values should be attributed to articulation and not to the notes themselves. For example, staccatos should have an option that defines the note's duration, or accents should have an option for the volume of the note, and let you decide whether a decrescendo should be heard or not and if yes then which will be the final volume.

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• Oct 17, 2020 - 21:32

Good examples uses, a bit like text styles but then applied to notes rather than to text.

It would also be possible to have more than a single variant of these defined for a score and to select from them easily. Maybe a button to play current measure would be handy for checking the applied articulation.

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• Oct 18, 2020 - 01:30

+1 for adding stuff to the inspector… I normally only need to change the end time in the pianoroll editor, but for multiple notes at once (SATB, occasionally more), and navigating between notes, especially between staves, in the PRE is so hard I just close it, select the next note and open it again, which takes quite an amount of work (plus the PRE normally doesn’t even show the selected note upon opening, I have to scroll vertically by some random amount to find it), or give up and edit the XML…

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