Show the note length in musical notation
Posted on 6-Feb-06 14:55Viewed 1292 times
In the edit segment window can you provide an option to show the note length in musical notation? Show it either as a graphic or simply spell it out (Eighth note, quarter note, dotted eighth, etc).
Note lengths in Songtrix can be any number of ticks (time units) long.
The number of ticks per quarter note is defined in each song (under Song-Setup-Controls) and is also indicated in the status bar (as Tpq=).
The distance between beat counts within each bar in Segment View indicate a quarter note (for n/4 time, eg 3/4, 4/4) or an eighth-note (eg. 6/8, 12/8), so you can see graphically the length of the notes.
We will probably have some kind of staff view option by the time of final release, but this will have to approximate the real length of most notes, whereas the "piano roll" view that exists now can indicate their exact length by the horizontal size of the events.
It is better to have flexible note lengths, rather than limiting them to what staff notation can represent, otherwise musical expression would always be very mechanical during playback.
If you want the convenience of working with quantized note lengths when editing, you can do this easily using the Snap To Grid function, with the gridline spacing of your choice (2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16 or 24 gridlines per quarter note).