Any other serious composers using PRV?

[Jamie Kowalski]

I'd love to hear of anyone else out there who is using their sequencer's "piano-roll view" as a major composition tool. Particularly theory wonks, and those who use it as a choice in spite of solid training in more traditional technique.

I originally considered PRV as a necessary nuisance that I had to endure to make corrections for my orchestral realizations in Sonar. Soon it became clear that certain edits and transformations were much easier to do this way if I just set aside the notation until later.

Ultimately, I came to realize that PRV is more than a editing contrivance or curiosity; it is an absolute gift for me as a composer, allowing me to write things that otherwise never would have occurred to me. For the past three years, I have been writing almost exclusively in PRV. It took awhile to become comfortable with it, but it was absolutely worth it for me.

How about you?

[James Semple]

Wow, I was having this very discussion with two friends yesterday.

Basically I completely agree and I just completed a film cue last night that was written almost entirely in PRV. Full 4 part harmony written in strings. You can listen here.

[Jamie Kowalski]

Hi James,

Thanks for the reply.

I enjoyed your example. Very nice writing. Do you find that using PRV can break you out of old lines of thinking, or is it just a convenience? I'm interested in talking more about processes and such, if you'd like to carry on the conversation.

Here's an example of a work of mine for very large orchestra written entirely in PRV: Equilibrium. Many of the ideas in this piece I never would have conceived of using traditional means.

[Jamie Kowalski]

Thanks Ray,

I'm not familiar with what the key editor is. Is it Steinberg's term for piano-roll view?

[James Semple]

Hi Jamie,

I'm at work at the moment but I'll try and listen to Equilibrium when I get home tonight.

I do feel that PRV can stop me playing safe. It seems to make me focus on the horizontal considerations more than the vertical considerations. There are certainly a couple of sustained harmonies in my piece that I would not have written if working by ear or on the stave (the penultimate chord of D F C B for instance).

I also find that the visual aspect of PRV is helpful for turning simple chord changes into actual lines. The graphic nature lends itself to this kind of manipulation IMO. So, yes I have found it helpful and I frequently write 4 part harmony and contrapuntal ideas using PRV.

[Ronald (rolifer) Ferguson]

I started out composing in Sibelius and got used to it enough where I was pretty happy with it. Then a number of friends said to make my music sound better I needed a DAW. So I got Sonar and would compose in Sib and transfer the data into Sonar to get a final mix. Then I started toying around in Sonar and began to move things around some in the PRV. I would always open the PRV with one or maybe 2 instruments at a time to work. Then I started adding more instruments to the PRV and working there more. I did a number of pieces where I played the instruments (from my keyboard) into Sonar and moved the notes around in the PRV. I would even do some adding of notes etc until I am at the point now that I have one screen set up for the track view and everything else and the other monitor stays with the PRV with all of the instruments being displayed at once. I find I can get a better feel for a piece using the PRV than I ever did using staves.

Ron

[tony hartmann]

Hi Jamie
If the ear says it's right - it's right. Where did I see that?


Always in piano roll, listening,practicing, to write a nuanced piece like Kowalski's ORIGINAL Equilibrium. i do not ever expect anyone to perform my music, so I have stopped using notation.
best to you, Jamie
tony h

[Michael J Lawrence]

Wow, I thought I was the only one. I have composed using PRV for over 15 years now. There's a story. When I got out of the Navy and entered the civilian workforce, I was suddenly poor and had to sell all my music gear. I scraped together enough to get an XG card, which came with a Voyetra sequencer. I ran this on a 386. The only thing I had to compose with was my mouse. And I found that composing away from the keyboard liberated my compositions GREATLY. With the keyboard, if I couldn't play it, I couldn't write it. With the mouse, I can do anything. I haven't owned a keyboard since.

More recently I've started using Allegro and I actually prefer the traditional approach because I can correlate what's on the page with various theoretical ideas and structure. (Oh, that's what a German sixth looks like.) It also gives me a short path from basic SATB composition to full orchestration, which is really not possible in PRV. I've also found that going from PRV to something that the performer can use (read) can be problematic.

But, yeah, PRV works great imo. It takes a little longer and you gotta do a whole bunch of MIDI controller edits, but I think it's superior to keyboard composition.

-MJL

[Cyril C.]

Hello,

as I never studied the way of reading and writting music, when I first started tu use Cubase, I had to use the piano roll view. It's a very powerfull tool. It allows not only to enter the notes, their durations and their place, but also to manage with the expression.
When using my EWQLSO, it's the only tool I use to compose.
That's why I don't own a big notation software such as Sibelius or Finale. I just use a notation software in order to obtain a clean score for my piano exercices.

[Jean Paul Zoghbi]

I use Pro Tools 8, and with this version pro tool has added a score editor in additiont to the PRV, Its a miniature version of Sibelius score editor. (I think they bought Sibelius and plan to integrate it fully with pro Tools). So you can open both windows, tweak the notes in PRV and they will automatically change in the score editor. Its a cool feature, once you are done with teh orchestration, you can export it directly into Sibelius for performance purposes.