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.

[Ray Kemp]

I'm obviously not a serious composer, as I have used no visual page other than the key editor since Steinberg began developing their software sequencing. I dabbled with the drum edit page for a while but now I just use key edit.

[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?

[Ray Kemp]

yes

[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.

[Marius Amado-Alves]

As someone else said (I think), it very much depends on your creative process. If PRV makes you "write things that otherwise never would have occurred to you", then that's a very specific process you got there, one based on the writing device. And PRV works for you there. Other processes seem to be performance based (you sit at the piano and, well, compose); and "inner ear" processes (basically you think up your tunes, sometimes in your dreams). Personally I am more of the latter denomination. But I find PRV very useful too, for some purposes, principally arrangements, principally for rock group, principally to visualize well the octaves that each part is playing, this requires a PRV with different colours for each part. In rock we need to be more carefull with octave clashes, probably because the instruments are very powerful. I find the coloured PVR is the best way to audit a rock piece for that issue. The tradicional score does not visualise the octaves well. The print octave is not the actual one for guitars and bass. Add an organ or piano (written in the actual octave), and it's hard to verify that the chords on the organ and on the guitar are not stomping on each other for example. Same thing for orchestral scores with all that damned transposing instruments sharing octaves specially winds and brass. Long live coloured PRV :-)

[Jan Civil]

In spite of training?

Notation just barely gives instructions to people, who tend to be reliable to the degree you pay them to be; and still require being told about a lot more than what's on the page.

There is no one who can achieve in a live performance the articulations needed for. most parts in an orch.
It's what there is to work with today. I live in the key editor.

I didn't have lines of thinking to get rid of. I made scores on paper, but it isn't a thing. It's just another way of abstracting what you had in mind. I record and edit. I find things in the editing I doubt I'd find on paper. I don't do on paper, it's an intermediary step which isn't helpful to me at this point. I wouldn't go so far as to say the process is based on the device. The device is wide open as far as I'm concerned.

I'm with James on the horizontal thing, but I'm horizontal first as it is. (insert ribald joke here)
I go with the ear, the ear is all. I kind of stupidly or blindly find the shapes with some kind of controller.
I use the drum editor for one thing basically, I make a map of a kit or instrument, and it's a list on the right (it's an upside down list, but fine, whatever.
In Cubase, 4000 ppqn is available. so that's finely resolved edits; with the ability to change the tempo by 1/1000th of a beat per minute, at t

his extended zoom if you need it, it really obviates any other visual way of approaching a composition, IME.

here is an example of (guess how much %) key editor realized (the electronic sound design is in Absynth, my own from scratch recipes, which had nothing to do with a keyboard except to initiate note ons; much of it's not even 12-tone ET).

[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