Notation Composer and Musician 233 maintenance release

Hello Herbert,

Thanks for your description of the musical scenario in which the MIDI performance of the timpani roll is compromised during your editing with Composer.

I believe that you can avoid this problem with the tools already available in Composer. The important option named "Quantize the note locations and durations as notated" in the File / Save As command. To see that option, you must select MIDI File as the File Type in the File / Save As dialog box.

Perhaps you have already been using that option but are still having problems. Here's how I suspect the problem is happening:

1. Initially, you manually add the 16th notes on the quarter note beats. These notes sound right: they sound short relative to the beat, as they are held for one quarter of each beat.
2. You then save the MIDI file using the "Quantize the note locations and durations as notated" option.
3. When you play the MIDI file in Cubase, it sounds right. So far, so good.
4. You reopen the MIDI file in Composer. The 16th notes now appear as 8th notes on the quarter beat.
5. If you play the song in Composer now, it still sounds correct. Although the notes are displayed as 8th notes according to Composer's transcription, the notes are still correctly played as 16th notes. Composer has not changed the underlying MIDI timing of the notes. So far, half good. The part that is half good is that the notes are still played correctly. The part that is half bad is that the notes are displayed as 8th notes rather than 16th notes: Composer does not literally write out exact timing of notes, because usually this is undesirable. (See my post above on that subject.)
6. Now, if you save the song a second time as a MIDI file, using the "Quantize the note locations and durations as notated" option, there is a problem! The 8th notes are saved as MIDI 8th notes rather than 16th notes.
7. If you then play the saved MIDI file in Cubase, the crispness of the original 16th notes is lost: you'll hear 8th notes instead.

That's the problem. So, what can we do to deal with the problem?

In the long run, maybe there is some option I could add in Composer to literally transcribe MIDI rhythms upon opening a MIDI file. But I'm reluctant to do for the reasons described in my previous post in this thread.

Another possible solution in the long run is to use MusicXML as the file exchange format between Composer and your preferred external MIDI sequencer (e.g., Cubase). The MusicXML file format preserves both the MIDI timing of notes and the notated rhythms. MusicXML won't help you now because Composer does not yet support importing of MusicXML; and Cubase doesn't support either importing or exporting of MusicXML.

Another possible solution in the short-run would be for you to use Composer's MIDI sequencing tools: piano roll, note velocity, and MIDI graphs. However, you almost certainly have a good reason for going to Cubase for its MIDI sequencing tools instead. What tools are missing in Composer that you use in Cubase?

Note, I've already implemented advanced MIDI sequencing features for a Pro verison of Composer, including MIDI event lists and support for SysEx. Right now, however, I'm focusing 3.0 efforts on more basic usability and software quality issues.

Cheers
-- Mark