5 ms·

A piano roll visualization gives a somewhat more immediate depiction of intervallic information. But it isn't absolutely proportionately spaced, it's mapped to

A piano roll visualization gives a somewhat more immediate depiction of intervallic information. But it isn't absolutely proportionately spaced, it's mapped to keyboard topology. Two neighboring white keys could be a major or minor second apart, etc. (And if real piano topology is shown, asymmetric positioning of black keys mean that identical intervals with one white key and one black key are different in span.) In relation to the staff, pitches in standard notation are just as "proportionally spaced". Instead of squeezing in black keys, you have to squeeze in accidentals, but then accidentals are an extremely useful way of "showing how chords work", especially in the context of progressions in tonal harmony, which a piano roll gives you no meta-information about. It's less intuitive only in that you need some study to parse it fluently, at which point you gain the advantage of being untied to the layout of a particular physical instrument. In any quest to "understand how music actually works", as soon as you take some baby steps beyond the basic alphabet of intervals, a piano roll visualization is going to hold you back.

codeulike 6y ago
In all the software I've used, it is proportionally spaced. You're just used to thinking the old way. Trust me, the whole thing is a lot simpler if you just accept 12 equally spaced semitones, with 7 of them in play for any particular key.
- contingo 6y ago
  I don't trust you. You're just used to thinking in terms of the piano keyboard. As I said before, the distance between two adjacent white keys on a piano roll could be a major second, or it could be a minor second. In other words the same distance encodes different intervals. You don't know which it is until you also examine the position of the black keys. A keyboard where the twelve semitones were actually equally spaced would not have groupings of two vs. three black keys. Looking at the adjacency of the keys trivial to do, but so is reading an accidental, which gives you additional information about the functional role of the pitch it alters.
  - mb7733 6y ago
    On a piano roll the black and white keys are equally spaced. Two adjacent rows are always a semitone apart.
    - contingo 6y ago
      OK, I looked at some piano roll layouts in DAWs, and found examples with equal spacing between semitones, you're right. I looked at some music mapped onto this layout. The layout allowed for speedy recognition of lone intervals and simple chords, but no more so than standard notation, and it was far worse than standard notation at showing any higher level musical content (the harmonic function of those intervals and chords in the context of the piece or a progression, polyphony and independent voices in general, counterpoint, organization of rhythms and cross rhythms, phrasing, larger compositional structures...). Also, because it's just a homogenous field of repeating piano octaves there is much less to positionally anchor the eye on as it reads through, like a staff with ledger and bar lines would provide to a fluent sight reader. All this musical meaning is stripped away and to reinstate it would be a case of painstakingly decoding the piano roll rather than just fluently reading the music. I can see how this layout is really useful in a DAW for MIDI input and editing. As for learning the absolute basics of harmony, yeah it's accessible, if you can't be bothered to learn the basics of standard notation. After which point it's a dead end.
  - codeulike 6y ago
    You need to actually look at how piano rolls work in a DAW. The twelve semitones are all equally spaced.
    - contingo 6y ago
      OK, I looked at some piano roll layouts in DAWs, and found examples with equal spacing between semitones, you're right. I looked at some music mapped onto this layout. The layout allowed for speedy recognition of lone intervals and simple chords, but no more so than standard notation, and it was far worse than standard notation at showing any higher level musical content (the harmonic function of those intervals and chords in the context of the whole piece or local progression, polyphony and independent voices in general, counterpoint, organization of rhythms and cross rhythms, phrasing, larger compositional structures...). Also, because it's just a homogenous field of repeating piano octaves there is much less to positionally anchor the eye on as it reads through, like a staff with ledger and bar lines and key signature would provide to a fluent sight reader. All this musical meaning is stripped away and to reinstate it would be a case of painstakingly decoding the piano roll rather than just fluently reading the music. I can see how this layout is really useful in a DAW for MIDI input and editing. As for learning the absolute basics of harmony, yeah it's accessible, if you can't be bothered to learn the basics of standard notation. After which point it's a dead end.

codeulike 6y ago

In all the software I've used, it is proportionally spaced. You're just used to thinking the old way. Trust me, the whole thing is a lot simpler if you just accept 12 equally spaced semitones, with 7 of them in play for any particular key.

contingo 6y ago
I don't trust you. You're just used to thinking in terms of the piano keyboard. As I said before, the distance between two adjacent white keys on a piano roll could be a major second, or it could be a minor second. In other words the same distance encodes different intervals. You don't know which it is until you also examine the position of the black keys. A keyboard where the twelve semitones were actually equally spaced would not have groupings of two vs. three black keys. Looking at the adjacency of the keys trivial to do, but so is reading an accidental, which gives you additional information about the functional role of the pitch it alters.
- mb7733 6y ago
  On a piano roll the black and white keys are equally spaced. Two adjacent rows are always a semitone apart.
  - contingo 6y ago
    OK, I looked at some piano roll layouts in DAWs, and found examples with equal spacing between semitones, you're right. I looked at some music mapped onto this layout. The layout allowed for speedy recognition of lone intervals and simple chords, but no more so than standard notation, and it was far worse than standard notation at showing any higher level musical content (the harmonic function of those intervals and chords in the context of the piece or a progression, polyphony and independent voices in general, counterpoint, organization of rhythms and cross rhythms, phrasing, larger compositional structures...). Also, because it's just a homogenous field of repeating piano octaves there is much less to positionally anchor the eye on as it reads through, like a staff with ledger and bar lines would provide to a fluent sight reader. All this musical meaning is stripped away and to reinstate it would be a case of painstakingly decoding the piano roll rather than just fluently reading the music. I can see how this layout is really useful in a DAW for MIDI input and editing. As for learning the absolute basics of harmony, yeah it's accessible, if you can't be bothered to learn the basics of standard notation. After which point it's a dead end.
- codeulike 6y ago
  You need to actually look at how piano rolls work in a DAW. The twelve semitones are all equally spaced.
  - contingo 6y ago
    OK, I looked at some piano roll layouts in DAWs, and found examples with equal spacing between semitones, you're right. I looked at some music mapped onto this layout. The layout allowed for speedy recognition of lone intervals and simple chords, but no more so than standard notation, and it was far worse than standard notation at showing any higher level musical content (the harmonic function of those intervals and chords in the context of the whole piece or local progression, polyphony and independent voices in general, counterpoint, organization of rhythms and cross rhythms, phrasing, larger compositional structures...). Also, because it's just a homogenous field of repeating piano octaves there is much less to positionally anchor the eye on as it reads through, like a staff with ledger and bar lines and key signature would provide to a fluent sight reader. All this musical meaning is stripped away and to reinstate it would be a case of painstakingly decoding the piano roll rather than just fluently reading the music. I can see how this layout is really useful in a DAW for MIDI input and editing. As for learning the absolute basics of harmony, yeah it's accessible, if you can't be bothered to learn the basics of standard notation. After which point it's a dead end.