Dave Luebbert brought his Mac to the geek dinner we held on Thursday night (about 40 people showed up). Why did he do that? So he could compose a song right in front of me during the geek dinner.
Hey, yesterday was Mozart’s birthday so this is fitting.
Anyway, what is SongTrellis. It’s a program that looks like a sheet of music. Dave was able to use it to draw out notes and play them back. Or, he could have the computer come up with some notes of its own and he could play them back, delete them if not appropriate, try again. Manually manipulate them. I could see how, if in the hands of someone with musical talent, this could be used to build music very quickly.
Yet another digital lifestyle story. Sorry, this one is for the Mac only. But then if you knew Dave you’d know that to be the case (he was on the first Word for Macintosh teams at Microsoft and has since left Microsoft to work on stuff like SongTrellis).
Very cool app! I’m gonna get Patrick (my 12-year-old son) to try it out. In free beta now, but he expects to charge less than $100 for the completed software.
Oh, and Patrick says thanks to the Mac/Office team who sent him a copy of Mac Office and Virtual PC for his Mac. He’s sitting on the couch right now playing with Windows on his Mac. Ahh, maybe he’ll come back around to the dark side of the force! 🙂
Scobleizer 
Yeah, Dave demoed the app and alot of stuff website as well to me, really cool stuff. Perfect for my iBook thats a bit too slow for garageband…
I’m going to pass it along to some of the more musically inclined people in my family too.
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Yeah, Dave demoed the app and alot of stuff website as well to me, really cool stuff. Perfect for my iBook thats a bit too slow for garageband…
I’m going to pass it along to some of the more musically inclined people in my family too.
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Greetings from Mozart-Country Austria. Sorry, I could not come the geek dinner, but it was some thousand miles away …
Georg
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Greetings from Mozart-Country Austria. Sorry, I could not come the geek dinner, but it was some thousand miles away …
Georg
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Robert,
Don’t forget you’ve got a fun music tool closer to home:
the Tablet PC composition tool
It’s free and inkable. And OK not very sophisticated but Mozart would still probably have come up with a something decent.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/tabletpc.mspx
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Robert,
Don’t forget you’ve got a fun music tool closer to home:
the Tablet PC composition tool
It’s free and inkable. And OK not very sophisticated but Mozart would still probably have come up with a something decent.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/tabletpc.mspx
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If you are a member of the SongTrellis site and use a Workscore (one is provided for free to any member) you can compose new music using one of the SongTrellis Workscore pages. I wanted to have a way for folks to play even when they don’t own Macs or don’t yet have a copy of the SongTrellis Music Editor for Macintosh (the complete name of the Mac software I demoed to Robert).
When you first view your Workscore, you’ll see that it displays an empty sheetmusic page. The three SongTrellis pages that allow you to view and edit your workscore are Workscore Chord Entry (URL: http://www.songtrellis.com/workscore), Chord Entry By Grid (URL:http://www.songtrellis.com.chordGrid3), and Workscore Composer (URL: http://www.songtrellis.com/workscoreComposer2)
There is a two-step recipe for writing new music using SongTrellis Workscores:
1) First, you need to write or copy one or more chords into your score. The site provides three ways to get this done. Workscore Chord Entry and Chord Entry By Grid are two of those ways.
2) Second, you use the controls provided by the Workscore Composer page on SongTrellis to invent a new melody that harmonizes with your chord sequence.
This recipe page (http://www.songtrellis.com/composersRecipe) describes how to compose using Workscores in greater detail.
The SongTrellis Music Editor will be available for free public beta in a few more days, as soon as I can set up the download pages. Send me mail if you’d like to get an email notice when it becomes available: davidlu at songtrellis.com
Zach Graves just submitted his first score to SongTrellis a few hours ago using the Workscore pages (http://www.songtrellis.com/discuss/msgReader$4716). (Hi Zach!) I’m pretty sure this is the first music he’s ever composed. He learned to do this by helping me write that small tune that we posted from the geek dinner.
The Workscore pages will be free for SongTrellis members as we shake the bugs out of the software and make it run smoothly. We will institute a small charge for usage when we feel it’s completely solid and are certain that it’s a good experience for those who use it.
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If you are a member of the SongTrellis site and use a Workscore (one is provided for free to any member) you can compose new music using one of the SongTrellis Workscore pages. I wanted to have a way for folks to play even when they don’t own Macs or don’t yet have a copy of the SongTrellis Music Editor for Macintosh (the complete name of the Mac software I demoed to Robert).
When you first view your Workscore, you’ll see that it displays an empty sheetmusic page. The three SongTrellis pages that allow you to view and edit your workscore are Workscore Chord Entry (URL: http://www.songtrellis.com/workscore), Chord Entry By Grid (URL:http://www.songtrellis.com.chordGrid3), and Workscore Composer (URL: http://www.songtrellis.com/workscoreComposer2)
There is a two-step recipe for writing new music using SongTrellis Workscores:
1) First, you need to write or copy one or more chords into your score. The site provides three ways to get this done. Workscore Chord Entry and Chord Entry By Grid are two of those ways.
2) Second, you use the controls provided by the Workscore Composer page on SongTrellis to invent a new melody that harmonizes with your chord sequence.
This recipe page (http://www.songtrellis.com/composersRecipe) describes how to compose using Workscores in greater detail.
The SongTrellis Music Editor will be available for free public beta in a few more days, as soon as I can set up the download pages. Send me mail if you’d like to get an email notice when it becomes available: davidlu at songtrellis.com
Zach Graves just submitted his first score to SongTrellis a few hours ago using the Workscore pages (http://www.songtrellis.com/discuss/msgReader$4716). (Hi Zach!) I’m pretty sure this is the first music he’s ever composed. He learned to do this by helping me write that small tune that we posted from the geek dinner.
The Workscore pages will be free for SongTrellis members as we shake the bugs out of the software and make it run smoothly. We will institute a small charge for usage when we feel it’s completely solid and are certain that it’s a good experience for those who use it.
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Hmmm! ‘Dark side of the force’. I must say that you have a good sense of humor. I hope Patrick is not the chosen one to bring balance to the force. 🙂
Rohit
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Hmmm! ‘Dark side of the force’. I must say that you have a good sense of humor. I hope Patrick is not the chosen one to bring balance to the force. 🙂
Rohit
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There are similar tools for the PC. Sticks (my middle drummer son) uses Sibelius (high-end), but Finale is sold in modules that build upon each other. Sticks has used it since 2003 for music composition and writing charts. He switched to Sibelius because it has higher-quality MIDI capabilities and has been doing charts for many local (famous) musicians in our area for the past year.
His opinion (having used both Mac and PC tools) is that there is no comparison — the PC wins. That’s got a lot to do with speed and ease of use (!) for him. Mostly speed because he has no patience for slow machines. Possibly the Intel Mac would change his mind, but he’ll tell ya this little tool has nothing on his little $50 PrintMusic module.
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There are similar tools for the PC. Sticks (my middle drummer son) uses Sibelius (high-end), but Finale is sold in modules that build upon each other. Sticks has used it since 2003 for music composition and writing charts. He switched to Sibelius because it has higher-quality MIDI capabilities and has been doing charts for many local (famous) musicians in our area for the past year.
His opinion (having used both Mac and PC tools) is that there is no comparison — the PC wins. That’s got a lot to do with speed and ease of use (!) for him. Mostly speed because he has no patience for slow machines. Possibly the Intel Mac would change his mind, but he’ll tell ya this little tool has nothing on his little $50 PrintMusic module.
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Rohit: we’re gonna do a podcast called “black and white.” My computer is black. His is white. Enough said. 🙂
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Rohit: we’re gonna do a podcast called “black and white.” My computer is black. His is white. Enough said. 🙂
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I agree with Neil. I was doing this very same thing on a Tablet PC almost 3 years ago by drawing the notes on the screen with the pen.
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I agree with Neil. I was doing this very same thing on a Tablet PC almost 3 years ago by drawing the notes on the screen with the pen.
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Neil and Jon,
I would guess that if you downloaded a chord progression from the SongTrellis site and added some random notes to the score by drawing notes over the progression, you would produce a musical trainwreck with your first motion which you would instantly want to throw away. I would also guess that if you got three notes by chance that fit that accompaniment, you’d never get to note six or seven, much less write eight bars of musically sound melody in 2 minutes, which is what Robert witnessed during his demo.
DrumsN’Whistles,
Sibelius and Finale are wonderful tools for the musically well-schooled. I’d guess that your son studied for many years, possibly with ample instruction by wonderful teachers, before he got to the point where he could produce musical results using those apps. He very likely composes at the piano writing notes on paper before he enters them into his computer scores. I doubt that those editors assist him in the invention of his melodies.
Those apps will add the notes the user has the wit to point out on a musical staff. They do not have the formulas for different chord types built in. There is no knowledge built into those apps that recognize which scale choices are liable to produce musical results above a given chord.
They lack the ability to voice the chords in an accompaniment automatically so that a musically pleasant transition between each chord in a sequence occurs. I believe in both Sibelius or Finale the musician has to rely on his training to decide on the staff position of every note in a chord. In SongTrellis, we just say that we need a chord of a certain duration and chord type that is built on the chosen chord root. Entering a single chord via mouse and keyboard is a one second operation rather than the 10 or 15 seconds that it takes the supremely knowledgeable to accomplish using the same input devices with the other editors.
I do recognize that skilled folk can play their chords on a keyboard and capture chords quickly that way. It takes years of piano practice to do this fluently.
The SongTrellis score instantly displays the chord symbol for the chord that was entered properly aligned above it. Last I checked in Finale and Sibelius, they don’t recognize the name of what’s been entered. The composer has to analyze what he’s played, name it, and add that name to the score.
They do not provide assistance to find the next note up or down from the previous note in the accompanying chord or matching scale and add a note with that pitch to the end of the melody. They are unable to combine these operators in different combinations, so that the app can propose an additional half-bar to three bars of melody to add to the end of the score that fit the current harmonic context.
The existence of these features made it possible to compose so very quickly. They are also the things that make it possible for musical neophytes to immediately produce music that fits a harmonic context after their first exposure to the program. I think SongTrellis is an advance because folks can invent melody that makes sense without advanced training being necessary.
It was this characteristic of the SongTrellis Editor that made Robert believe that it might be fun for a 12-year old to use.
From what I’ve seen today, the SongTrellis Workscore composer features that are available on the website, might be equally fun to use. Zach Graves, who I demoed to on Thursday, submitted his first score to the site this morning using those tools from the website. I don’t believe that he’s ever composed before.
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Neil and Jon,
I would guess that if you downloaded a chord progression from the SongTrellis site and added some random notes to the score by drawing notes over the progression, you would produce a musical trainwreck with your first motion which you would instantly want to throw away. I would also guess that if you got three notes by chance that fit that accompaniment, you’d never get to note six or seven, much less write eight bars of musically sound melody in 2 minutes, which is what Robert witnessed during his demo.
DrumsN’Whistles,
Sibelius and Finale are wonderful tools for the musically well-schooled. I’d guess that your son studied for many years, possibly with ample instruction by wonderful teachers, before he got to the point where he could produce musical results using those apps. He very likely composes at the piano writing notes on paper before he enters them into his computer scores. I doubt that those editors assist him in the invention of his melodies.
Those apps will add the notes the user has the wit to point out on a musical staff. They do not have the formulas for different chord types built in. There is no knowledge built into those apps that recognize which scale choices are liable to produce musical results above a given chord.
They lack the ability to voice the chords in an accompaniment automatically so that a musically pleasant transition between each chord in a sequence occurs. I believe in both Sibelius or Finale the musician has to rely on his training to decide on the staff position of every note in a chord. In SongTrellis, we just say that we need a chord of a certain duration and chord type that is built on the chosen chord root. Entering a single chord via mouse and keyboard is a one second operation rather than the 10 or 15 seconds that it takes the supremely knowledgeable to accomplish using the same input devices with the other editors.
I do recognize that skilled folk can play their chords on a keyboard and capture chords quickly that way. It takes years of piano practice to do this fluently.
The SongTrellis score instantly displays the chord symbol for the chord that was entered properly aligned above it. Last I checked in Finale and Sibelius, they don’t recognize the name of what’s been entered. The composer has to analyze what he’s played, name it, and add that name to the score.
They do not provide assistance to find the next note up or down from the previous note in the accompanying chord or matching scale and add a note with that pitch to the end of the melody. They are unable to combine these operators in different combinations, so that the app can propose an additional half-bar to three bars of melody to add to the end of the score that fit the current harmonic context.
The existence of these features made it possible to compose so very quickly. They are also the things that make it possible for musical neophytes to immediately produce music that fits a harmonic context after their first exposure to the program. I think SongTrellis is an advance because folks can invent melody that makes sense without advanced training being necessary.
It was this characteristic of the SongTrellis Editor that made Robert believe that it might be fun for a 12-year old to use.
From what I’ve seen today, the SongTrellis Workscore composer features that are available on the website, might be equally fun to use. Zach Graves, who I demoed to on Thursday, submitted his first score to the site this morning using those tools from the website. I don’t believe that he’s ever composed before.
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“Oh, and Patrick says thanks to the Mac/Office team who sent him a copy of Mac Office and Virtual PC for his Mac.”
What does he say to the Mac/WMP Team?
You did promise to learn the story and (ha, ha, ha!) do something about it.
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“Oh, and Patrick says thanks to the Mac/Office team who sent him a copy of Mac Office and Virtual PC for his Mac.”
What does he say to the Mac/WMP Team?
You did promise to learn the story and (ha, ha, ha!) do something about it.
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Goebbels: I haven’t learned yet and am not done hitting execs on the backs of their hands.
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Goebbels: I haven’t learned yet and am not done hitting execs on the backs of their hands.
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David,
Sticks is 16 — he’s been using Finale and Sibelius for about 3 years…they’re easier to learn than you’d think, but yes, having a musical education certainly helps. Of course, it would help regardless of the software. But right out of the box, he used the built-in arpeggios to help with the composition piece (without any piano lessons…), which was really my point. If you have a piece of software that has arpeggios and keying built into it, you can do what Robert described in his post with very little formal music education, and it works very nicely and seamlessly on the PC.
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David,
Sticks is 16 — he’s been using Finale and Sibelius for about 3 years…they’re easier to learn than you’d think, but yes, having a musical education certainly helps. Of course, it would help regardless of the software. But right out of the box, he used the built-in arpeggios to help with the composition piece (without any piano lessons…), which was really my point. If you have a piece of software that has arpeggios and keying built into it, you can do what Robert described in his post with very little formal music education, and it works very nicely and seamlessly on the PC.
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But what does your son think? That was the question.
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But what does your son think? That was the question.
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Hey, the SongTrellis website puts a kind of underwater housing around a copy of the SongTrellis Editor running on a Mac server so that Windows users or any other netizens can try this stuff out by using the site’s Workscore Composer page (mentioned above in comment 4).
I think we’ve done stuff that’s an improvement on the arppegiator idea that other editors use. These are available to play with on the Workscore Composer page. That way, you might gather enough intelligence that you’ll be driven to taunt your favorite editor vendor with new feature requests ;-).
That page provides a kind of arppegiator by way of a control grouping whose title reads “Enter Next Chord Tone” that’s followed by buttons labelled “Up” and “Down”. Most arppegiators, I think, require a fixed duration for the notes that are generated. In SongTrellis and on the website, the composer can select a rhythm pattern, a cycle of different durations, that determines the durations of the next notes entered. The up and down buttons let you draw melodic contours where the melody notes fit the underlying harmony with varied durations. This operator also notices when the melody is going to be accompanied by a different chord, and changes to pick pitches from that chord when Up or Down is next pressed.
The editor also knows which scales sound best when played over a particular chord, which makes it possible to offer a “Enter Next Scale Tone” control group with Up and Down buttons which cause notes from the accompanying scale to be entered. This operator also tracks the chord accompaniment and changes the scale that’s used for newly chosen notes.
On the website, the scale that is used is the default scale for that type of chord. In the Mac Editor, users have many scale choices that they can change at will, as they invent their melody.
You get very cool melodies when you change between Chord and Scale entry and change direction every few beats with a Rhythm Pattern selected. When it sounds like you have made a phrase long enough, you choose to rest for a few note durations by pressing the Composer pages’s “Insert Rest At End” button.
To use the Workscore Composer page, you do need to get chords into the score first. To have a simple example harmony to play with, use the Workscore Chord Entry page (URL is up above in comment #4),to enter Dmi7 G7 and CMA7 twice. If you dig into the SongTrellis Excerpt Service, you’ll learn how to snag harmony from existing tunes and copy that into your Workscore.
If your own ear is good, you should be able to write an interesting piece yourself using this stuff, with the hints above. If you like what you’ve done, use the “Submit To SongTrellis” button and it’ll be listed under your name in the “Our Composers” section of the site.
This will be my last word for this comment on Robert’s site, since I don’t want to wear out my welcome here. If you have any questions, comments, or want to beta the Mac editor, send me email (davidlu at songtrellis.com)
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Hey, the SongTrellis website puts a kind of underwater housing around a copy of the SongTrellis Editor running on a Mac server so that Windows users or any other netizens can try this stuff out by using the site’s Workscore Composer page (mentioned above in comment 4).
I think we’ve done stuff that’s an improvement on the arppegiator idea that other editors use. These are available to play with on the Workscore Composer page. That way, you might gather enough intelligence that you’ll be driven to taunt your favorite editor vendor with new feature requests ;-).
That page provides a kind of arppegiator by way of a control grouping whose title reads “Enter Next Chord Tone” that’s followed by buttons labelled “Up” and “Down”. Most arppegiators, I think, require a fixed duration for the notes that are generated. In SongTrellis and on the website, the composer can select a rhythm pattern, a cycle of different durations, that determines the durations of the next notes entered. The up and down buttons let you draw melodic contours where the melody notes fit the underlying harmony with varied durations. This operator also notices when the melody is going to be accompanied by a different chord, and changes to pick pitches from that chord when Up or Down is next pressed.
The editor also knows which scales sound best when played over a particular chord, which makes it possible to offer a “Enter Next Scale Tone” control group with Up and Down buttons which cause notes from the accompanying scale to be entered. This operator also tracks the chord accompaniment and changes the scale that’s used for newly chosen notes.
On the website, the scale that is used is the default scale for that type of chord. In the Mac Editor, users have many scale choices that they can change at will, as they invent their melody.
You get very cool melodies when you change between Chord and Scale entry and change direction every few beats with a Rhythm Pattern selected. When it sounds like you have made a phrase long enough, you choose to rest for a few note durations by pressing the Composer pages’s “Insert Rest At End” button.
To use the Workscore Composer page, you do need to get chords into the score first. To have a simple example harmony to play with, use the Workscore Chord Entry page (URL is up above in comment #4),to enter Dmi7 G7 and CMA7 twice. If you dig into the SongTrellis Excerpt Service, you’ll learn how to snag harmony from existing tunes and copy that into your Workscore.
If your own ear is good, you should be able to write an interesting piece yourself using this stuff, with the hints above. If you like what you’ve done, use the “Submit To SongTrellis” button and it’ll be listed under your name in the “Our Composers” section of the site.
This will be my last word for this comment on Robert’s site, since I don’t want to wear out my welcome here. If you have any questions, comments, or want to beta the Mac editor, send me email (davidlu at songtrellis.com)
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Greetings from Mozart-Country Austria. Sorry, I could not come the geek dinner, but it was some thousand miles away …
Georg
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Greetings from Mozart-Country Austria. Sorry, I could not come the geek dinner, but it was some thousand miles away …
Georg
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