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Notion -> DAW
I'm not at all an experienced midi user. My work so far has simply been to go from my iKeys keyboard, into thumbjam, into Auria, or from my Alesis Percpad through the same route.
I write away from the instrument at times in Notion, which is a fun and interesting exercise, getting me away from habitual routes we all develop as players. Notion will export midi. But I'm not quite sure how you would take the output from it in midi format, and import that into something like Cubasis or the coming Auria Pro, and make it sound good. When I play it in Notion, it's really just a way to hear what the piece could sound like, but it is of course lacking a lot in dynamics. Also, I'm not sure how you associate a particular midi track with a particular instrument.
I was told by a composer friend that it's more normal to take a piece of music recorded in a DAW, and export it into notation software. But this seems somewhat backwards.
Anyhow, I'm assuming some folks here have done this. If you take a straight midi track, notes, duration, etc., into a DAW, how do you make it sound less like a machine, and more like a piece of music? I'm waiting for Auria Pro to have a go at this, but thought I'd ask to see if there was brilliant insight available here. 
Comments
Hi @rickwaugh, I have been toying with the idea today to get a thread like this out, like 'composer's corner' or 'various aspects of composing apps (esp. Midi)'
As a first thought, you can email the midi file to yourself, 'delete' it in the mail app, and looking it up in the trashcan, from there it's ready to 'open in'.
Cubasis will spread it over several instrument tracks, Nanostudio, ProMidi and Caustic do as well.
It seems Cubasis doesn't take much more info out of it (regarding tempo or velocity).
Playing it in Bs-16i gives musically interesting results for a quick overview.
On a second train of thought, what I'd like to achieve is a consistent composing flow with midi...
The apps available to me in this regard are Notion, Mapping Tonal Harmony, YouCompose, Firo (Fiddlewax Pro), Arpeggiators, other virtual controllers like Soundprism etc., and the Daws.
What might be possible and desirable in the first place, is to play in notes with a keyboard, virtual or hardware. Quantised or 'free'.
Notion lets me do that, Firo as well (in it's looper).
Now, I'd like to 'record' the 'performance' in a daw, having activated a midi track. Firo, YouCompose and MTH and others have options for that. I can add several tracks, and overdub etc.
The thing with most of the composing apps is however, they aren't active in background mode. And they lack proper midi implementation.
With that in mind, Notion can be targeted for example by Xynthesizer or a Firo loop, and, when back in the foreground, be filled with notes, or, optionally, an armed 'control' track from a daw, prepared w/ midi in from another app and midi THRU and 'virtual out'.
That way the human element, the several app's unique compositional approaches and instruments can be kept.
We have a FB group dedicated to Notion if folks are interested.
As far as dynamics go, it depends what you do. I score classical work completely in Notion on the iPad. I do export the pieces too to Notion on the desktop and use other desktop instrument libraries to augment the sound, but, only using the dynamics markings in Notion itself (which are the same ones as on the iPad and which apply to the iPad instruments in Notion). Others, like Michael Myers, take it a step further and augment the dynamics (and articulation) with specific MIDI tweaking (again on the desktop version though).
It is possible to save MIDI from Notion, import into, e.g. Cubasis and then drive, e.g. Thumbjam. The problem is, unlike Notion's own instruments, you then have to individually manage articulation specifically by using different instrument targets and that's very messy.
Anyhow, come on over and join us in the FB group if you like too! :-)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NotionUsers/
Here's an example produced entirely in Notion on the iPad. Stereo width and reverb added with Stereo Designer and Altispace. Some post-process mastering done with Audio Mastering.
And another - again all in Notion on the iPad. Reverb added with Altispace using Auria via IAA. A touch of Pro-Q and Pro-MB in Auria. Exported and lightly mastered in Audio Mastering.
Or this. This needs more work still - esp. on the dynamics and articulation.
That's some nice stuff there. It's still missing that a bit of feel for me. And while the sounds from Notion are not bad, they're not, to my mind, super fantastic either. It's all interesting and new to me. It certainly makes things possible that I could not do by myself with my guitar. But I still want it to sound good.
I wrote this in Notion. It's hugely enjoyable. I also would like to take some of the things I've done, do them part midi, part analog. Write the basics in midi, move it to Auria, finish it off.
Very nice @rickwaugh!
And, I agree about it lacking in spite of how good it is - no room for really in-depth samples on the iPad. Still, good for a great deal in spite of that! :-)
I had a listen to some Michael Myers stuff, @MusicInclusive. Sounds pretty amazing, it really does have that tone and sense of dynamics. But I have a feeling he spent a bit more on his desktop stuff than I have on the iPad.
And he knows what he's doing. I wonder how much time he spends messing with a piece, and how he does that. I'm a long way from finding out.
I've tried this with MTS and the midi is transferred faithfully. Notion doesn't save time sig changes in midi though so you have to make those changes yourself in MTS. In MTS you can finetune a piece either in notation or the pianoroll. I don't think any sample app for the ipad can match what you can get for the desktop so if you want top quality you'll probably need a Cubase setup with Native Instruments are something. Cubase apparently has the best inbuilt notation software.
@MusicInclusive really beautiful work and great to hear orchestral music on the forum. How long does it take to put one of those together?
Would you consider joining @richardyot's song of the month threads? I've no idea where I would start but i think it would be really interesting to try and critique this in the way we do with other people's songs.
Looking forward to hearing more.
That sucks. Did you see if that had been changed with the latest update? Or was that on the desktop?
I don't know about the desktop but the latest Notion for ipad does not send time sig changes in midi. It's just a quick edit in MTS though, unless you really like having a lot of changes. MTS does save all data in midi though.
Hopefully it'll be an easy change in Auria pro.
I think for straight orchestral pieces, I might do straight midi. But another workflow is to take a piece that I intend to play the parts, import as midi, then play over/replace the parts I want to do "live." This is one I'm working on now. With this, I might replace pretty much everything. But it would get the timing where I want it, and some stuff I might leave.
@Jocphone - I'm currently working on a complete 3 movement violin concerto. I started it last week, and I'm about 80 bars in already. I find it extremely easy to get the basic structure, melody and harmony down in Notion for the iPad very quickly. Faster than using Notion on the desktop, Sibelius, Finale, Musescore, or anything else :-)
I often (but not always) work in an incremental "rinse and repeat" fashion. I make a lot of use of theme repetition, often by phrase copying and then adjustment (timing, melody changes, transposition, moving between instruments and voices) to build the pieces. Then I'll go back and select a whole section and modify it and repeat the section itself with alteration.
I do also do a lot of selective deletion while creating a piece too. It's easy to build a composition that is way too busy. I've learned to throw stuff away mercilessly and incorporate space.
Way my mind works on this stuff :-)
What I then find takes the time is fine detail - of individual sections, individual bars, individual notes, dynamics, articulations to get the sound I really want to build throughout the piece.
It's great fun! (And - yes - hard work sometimes! - Those 3 bars (or 3 notes!!! :-) ) that just won't work properly. )
My friend just showed me notion on his iPad and I bought it immediately. I'm going to be using it mostly to make bass charts that other people can read, rather than my usual cryptic charts, that way when I need a sub I don't need to Give them tons of songs to learn. And it will give me good practice notating again as it's been a long time.
The possibilities as a daw type platform sound intriguing though.
Basically, what you'll hit up against in some notation apps is a preference for "strictness" and less "humanizing".
Obviously, when someone plays your written piece, it will be humanized with their own character.
So, I'm taking it that you want a humanized performance out of a likely strict program trying to slot things into perfect divisions in order to be represented properly in the notation.
So the question is, are you wanting the humanized input to be represented faithfully, or are you wanting humanized output?
I simply don't see how simple iOS notation software could do either.
But, if you want to preserve the humanization in both input and output, you need to use a DAW without Quantize enabled, and derive the notation from your recorded values in that midi file.
I originally was somewhat annoyed with Logic because it does push you down a notation path in song structure even though it gives you vast humanizing options, but it has slowly grown on me.
If I put the output from notion into the daw, and turn quantize on, would I not be getting the result I want that way? A humanized version of my strict piece?
@MusicInclusive, exactly. I am learning so much about arranging, just be doing it. And it's so easy to do too much, or write things to complex to play. I love the ability to move stuff around. One thing with copying and pasting, it's a bit of pain when copying across multiple line breaks. I'd sure like to be able to copy, "from here for x bars." The way it jumps around at times is maddening. Also, inserting in the middle of bars, if I want to change the beginning of the bar, is painful. I may be doing something wrong, of course.
Quantizing puts things into divisions, which I assume notion is already doing?
You could try to use "humanize" functions in a DAW on midi, but you'll usually have to manually edit that to make it convincing.
Basically, no human can play perfectly in time, so getting a humanized performance out of a perfectly timed and divided piece produced by a simple notation editor or simple DAW will be very difficult.
If you have automation control of tempo, you can set up slight humanizing drifts throughout a piece to make it more realistic, among many other tricks. That said, I'm unaware of an iOS DAW which offers that yet.
Ah, my misunderstanding.
@MusicInclusive thanks for the insight into your working process. Gives me a lot to think about.
Do you solely work with orchestral instruments? Is it the intention that a real orchestra will play this?
@Jocphone :-D No - I also work with analog / modular / VA / VST / AU / iPad synths, real electric guitar, bass, VST / AU FX, desktop DAWs, other keyboards, Rock, Blues, ;-) etc. etc.
BUT I tend to mostly score classical in Notion on the iPad - because it's a creative tool that fits that classical niche for my approach to composition when I'm composing classical works.
I do have in mind that a local orchestra might be interested in picking up a couple of pieces - I already know they welcome new material and have been invited to contact one of the members if I produce something I think they might be interested in performing. We'll see :-)
@rickwaugh - pinch and zoom is your friend :-)
For insertion of notes, zoom in and use the pencil (the one on the toolbar - which turns off normal insert mode and allows you to easily place a note / rest in between other notes). Don't forget to switch the pencil off again afterwards.
For selection across bars, zoom out and then select over the bars more easily that way.
Took me a while to figure that workflow out as the most optimal, but I do this mostly on an iPad mini screen and find that those two simple tips help tremendously. :-)
To the quantization discussion, yes, I agree that one gets a less humanized performance from a direct strict interpretation from something like Notion. However, that's where a lot of work has gone in to developing some of the high end libraries which add humanizing factors, including, but not limited to, tempo swing. I don't think we'll ever see that on the iPad because of the footprint and cost involved. (A "complete" VSL edition for orchestration is about $1400 for example).
That's where I would and do take the output of Notion, import into Notion for the desktop, and then orchestrate and further arrange in the desktop and with DAWs and with desktop instrument libraries.
Having said that, one can do a pretty decent job with Notion on the iPad for all that! :-) There are tricks, esp. with dynamics and articulation, that can help give less of a "wooden" feel - (although, I don't actually think that's as pronounced as it could be even then).
There is also a swing control that one can apply judiciously.
How cool would that be?!
Here's the swing feature. Meant to attach this earlier but my iPad needed rebooting and hadn't sent the screenshot when I posted before: