Synthesia 2013 Roadmap

Archived development update discussion from past versions
Archived development updates.
slash8789
Posts: 90

Post by slash8789 »

Nicholas wrote: As for other types of annotations, MusicXML should cover (traditional) pedal markings in the sheet. I'm still thinking about how to do it in the falling note area. I'm worried that displaying pedal events will be less useful because many MIDI files simply hold down the sustain pedal the entire song to achieve a particular effect.
I just reread what you said and perhaps there is a misunderstanding. I am not suggesting displaying pedal events in the falling note area for MIDIs that have them. What I suggested, in the original "pedal markings" thread I made a few months ago and the "finger substitution" thread someone started a few weeks ago, was to allow the user to input there own hints for pedals just like finger hints. Maybe I should make a a mock-up of what I mean? Would that help?
revilo2
Posts: 135

Post by revilo2 »

when multi-line notation (with fingering) is sheduled ?
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

jimhenry wrote:If you had an on-screen indication of the pedal down and pedal up events but did not display pedal state between events, would that resolve this issue?
I actually like that a lot. That completely solves the whole-song pedal case.
jimhenry wrote:I am surprised that many MIDI files hold sustain all the way through.
It's common enough (and happens to exploit a bug in the Mac MIDI synth that causes audio to cut out completely after the pedal has been held long enough) that I had to add a Mac-specific option to disable pedal events years ago. If we're talking about the subset of MIDI files out in the wild that are just 1-2 track piano-only pieces, I would upgrade "many" to "most". It's a pervasive practice.
slash8789 wrote:... allow the user to input there own hints for pedals just like finger hints.
What would you be adding the pedal hints to? Notes? It feels strange to add them to an individual note because the pedal affects all notes. It seems like you'd want some "global" area (maybe off in the margin?) that you could add them to.
revilo2 wrote:when is multi-line notation (with fingering) scheduled?
Not during 2013.
slash8789
Posts: 90

Post by slash8789 »

Nicholas wrote:What would you be adding the pedal hints to? Notes? It feels strange to add them to an individual note because the pedal affects all notes. It seems like you'd want some "global" area (maybe off in the margin?) that you could add them to.
The pedals hints would be added to the musical piece. Its placement could be on a specific note/beat (which in classical sheet music is usually the case) regardless of whether it affects all notes or not or, placement could be somewhere in the falling-note area. The purpose of the hint would be for "oh, I have to press the pedal here and depress over here. Its basic stuff in classical sheet music so I think it would be basic as well in Synthesia. Like I said in my other threads, if Synthesia helps with the mechanics of the hands with finger hints, it makes sense to me that it would help with the mechanics of the feet with feet hints/pedal markings which is basic in sheet music. I'll try and get a mock up done.
kiwi
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by kiwi »

Or just a special mark falling when the pedal need to be pressed cause the aim is to pres it in time thats all ,whatever the note we play or not (pedal is usually pressed slightly before to play the note)
slash8789
Posts: 90

Post by slash8789 »

kiwi wrote:Or just a special mark falling when the pedal need to be pressed cause the aim is to pres it in time thats all ,whatever the note we play or not (pedal is usually pressed slightly before to play the note)
Precisely, only it would be better if the "special marks" adhered to the standards of music notation like what I described in the pedal markings thread or the finger substitution thread.

"Pedal is usually pressed slightly before to play the note" would be more rhythmic pedaling where I prefer the more standard legato pedaling. I know rhythmic pedaling was used in the 19th century in classical music but, maybe it is still used today in other types?
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Giving it some thought, I think I have a nice solution. Until this point, thinking about adding a whole new system with interface bits and language describing how to edit something as specific as pedal indicators felt a little too specialized (not enough "bang for my buck", if you will).

But! I remembered a different feature that this could be included with pretty easily that would give even more flexibility. That feature is a sort of general annotation system I've been talking about for a while now. Until just now, it was just going to be the YouTube-style "boxes with text" annotations. But including the ability to include other small images (that I'm calling "stickers") would handle the pedal case. These annotations would fall at the same speed as the notes and would be able to be placed anywhere.

I suppose there is a standing question of how Synthesia would place them horizontally given different keyboard zoom levels. Would annotations be "attached" to a particular pitch? So if that note was scrolled off to the left or right, the annotation would be hidden too? Or should they always appear near the left or right margin regardless of pan/zoom? I'm not sure what the right answer is. In any event, annotations aren't planned for the 9 or 10 releases, but I could see tackling that sometime in 2014.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

In other development news: the whole program has had all its text unceremoniously stripped out and placed in a single file to be translated into a bunch of languages. About 3000 words in 564 strings. It's scheduled to come back from the translation place on the 14th (in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Traditional Chinese). After a few days of making things fit again (many of those strings will be more verbose than the English version so various UI bits will have to shimmy), it'll be time for a Synthesia 9 release candidate.
slash8789
Posts: 90

Post by slash8789 »

Here is my mock-up for the pedal markings. I only made the pedal down and pedal up markings, the "Ped" and the asterisk. This is just one way but, at least I have a visual to hopefully better get my idea across. For the Sostenuto pedal you could just have "Ped II" and for the Una Corda pedal you can also just have "Ped III". These are accepted notations for these other two pedals.
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fingerSubstitution.png
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Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Yeah, the way I'm imagining the "sticker" idea I mentioned above, it should be able to do something that looks just like that.
slash8789
Posts: 90

Post by slash8789 »

I really like that "sticker" idea and being to annotate anywhere on the falling note area.
Nicholas wrote:
I suppose there is a standing question of how Synthesia would place them horizontally given different keyboard zoom levels. Would annotations be "attached" to a particular pitch? So if that note was scrolled off to the left or right, the annotation would be hidden too? Or should they always appear near the left or right margin regardless of pan/zoom? I'm not sure what the right answer is. In any event, annotations aren't planned for the 9 or 10 releases, but I could see tackling that sometime in 2014.
Personally, I think it should be attached to the pitch but you said it could be placed anywhere? If it could be placed anywhere then that would help with the exact timing of when you want to press the pedal down, release etc...

Great to hear that it might be released in 2014. Woohoo! You have a really great program here Nicholas. I I think I have worked with every graphical piano "system" available (piano wizard, piano cheetah, virtuoso 3.0, softway to mozart, and many others less known) and for me, they really all fall short graphically and functionally to Synthesia. I know as it stands right now, Synthesia probably has everything most pop and blues players need. I guess I'm just trying to suggest features which us classical music players/teachers use the most.

I hope I didn't break some forum rule by mentioning those other programs. :)
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

slash8789 wrote:I hope I didn't break some forum rule by mentioning those other programs. :)
Nah. ;) There are a couple other Synthesia clones I'm a little touchier about, but if it's a legitimate product from someone that cares (and not just some knock-off) it's cool if they come up in conversation.
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stephenhazel
Posts: 223

Post by stephenhazel »

Wow!!

Did that guy just take the open source version of synthesia, recompile and start charging for it?
If his last release was in 2010, I kinda don't think he made much of a profit at least.
Sheesh !!

Well, you know I ain't copyin' ya, right?
We seem to have slightly different philosophies on some things I think.
Which I like.

So are there very MANY clones? Are any worth beans?
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

stephenhazel wrote:Well, you know I ain't copyin' ya, right?
Your stuff (Ditty -> PianoCheater -> PianoCheetah) predates mine by a bunch of years. And yeah, you have a lot of cool ideas that you explore for your own purposes. You're clearly not copying anything just for copying's sake. To contrast, take a look at the last question on that guy's FAQ. I'm not sure in the history of the expression "For the record" that the person saying it didn't have a guilty conscience. :lol:

Even the FAQ itself is a near-verbatim copy of Synthesia's FAQ from 2010 with the same links and hardware recommendations -- making sure to add his own Amazon affiliate ID. Gross.
stephenhazel wrote:If his last release was in 2010...
First and last. The video that "inspired" him was posted just before September that year, he finished development in December, and then "fixed a parsing bug" a month later (or 11 months in the past depending on how you choose to read the typo in the date). :lol:
kiwi
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by kiwi »

Dont't understood all of you're words guys but for me it's clearly a plagiat !
Nicholas have you some copyright on synthesia? If so i 'll intent a law pursuit...

So back to the swetties why not a Dot icon for to show the level of pressure to be applyed on the pedal? like a "camembert"
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Track splitting in Synthesia 10 is going to be really cool. Despite having a little bit of Synthesia 9 wrap-up work to finish while I'm waiting for the translations to come back, I was bitten by the inspiration bug and haven't been able to stop thinking about how all the pieces for track splitting will fit together.

I've got some rough sketches showing how it will fit into the Simple/Advanced song screens and I was alarmed to find that adding it will actually simplify a lot of things. Well, mostly the idea that more than one track -- or portion of a track -- can be assigned to the same hand. That is the part that simplifies a lot of assumptions and allows the interface to be a lot cleaner.

It's really rare to get a lot more robustness out of even less user interface, so I feel like I'm on to something here. Anyway, as this solidifies more over the next couple weeks I'm excited to start talking about it.
slash8789
Posts: 90

Post by slash8789 »

Wow. I was actually just going to make a post about track splitting before I read your post. Hehe. I was actually going to suggest if the user could just change the color of the of the falling note instead of actually having to assign the note to a different track it would make things simpler on the user end but, it seems you have things pretty far along and all worked out.

I was also thinking about all the discussion on the finger substitution and on that 3rd finger hint, would those "stickers" be able to take care of that as well? Maybe you could even use them for the 2nd finger hint? I'm just asking because you said " Right now it seems like more than one substitution will come for "free" on the engineering side. It might get a little complicated on the user side when you go to add these."

I'm sure you'll figure out which is the best way to go. Finger substitutions and pedal annotations. I can't wait!!! :D
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

slash8789 wrote:... on that 3rd finger hint, would those "stickers" be able to take care of that as well?
Certainly for the 3rd they would work. Depending on how things turn out, you may have just made a pretty good case for them covering the 2nd, too.

It will depend on how portable they are. Finger hints can be shared nice and easily today. If "stickers" require packaging up some set of images it might not be as easy. (Though because the whole idea for that system started with text annotations, those should be portable enough and able to be shared as easily as finger hints.)

Now I want to do the annotations/stickers first before the finger substitution stuff. If that's a good enough workaround, that saves me some work. :D
slash8789
Posts: 90

Post by slash8789 »

Nicholas wrote:If that's a good enough workaround, that saves me some work. :D
Yeah, I figured it might save you some work, thats why I mentioned it. Like I said, CAN"T WAIT!!! :)
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

This is the first time I've added something to Synthesia that I don't have the ability to test myself. I suppose if there are any mistakes, users will (hopefully?) tell me about them. :lol:

In any event, a preview is forthcoming in the next day or so once I iron out long text falling outside of boxes. (Chinese is generally super short, so this was a safe screenshot to show. German... not so much.)
SynthesiaZhTw.png
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