LOGIC PRO - How Can I Adjust The Piano Roll Grid

I am sure you are here for this specific issue.

I can even guess...

You are probably doing your first dance tune and wanted to do that drum roll before the break-down, but you cannot enter any shorter than 1/16th notes in the piano roll, right?

Apple Logic Pro is really great but sometimes things appear to be not very intuitive.

And if you post your question on a forum, chances are that you get a snide remark about "read the manual."  Well, I've read the manual, but I am willing to say in this case the manual is not even very clear.

As a software engineer myself, I can clearly see the engineering side's argument as this feature is already covered and documented on a separate part of the software, and it should be so obvious to you that if you cannot figure this out, you might as well not be a musician.

I totally disagree, if you are looking at a part of the UI that has a grid in it then there ought to be a control-click-menu in there as "Adjust Grids" and even if there are other ways to do it, it should also allow you to make the change there. I would right click in the ruler on top and expect a menu to adjust the grid spacing!

But I did not write Logic. So let's figure out how to do this now.

Anyhow, it actually is easy. The key is that you probably did not know all of the grid is controlled in the Transport Bar!

Here is my "Drum Roll" which hits the snare every 16th of a beat. Idea is to show the grid every 32nd of a beat with the Piano Roll grid showing every 32nd.

 

The reason why my piano roll above is showing only every 16th is because of the setup in the Transport bar.  On "out of the box" Logic it is the standard division (that's how they call that.) You see that my transport is currently showing 131 PBM 4/4 time signature (so far you follow, right?) OK now, look under 4/4, it says /16. That's the problem!

 

What you should do now is to click in where it says /16 and type in 32.

 

Now go back to the piano roll and you can now see that grid has doubled!

 

Now you know how, you can use 1/48 division and you can make neat triplet sounding drum rolls or super fast 1/64 drum rolls. Have fun!

KORG Hanon to the Rescue! M3 and KRONOS RH-3 Note Dropping or Choking?

I have a very low serial number M3 88 with the RH-3 keyboard, and have had occasional note dropping or choking issue ever since I bought this.

For the longest time nobody seemed to have complained about this issue, but now I am starting to read them all over the places on the Internet, so if you have landed on this page, then rest assured that it is a well known issue now and with a bit of modifying yourself, it can be fixed for free!

I decided to post this, as I was also listening to another person's performance on her brand new Kronos, and lone behold! I can hear this same happening to her too.

What's The Problem?

Under some playing style, the RH-3 sends out two same short notes very rapidly on the MIDI interface; two very very fast staccato notes. Even if you got a pedal pressed down, the note does not seem to sustain, in fact, that's where the problem happens the most... when you are pedaling.

Why is This Happening?

This is due to the key bouncing very fast when you press it.  I think that this probably escaped the QA because they probably used experienced strong piano players to test the RH-3.

Many of you have, like myself, came from playing synth keys and not have been playing a true weighted action keyboard or a piano. Our weak fingers are actually forming a classic oscillation-damping (bio) mechanical circuit with the weight on the piano and spring on your muscles.

You will likely notice that this happens mainly on fingers 4 and 5. With these fingers, they do not have the strength to press and hold the key steady enough, it bounces off the bottom rubber then somewhere half way it oscillates up and down at some frequency which triggers MIDI on/off twice in very fast succession.

And those are the weakest fingers so that's explains why.

I do agree that Korg should have caught this issue sooner and corrected them, but on the other hands, it actually is pointing also to our poor piano playing technique.

We can correct this issue by adjusting our playing style a bit, and also train our two of the weakest fingers by some arpeggio exercises.

Just make sure that all fingers will press the key all the way to the bottom and keep it there for the duration of a note. After all, those notes will not sound good on a true grand piano if we are keep playing that way. For me, just playing a few weeks on Hanon exercises, I am starting to eliminate them.

It's really a shame as otherwise this RH-3 is a very excellent keyboard with the feel, and I am a big Korg fan with M3 Karma and the sound it comes with are always great.

It is likely a fundamental mechanical issue in the design of the thing that I am afraid it cannot easily be corrected by software updates, and also the bouncing issue seems to get worse as the keyboard wears. I see this happening a lot more in the middle of the keyboard than the outside.

Another Workaround

If you are sequencing using a DAW like LOGIC or Pro-Tools, Live etc., then just let it play and you can edit out the MIDI notes when you hear them. You see two rapid notes successively. I take a pencil tool and edit out these notes or do the List view and see two successive notes very easily.

Discovering Guide Tone Lines with 3rd and 7th Notes on the Chords

I was doing some comp practice using two-note chords, and writing those out.

The idea of the practice is to only use the 3rd and the 7th (or equivalent of the intervals such as major 7th or minor 3rd) of the chords in the progression and alternate between 3rd on the bottom and 7th on the bottom on each chord change.

As I was doing this with "Like Someone in Love (Van Heusen, Burke),"  I found something interesting happening with this specific composition.

Take a look at the chart below, take note, for example on the measures 2 and 3. You can see that the bottom note is moving from G to Gb to F to E. This is a perfect chromatic down movement. And that's not even considering chord alterations in place. Just the notes in the 3rd and 7th.

From the measures 9 through to the ending of the first verse, both top and bottom notes are going down very smoothly taking no more than a half step. Contrast to that with the root of chords written, it's all over the scales like Ab - D - G - C - Bb.  To me is was not very obvious by just looking at the chords how these harmonies are built around these chords.

The idea of Guide Tone Lines is very important in Jazz improvisation technique as my former teacher Gary Burton taught us that it is the "Clothes line to hang a melody on." So here it is, try this technique on some of the tunes you know and you might be surprised for finding some hidden clever harmony to hang your melodies on!

I think this technique works especially well with compositions that have II-V-I (e.g., D, G, C) chord movements.

 

Even Better Transcription Tool - Transcribe!

Happy 2013 Everyone.

Thank you for all your support in 2012 when I decided to re-launch my music "career." In 2013, I will be studying some Film/TV music production at Berklee as well as taking more piano coaching.

So I posted a note about the Amazing Slowdoner.  Shortly after that I have also found Transcribe! Which is also Mac/PC software. This one is much more geared towards musicians doing serious transcribing job. In addition to being able to slow down, it has a lot of nice workflow feature that can facilitate the job.

Why I found it so much more useful?

• I can scroll over the samples. 
• I can slow down with preset rates like 25% or 50%
• You can loop through sections easily. You can drag a marker in the sample. You can also slide the loop section, so if the song is played in a steady tempo then you can set the width of the section to exactly 1 measure + a second or so of lead in, and you can continue to transcribe the whole song without typing in or changing the loop setup. There are also shortcuts to move along by a section of a measure.
• It shows on the keyboard where the dominant frequencies are. This greatly aids in guessing complex Jazz harmonies. 
• While I do not use it, it also has a chord guessing feature. If you are still not yet familiar with Jazz harmonies, this may aid you in coming up to speed.
• Like the ASD you can use the MIDI controller programming to control the transport on the software to start, stop, rewind etc.
• It's actually cheaper than ASD, and going for $39.00 per computer. Also there is a fully functional 30-day evaluation period.

Here is Some Useful Tip Using this Tool

• Mark the Sections and Measures using the keyboard. What you should do is to play the whole tune and using the keyboard mark major sections with letter S. This will put section markers.
• Once the sections are defined, slow down if needed, and play again and now start marking measures.
• If necessary, you can play again and mark the beats. This is helpful in figuring out syncopated and tied beats between measures.
• Now you have the structure well marked on the material, you can print a lead-sheet you have and with this in front of you, loop each section or each beat and begin transcribing notes.
  
  At this point you would loop and try to play the same passage on the piano until you think you got it completely and if you have a direct input option to charting software,  that could help you in speeding up the input process.
  
  Note there are many free options to write out the charts on a computer. I use Noteflight.COM which is an online service, and also there is Finale Notepad, which is an App. I like Noteflight.COM because I can pull up a chart anywhere there is a computer and internet.

Some Drawbacks

I am not completely versed with this software, but here is some annoyances:

The marker idea is great but there is no easy way to clear them out of a section as far as I can tell right now.

While it is not a drawback of software, in complex band scenario there will be a lot of frequencies and none of the spectrum analysis will work well. The only way out is your ear training to discriminate melodies and chords coming out of specific instrument. You can adjust the EQ settings.

Overall I will give this product a 4-Stars out of 5.