Music staff position indicator line

Synthesia is a living project. You can help by sharing your ideas.
Search the forum before posting your idea. :D

No explicit, hateful, or hurtful language. Nothing illegal.
Post Reply
MaxC246
Posts: 77

Post by MaxC246 »

You're going to get sick of seeing me, Nicholas. I can tell already. :)

I definitely want to use Synthesia to learn how to read music. It seems perfectly well suited for that. One (hopefully) small addition would help me out tremendously. How difficult would it be to put a small, vertical red line in the staff section that is a representation of where the notes are touching the graphical keyboard? I envision the line to smoothly scroll from left to right as the song progresses and notes are falling toward the keyboard.

I realize that there's a dark blue section that indicates which note you're on, but it seems slightly ambiguous to me and the bouncing around seems a bit disorienting. I think a smooth scrolling line would really help me out.

Of course, I hope that's not just an option I've been unable to find. You've already thought of so many things I've wanted, I think that's a distinct possibility. :)
photo.gif
photo.gif (90.38 KiB) Viewed 4335 times
Pianotehead
Posts: 325

Post by Pianotehead »

Agree with this proposal. Think I even suggested exactly this before the blue frame came about. Another option would be to make the notes themselves light up, not the background.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

MaxC246 wrote:I envision the line to smoothly scroll from left to right as the song progresses...
This is an impossible task.
doesNotExist.png
doesNotExist.png (9.04 KiB) Viewed 4327 times
If we're talking about a smooth-scrolling, continuous function, the areas highlighted in red are "time" that doesn't technically exist. There is no such thing as smooth scrolling. Only poppy/jumpy/stuttery scrolling. You have to skip from the end of the previous measure to the first note in the next. Compare it with the falling notes: there is no extra gap between the end of the last note in a measure and the start of the first note in the next.

Even worse, if your measures are different widths (and looking at the spacing between those red sections, they are), the rate at which the red line "smoothly" scrolls changes each measure (after the weird, required hiccup jump at the start of each).
MaxC246 wrote:... the bouncing around seems a bit disorienting.
It's the same whether it's a blue rectangle or a red line. The disorientation is the sheet music's fault; not Synthesia's. :lol:


Older versions of Synthesia had a red line. I removed it because it was awful. ;)

(This is why no other software animates their line. I learned it the hard way. Every other sequencer/editor just jumps their line to the next note when the time comes... much like Synthesia's blue rectangle.)
MaxC246
Posts: 77

Post by MaxC246 »

I'm probably about to seriously show my ignorance here.... but what the heck.

Would it be possible to calculate where the red line should be based on the completion percentage of the falling notes? If the falling notes start to finish were represented from 0.00% to 100.00%, could that be used in the staff? Perhaps don't worry so much about the notes being played at all.... just the % completed and overlay the red line on the staff based on 0.00% to 100.00%?

Obviously I don't know what's happening under the hood, so this might sound ridiculous.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

If you broke things up by simple percentages, wouldn't you end up with something like this (while waiting in melody practice for the user to play the first note)? Is it alright if the line doesn't actually approach the notes when it stops for you to play?
photo.png
photo.png (9.44 KiB) Viewed 4317 times
As the measure progressed, the line would get closer and closer to each note head each time it stopped until for that last note, it would be (nearly) right on top of it. If you were to illustrate each of the note's starting points (or where the line would stop in melody practice), it'd look something like this, most-likely:
stoppingPoints.png
stoppingPoints.png (8.34 KiB) Viewed 4317 times
MaxC246
Posts: 77

Post by MaxC246 »

Ok, I think I see what you're saying.... If not, I may have just realized the error of my overly simplistic thinking. Just because the falling notes GUI is 50% complete doesn't mean the staff will be exactly 50% complete. On the staff, a whole note takes up no more horizontal space than a quarter note. Working on a percentage would be pointless. There's no guarantee that both sections would be at the same part of the song.

Let me ponder this some more and bug you with other ideas later. Hopefully I'll be able to put more thought in to future ideas than I did my first one. Sorry about that. And thanks for humoring me.
Post Reply