Funny I was about to post about the same thing. And then I got to thinking I should start a new thread and call it something like "The ultimate notation and printing thread". Sounds a little presumptuous though. However I think my point is a good one. There are so many things that the notation and print functions can do but menus are hidden and the whole process is very confusing.

My mind is on this because I spent several hours yesterday creating and editing the notation of a Biab song. Usually I'm under the gun and need a chart that same day for a band and get jammed up. This time I decided to just do it with no pressure and discovered lots of interesting stuff not the least of which is this delete question. Without elaborating right now here's my list of things to talk about:

Notation:

1. Big difference between starting from scratch and editing a melody part that's already there which is what I was doing.

2. Having to be very exact with mouse placement.

3. Making a tie going from one bar to the next. Like a held note on the "and after 4" in bar 4 carrying forward to the first two beats of bar 5 then...

4. Trying to scroll from the end of the window at bar 4 for example to bar 5 if there's a held note there.

5. How copy and paste works in the notation window.

Next is the difference between using the notation function for edits and the piano roll window. First, to answer the question above, the term "piano roll" has nothing to do with playing a keyboard, it's simply a cute descriptor based on how the midi notes look on the screen. It resembles an early 1900's player piano paper roll that was one the earliest type of musical recordings.

It's true for large cut, paste and deletes this is the better place to do it not notation. Also, another thing I didn't "discover" right away is holding down the shift key and clicking on the piano roll icon. That turns it into a dockable window that allows you to drag the edges to make it big enough to work with. If you don't do that it's locked into the space used for the chord grid which is where I was and it's very difficult to do edits in that small space. I think the floating window should be the default and it should automatically open to say two thirds of the screen size, forget about having to hold down the shift key.

The next part of my thinking about a new thread is the related print functions and I think I'll stop here but I've found some interesting things there too.

What do you guys think, should I start a new thread strictly for notation and printing topics only and maybe ask Peter to pin it?

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.