Encore - Swing Playback - removal

[Doug Kerr]

In Encore, once we have applied swing to the notes in one or more measures, there is no way to revert to the previous state of the notes. (I am not speaking about Undo - that seems to work fine if applied before any other editing.)

We might need to do that if:
• We decided that swing here is not such a good idea
• We conclude that the swing would be better applied with different values of its two settings, andn need to go back to point A before we can do that.

We cannot put the notes back to their pre-swing state (as intimated by the Manual) with Align Playback. Neither can we do it (as intimated by the Manual) by applying Swing Playback again with the swing parameter (as I prefer to call it) set to 50%. (If we were starting with virgin notes, application of Swing Playback with the parameter at 50% should make no change. But like the effect of a condom, it is evidently not retroactive.)

I feel it is urgent to provide a way to nullify the affect of Swing Playback.

Ideally, the "remove swing" tool would put the notes back as they were before, both in terms of start time and initial duration.

But perhaps the initial duration is no longer known (perhaps the record for the note only carries the current start and end times, which have been changed by the swing adjustment).

In that event, a practical compromise would be to have the "remove swing" tool put the start times back to those implied by the notation and set the play durations to the Encore default (or perhaps to the current default on the Change Durations dialog).

Note that today there is no practical way to remove the effect of swing adjustment - not even a tedious one. We can use "Change Durations) to restore the durations, but we have no direct way to change the start times to match the notation (that's the main thing Align Playback is supposed to do, but it doesn't in this case). All we can do is delete all the notes in the measure and re-enter them. (Fortunately, that seems to work.)

Perhaps all that is needed here is to fix things so that Align Playback, in the face of this situation, does what it is always intended to do: make the start times of the notes match the notation. (I don't know today what Align Playback, in an "ordinary" situation, does with regard to durations - I'll do some more testing.)

Doug

[commnthings]

I feel it is urgent to provide a way to nullify the affect of Swing Playback.

I wholeheartedly concur in this request. I had exactly the problem Doug described, and the only solution was to completely re-enter the "swung" notes. It was very frustrating.

...a practical compromise would be to have the "remove swing" tool put the start times back to those implied by the notation and set the play durations to the Encore default (or perhaps to the current default on the Change Durations dialog).

If this is the easiest solution it certainly would be acceptable.

Bob

[polarbreeze]

Hmm, it seems to me that I routinely apply "swing" and then can later retract that by doing "align playback" - and I've never had any problem doing that. Am I misunderstanding the issue...?

[Denkster]

Hmm, it seems to me that I routinely apply "swing" and then can later retract that by doing "align playback" - and I've never had any problem doing that. Am I misunderstanding the issue...?

Hard to believe, indeed.
It used to work ok, but in Enc5.0.2Wb3, it does not.

Please check what the result of Swing Playback + Align Playback does in the most recent beta for Mac?

Eveline

[Denkster]

The test is very simple.

• Enter a sequence of eights in measure 1,
• copy measure 1 to measure 2 and 3,
• apply Swing Playback to Measure 2 and 3,
• Apply Align Playback to measure 3.
• Listen.

I made this in Encore:

encore_swing-playback-test.png (10.77 KiB) Viewed 2228 times

Exported it to MIDI,
opened it in Master Tracks Pro
Viewed the Piano roll and saw this:

piano-roll-swing-playback-test.png (13.49 KiB) Viewed 2228 times

You see?

Note: the first note in the piano roll starts before time =0 ??? Or is that a cursor line?
Note: Swing Playback altered start time AND duration of notes
Note: Align Playback corrected the start times, but not the durations.

Kind regards
Eveline

[Doug Kerr]

Here, I have looked into the effect of Align Playback on a passage whose notes have already had Swing Playback applied under Encore/Windows 5.0.2.

Based on earlier tests, it appears that for the most part, Align Playback:

• makes the start times of notes conform to the implications of the notation.
• preserves the note play durations (that is, the difference between the start and end times in effect for play at the time Align is applied). But there are sometimes some exceptions to this. I am doing further testing to attempt to characterize the algorithm there. I will not attempt to get out in front of that story in this report.

This figure summarizes the result of one test series:

Swing_align_20_comp.gif (10.28 KiB) Viewed 2225 times

At the top we see the source notation, four quarter notes. Their play durations were all set to 100% of face. (It would have been more interesting to use, say, 90% of face, but the Encore Swing Playback algorithm misbehaves if the second notes of the pairs do not have initial durations of 100% of face.)

The next row shows the "time traces" for play of this notation before applying any special operations. It is just what we would expect.

The next row shows the time traces for play after Swing Playback had been applied with the control note value set to quarter note and the swing parameter set to 75%. It is just what we would expect.

The next row shows the time traces for play after Swing Playback and then Align Playback had been applied. It is just what we would expect (based on the conjecture mentioned above regarding the Align Playback algorithm).

All notes now start where the notation would imply, but their durations are still those they had after the Swing Playback adjustment.

This is of course hardly reconstruction of the initial state of the notes.

Here we see the story with the initial durations at 90%:

Swing_align_comp.gif (9.97 KiB) Viewed 2225 times

Note that after application of Swing Playback, the end of the second note has moved beyond end of the original "real estate allocation" for the pair of notes, conflicting with the first note of the second pair. (This is the misbehavior of which I sopke earlier. This has been reported to Gvox development in another forum section.)

Nevertheless, the application of Align Playback to this mess produces somewhat the expected result (although here, Align Playback has increased the duration of the fourth note from 120 ticks to 144).

In that regard, it is possible that the stored duration of the fourth note was indeed 144 ticks (as for the second note), but Encore "cut it off" in play at the end of the measure (120 ticks after the start). But Align Playback picked up its "stored" duration of 144 ticks and preserved it.

Or maybe an elephant sat on it.

Doug

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Eveline,

Nice work.

Note: the first note in the piano roll starts before time =0 ??? Or is that a cursor line?

Yes, it is (at 1:01:052, as a matter of fact, from reading the dashboard).

Note: Swing Playback altered start time AND duration of notes

As expected.

Note: Align Playback corrected the start times, but not the durations.

As expected, based on my recent understandings.

Presumably Align Playback has no way to "correct" the durations, as the original note times were probably replaced in the note data with the new times from application of Swing Playback.

Isn't this fun? It's like playing in the sand.

Best regards,

Doug

[q]

... once we have applied swing to the notes in one or more measures, there is no way to revert to the previous state of the notes. (I am not speaking about Undo - that seems to work fine if applied before any other editing.) We cannot put the notes back to their pre-swing state (as intimated by the Manual) with Align Playback. I feel it is urgent to provide a way to nullify the affect of Swing Playback.

Ideally, the "remove swing" tool would put the notes back as they were before, both in terms of start time and initial duration.

... a practical compromise would be to have the "remove swing" tool put the start times back to those implied by the notation and set the play durations to the Encore default (or perhaps to the current default on the Change Durations dialog).

Perhaps all that is needed here is to fix things so that Align Playback, in the face of this situation, does what it is always intended to do: make the start times of the notes match the notation. (I don't know today what Align Playback, in an "ordinary" situation, does with regard to durations - I'll do some more testing.)

PERFECTLY expressed Doug! You are a true champion of swing removal, and a preservationist of the prior data state.

Your proposed "compromise" is admirable, but as I've mentioned before, there are two ways that Encore could return from swing to the original data. (I know I'm repeating myself):

1) interpret swing on the fly, without changing the underlying data!

2) cache the original data; restore from cache on Align Playback (much more complicated.

Note that today there is no practical way to remove the effect of swing adjustment - not even a tedious one. We can use "Change Durations) to restore the durations, but we have no direct way to change the start times to match the notation (that's the main thing Align Playback is supposed to do, but it doesn't in this case). All we can do is delete all the notes in the measure and re-enter them. (Fortunately, that seems to work.)

To best of my knowledge there's a single underlying reason that we have no practical way to remove swing: When applying swing Encore preserves the durations of notes and offers no other option! In other words, when Encore increases the position of the Note On time value, it also tacks on the same increase to the Note Off time value.

I object to this as the default for two reasons:

1) we SHOULD HAVE THE OPTION for preserving Note Off time. When I swing a pair of eights, indeed I delay the onset of the second note, but RARELY would I delay the release of that note by the same amount. The same logical flaw

2) Sorry, had to pick up the phone and now I forget.

q

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, q,

1) we SHOULD HAVE THE OPTION for preserving Note Off time. When I swing a pair of eights, indeed I delay the onset of the second note, but RARELY would I delay the release of that note by the same amount.

Let me noodle a little on this.

Firstly, if the initial duration of the second note is 100%, then swing (as currently operating) does exactly preserve the end time of teh second note.

Secondly, in the algorithm I propose, swing adjustment would slightly delay the end time if initial duration is less than 100%, but only in the sense of holding fixed the end time of the "face value" ("real estate") duration. This figure illustrates that:

swing_14.gif (37.8 KiB) Viewed 2188 times

If instead of this approach we hold the actual end time of the second note absolutely constant, then for smaller second note initial durations and maximum swing, the second note becomes terribly short.

The substantial shift of the actual end time for the second note we experience in Encore today (for initial durations of the second note less than 100%) is clearly an aberration, some faux pas in calculation. The indicator of this is that for an initial second note duration of 100%, this doesn't happen, but for an initial second note duration of 99%, the phenomenon is substantial. (Those two situations should be almost identical in results, but they aren't even close.)

Best regards,

Doug

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Eveline,

If in this test you had used a swing parameter of 75%, you would have seen the second notes (with swing applied) each lasting beyond the start of the first note of the next pair. This is what I consider an anomalous behavior of Encore. (If we had a "unison" situation, it would produce a "MIDI straddle".)

Best regards,

Doug

[q]

If ... we hold the actual end time of the second note absolutely constant, then for smaller second note initial durations and maximum swing, the second note becomes terribly short.

Reinterating: 'Maintain Note Off time value' should be an option (for the short notes of swung pairs.)

Align Playback or Swing Playback mess with the note Off time values, as the User Manual states, by preserving a note's duration. This bugs me, especially because there's no other option. Granted — in a series of swinging eighths, assuming a meter of 4/4 — Encore must increase the Note off value for the beat notes (preferably on-the-fly) ... but that does not mean I want it to tamper with the note off values of notes that fall on 'ands'. I really don't want that.

I'd rather have the slightly shortened durations. That sounds more true to the way I swing. As a performing musician, I'll stand by that.

Of course the reduction % increases depends on the original shortness of the note, right? If you're suggesting that "terribly short" means a duration reduction of 10% or less on average, I don't think that's so terrible. If I played a pretty short real-time note, straight or swing, I probably wanted that ... straight or swing.

q

[Doug Kerr]

Of course the reduction % increases depends on the original shortness of the note, right? If you're suggesting that "terribly short" means a duration reduction of 10% or less on average, I don't think that's so terrible. If I played a pretty short real-time note, straight or swing, I probably wanted that ... straight or swing.

Well, for what its worth I will speak in terms of ticks, where teh time of a quarter notes is 240 ticks):

Imagine eighth notes, with initial durations of 75% of face. If we apply swing on eighth notes with a parameter of 75%, holding the absolute ending time of the second notes of the pairs, the play duration for the second notes would become 30 ticks

If we want to think of that in terms of a percentage duration with reference to the note's new "allocated real estate", its duration percentage would be 50%.

If we want to think of that in terms of a percentage duration with reference to the note's face value, its duration percentage would be 25%.

Under the algorithm I suggest (remember, that might even be what Encore is supposed to do!), for the same context:

After swing, the duration of the second notes would be 45 ticks.

Note that this only represents a deferral of the ending time by 15 ticks (and the second note still ends within its "real estate" - still before the start of the next note).

If we want to think of that duration in terms of a percentage duration with reference to the note's new "allocated real estate", its duration percentage would be 75% (that ratio is unchanged by the swing).

If we want to think of that in terms of a percentage duration with refernce to the note's face value, its duration percentage would be 37.5%.

Note that in terms of the play durations of the two notes, the ratio before swing is of course 1:1. After swing, the ratio is 3:1 (the "classical" relationship for a 75% swing, as discussed in your nice tutorial). (That would be true for any initial duration percentage, so long as it was the same for the two notes.)

So you can perhaps see my intellectual attraction to my proposed rule.

Now what is desirable from a musical standpoint I would have no idea.

Best regards,

Doug

[polarbreeze]

Hmm, it seems to me that I routinely apply "swing" and then can later retract that by doing "align playback" - and I've never had any problem doing that. Am I misunderstanding the issue...?

Hard to believe, indeed.
It used to work ok, but in Enc5.0.2Wb3, it does not.

Please check what the result of Swing Playback + Align Playback does in the most recent beta for Mac?

Eveline

eeeek! IT'S BROKEN!! That's not good at all. Really bad bug. "Swing" used to be reversible on earlier versions but it no longer is. It seems that "align playback" restores the note beginnings to square eighths; however, it does not restore the durations to their right values. Furthermore, "guess durations" does not correct the problem either. This is quite a mess, needs fixing badly. Matt, please set aside all the theroizing about how the swing ought to be "improved" - just please let's put it back the way it was before it got broken!!!!

[polarbreeze]

I'd rather suggest that the swing dialog allows to enter a percentage for each note value (in the same dialog), with a "On/Off" check box for each of them.

I think it's really simple and easy to use the way it is now and I would not be in favour of any change. The "percentage slider" concept is elegant and easy to understand. Why change it?

[polarbreeze]

...

Note: Align Playback corrected the start times, but not the durations.[/list]

Kind regards
Eveline

My observation also. This is a bug. It used to work OK.