The editor
and the canvas

The editor

When you start a new composition, you are taken to the editor screen. The canvas covering most of the UI is where you will start “writing down” music. Apart from the canvas, you can also find

• some convenient controls and a minimap on the top,
• quickly access some meta information about the composition and interpretation from the header,
• switch between voices on the left,
• switch between tools from the tool wheel on the top right,
• access various panels from the dock,
• access context-dependant settings on the right side of the dock,
• and monitor the music or enter notes with the on-screen piano keyboard.

The canvas and the coordinate system

The music always starts from the beginning where X = 0. While the Select tool (V) is selected, you can click on empty spaces on the canvas to set the position of the cursor, which is where new notes will be inserted at when you use a MIDI keyboard or the on-screen keyboard to enter notes. It is also where the playback will start from when you press the play/pause button (or the space bar). If you switch to the Quill tool (Q), clicking on blank spaces on the canvas will “write” notes down. You can learn more about tools on the Tools page.

At the bottom of the cursor, you can see an input attached to it. That is the Shorthand console which you can use to enter notes with some pre-defined shorthands.

The X axis: time

In Clavierist, each X unit always equals the duration of a quarter note (a crochet). An 8th note (quaver), for example, would have a width of 0.5.

The Y axis: pitch

On the Y axis, one unit represents one semitone. The Y axis assumes C4 (key of C on the fourth octave) as its center, which means when Y = 0, the note is in C4 which is MIDI number 60. The smaller the Y value, the higher the pitch, and the larger the MIDI number. For example, the note F4 = MIDI 65 = Y -5, as F4 is five semitones higher than C4. The frequency and octave values are then derived from the MIDI number, both of which you can also freely adjust.

X/Y scalars

As we define notes with abstract X and Y value, you can adjust the X/Y scalars to change how dense or sparse the notes appear on the canvas. You can find the controls in the Interpretation panel. Note that those values will also affect how notes are rendered in the play mode.

If you just need to zoom in to manipulate shorter notes and smaller elements, refer to the Pan and zoom section below.

Non-musical elements on the canvas, such as text nodes, are positioned within the same coordinate system. However, due to the nature of the canvas, those elements’ actual sizes or positions will change with the X/Y scalar defined in the Interpretation panel as well.

The Z axis

The Z values of notes are only visible in the 3D play mode, which you can preview by opening the Visualizer panel. Most of the times, you might want to adjust the Z value of the voices to achieve a nice parallax effect in play mode, although you can also adjust the Z value of individual notes if necessary.

Pan and zoom

To look around, just scroll in any direction. Alternatively, you can press space and drag to move in the viewport. You can also switch to the Hand tool (H) and start dragging.

Pinch and zoom the view with your trackpad, or hold ⌘ and scroll. You can also adjust zoom level from the zoom control in the titlebar. The usual ⌘+ and ⌘- also works to zoom in and out, and you can use ⌘0 to reset to 100% zoom.