Introduction

Clavierist is designed primarily to enable music composition for polyphonic music with a piano-roll style music visualization as its primary UI.

Most commonly, notes are “drawn” onto the canvas in their exact durations, and then “interpreted” to how they are actually played back. For example, a certain note could be played slightly earlier than notated, or with ornamentations, with micro tempo adjustments, and so on. These adjustments are non-destructive, making it possible to create multiple realistic interpretations based upon the same composition.

To aid experimentation in composition, there is a flexible pattern system (in beta) which makes it easy to reuse motifs. Modifications can be freely added to the copies of the original motif, and the notes will retain their links to the referenced notes in the original motif (called a pattern) as much as possible. You can transpose a copy (called replica) of the pattern easily, or make changes to each individual note in the replica. This means you can set up the music in a way that makes it possible to quickly test out variations of a pattern.

Continue to the next page to learn how to use the app.


The back story

As a total “hobbyist musician” and a major Bach fan, and coming from a graphic design background, I had since a long time ago wanted to write my own music in Bach’s style, with an interface that uses piano-roll visualization as the main way to interact with the music. Traditional DAWs are not designed for the type of music I want to write, so – I built Clavierist. It turned out to be as helpful as I imagined it to be! I am now finally able to really sit down and just, play with musical ideas in the visual way that I am used to, without worrying about music notation or trying to play them on the keyboard with my average keyboard skills.

As this app will remain a passion-based side project for the forseeable future, Clavierist will remain in a perpetual “beta” state with many half-finished features and other ideas waiting to be experimented with. Very soon, I will record a walk-through video to better explain how everything works. In the mean time, you can get in touch for any feedback or questions you may have.