Notes
Notes are defined primary with its x value, MIDI number (derived from its y value) and width.
In Clavierist, music composition is done without using the notation system, although theoretically with all the raw music data, corresponding sheet music can be generated on-demand. There is an very early prototype that maps the notes onto a traditional staff; you can enable it from the Advanced Settings section in the Settings panel and then look for the Engraver panel in the dock.
MIDI number and microtonal composition
The MIDI number supports floating point numbers, which means you can compose microtonal music in Clavierist. However, when you export your composition as MIDI files, floating point MIDI numbers aren’t supported by the MIDI standard and for now they will be rounded to the nearest integers. You can input floating point MIDI numbers in the note’s properties panel, or press Control on a Mac after you started dragging a note to disable snapping. You can hold ⇧ while you do so so that the note only moves in one axis.
Assigning notes to voices
Notes can be assigned to different voices. If you name the voices with numbers, you can quickly reassign selected notes’ voices by pressing ⌘ and a number, for example, ⌘3 will assign selected notes to the voice with the name “3”.
By default, new notes are added to the currently selected voice. You can quickly switch between voices by clicking on the voice tabs on the left of the screen, or press ⌘ + number without selecting any note to switch to a voice with a matching numeric name.
Velocity
The velocity corresponds to how “hard” a note is played. Note that some instruments do not support this value, such as a harpsichord or an organ instrument.
To quickly assign a velocity to selected notes, press the ⌥ key + a number. For example, pressing ⌥7 will set selected note(s)’ velocity to 0.7. Alternatively, select some notes and press < or > to decrease or increase its velocity by a random number approximately 0.1.
Ornamentation
You can quickly add in basic ornamentations for a note by picking a style from the ornamentation dropdown. After you’ve done so, some notes will be generated. You can freely alter what’s inside an ornament implementation, though the only way to add new notes into the ornament note group is by duplicating the notes already in it. To delete an ornament, select the ornament group and hit Delete.
Groups
You can group ⌘Gselected elements together for easier selection later on. You can also name groups which will display a label on top of the group.
Chords
Chords are one of the special types of groups. If you group notes as chords ⌘K, you will then be able to apply chord-specific features such as automatic arpeggios.
Patterns and replicas
Patterns are reusable groups of elements. Duplicates of a pattern are called replicas of the pattern and changes made in the source pattern propagates to all its replicas.
Learn more on the Patterns and replicas page.