Kids need to learn how to read staff notation. However, they would rather look at the MIDI piano roll. My question is, why not show them both? Each view has its own affordances. Staff notation is more human-readable and space-efficient, but the piano roll is more discoverable for beginners. The staff doesn’t show microrhythmic subtleties, but it isn’t supposed to; the performer adds those.
Here are some note durations in both views:
Here are some rest durations:
Here are some dotted notes:
And here are some triplets:
See and hear these and other durations over a beat using this interactive Noteflight chart.
Educational technology folks! Please make me a tool that allows me to display the staff and the piano roll on the same screen at the same time, vertically aligned if possible. There are many pieces of software that will show one or the other, but rarely both. I made the images above by hand using Omnigraffle, and it shows. I would love it if changes I made in one view are immediately reflected in the other. Various software developers have explained to me over the years why this is impractical for a serious sequencing or notation editing tool. But I don’t need a whole DAW. A single measure of 4/4 time would be adequate. I understand why aligning the score and the piano roll in general is complicated, but for specialized teaching purposes, it seems like an attainable goal. The nation’s music students would thank you.
Best I’ve seen that gives a a little bit of both is Groove Scribe. It’s not a full-fledged DAW, but it’s a web tool that lets you see notation and a drum sequencer side by side and can export MIDI and images. Pretty handy for what it does.
https://groovescribe.com/
Love this! Though in a perfect world I would wish for vertical alignment between the two views.
I’m not sure if it still does, since I haven’t used garageband in a while, but I remember that a version as recent as 2020 at least had the option to switch between a piano roll and a very janky sheet music representation of the midi, which might be helpful.
GarageBand and Logic both let you show the piano roll as notation, but, maddeningly, it has to be one or the other, you can’t show both views side by side.
Would the reason for choosing one or the other, or showing both, be because it shows some value in learning? People might prefer the MIDI roll, but if it doesn’t achieve whatever the goal is for showing it to them maybe preference is less important. It would be interesting for you to do an experiment to see what results in the outcome you want.
I believe in showing both because I want to support as many learning styles and approaches as I can. Some kids find notation easy, some find it difficult. Some understand the rhythmic aspects of notation better than the pitch aspects and vice versa. Why not provide as many paths up the mountain as possible?