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A new alternative way of entering notes in Radium?

Posted: 22 Jan 2026 16:02
by elode
Intro

Following difficulties encountered in my experience entering notes and parameters in the columns of the Radium editor (which seems to be bug-like, but still rarely encountered), I thought about a different method of introducing the notes that does not programmatically involve too complex keyboard key management.

Personally, I wouldn’t mind having to type the notes using the letters 'abcdefg' from the keyboard, according to the linguistic layout that I commonly use. That is to say, to obtain c#4, I would type it out in full.

One could imagine in this mode, that the confirmation of the entry of the note was performed by pressing the "enter" key (to move to the next line), or "right arrow" (to move to the next column), and not before.

By pressing this key (Enter, or other to be defined), Radium would calculate the "result" of the cell according to certain criteria (see below).
  • If the next note or notes to be introduced must be on the same octave, it would no longer be necessary to type the octave number. For example:
  • if on a line the note entered is c#4, and the next note has to be a g4, it would be enough to type "g" for the program to understand that it must write "g4".
  • After entering a sharp (e.g. c#), if all the following "c" notes must also have a sharp, this sharp will not need to be entered. It will be enough in this case to note the letter of the note (c for example) so that the program understands that it must write 'c#'.
  • If at some point the notes "c" should no longer have a sharp, another sign would be used to indicate to the program to resume writing the notes "c" without sharps. Regarding the sign, one could for example use the sign "/" which is very simple to access on most keyboards. The following 'c' notes would not have a sharp.


example

- Column 1 : input note
- Column 2 : result after confirmation by the "enter" key (or other key)

Code: Select all

|c4 |c4 |
|c  |c4 |
|c# |c#4|
|c  |c#4|
|c3 |c#3|
|d  |d3 |
|c  |c#3|
|c/ |c3 |
Etc.

Advantages of this new way of introducing notes:
  • From what I imagine, a much less complex programmatic management of the keyboard keys.
  • An entry "step by step" probably a little slower, but which could please some musicians – including myself – who likes to take the time to feel and understand what I am doing. The simple act of having to press the 'enter' key to confirm a note entry would be a quality for me. I don’t cultivate speed. I am more in search of tools that give me time to feel, to understand. In my way of writing music, a note can make the difference. It’s worth stopping there.
Disadvantages

- Maybe difficult to code?
- and of course, the flaws of his qualities.
- other ?

Thank you for your attention and your very beautiful software

Re: A new alternative way of entering notes in Radium?

Posted: 30 Jan 2026 09:32
by kjetil
There is already Left Alt + Return to edit/add a note by writing it in full, but what you're proposing is probably more efficient. Maybe you can propose some incremental improvements to Left Alt + Return?

Re: A new alternative way of entering notes in Radium?

Posted: 30 Jan 2026 09:50
by kjetil
There's a lot of things that are not in the manual though. E.g. Ctrl + J to move cursor (although that one is in the list of common keybindings). The default keybindings conf file might be a good idea to look over though if you're using the program a lot. :-) https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kmath ... dings.conf

Re: A new alternative way of entering notes in Radium?

Posted: 30 Jan 2026 10:44
by kjetil
How about an option to open a text editor for the notes of a track. Then you can edit the notes in the text editor, and when finished, press apply, or something like that?

The reason I'm suggesting this is that it's much cleaner to implement than changing the editor itself. In addition, a normal text editor has it's own advantages.

Re: A new alternative way of entering notes in Radium?

Posted: 04 Feb 2026 12:03
by elode
Thank you. I am still unable to say regarding your proposal (text editor), because I cannot yet use Radium. For the moment, I still hope to find a way to use it.

As I already mentioned, I am stuck: impossible to type numbers OR letters (a-f).

Whatever the layout (QWERTY, AZERTY, FR, BÉPO):

- With radium_64bit_linux-7.5.76 version,
- I can type letters in velocity text, but not numbers.

- On the contrary, with radium_64bit_linux-7.5.77 version (the one you had sent me to do some tests),
- I can’t type letters in Velocity Text, but numbers.

I cling because Radium ticks many boxes for the use I want to make of it. It is about composing music directly and precisely synchronized with animations that I create, mainly with Blender.

Here are some of my criteria, which I do not find gathered in other programs:

- Radium works quite well with Jack Transport.
- Radium allows you to work with a simple keyboard (no need for a midi keyboard and other bulky devices).
- Radium allows glissandos between two notes in a simple way, whether via its pianoroll or by text.

Of course, I would certainly have ideas to improve certain things (from my point of view), but first I need to be able to simply use Radium.

Thank you for your attention :)

Re: A new alternative way of entering notes in Radium?

Posted: 05 Feb 2026 10:00
by kjetil
Yeah, sorry about the delay. I'll try to make a new release today with options to use scancode for numbers and/or a/b/c/d/e/f.
(ref. thread: viewtopic.php?t=483)