Note entry

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Note entry refers to the ways that notes are entered into a digital audio workstation (DAW) when composing. The two most common methods are piano roll and notation.

Piano roll

The piano roll can be utilized in several different ways depending on the preferences of the user. It is common for composers to have a maximum number of notes equal to a useful edo, such as 31, 41, 46, or 53. Because there are only 128 MIDI notes, range is a concern for larger edos.

Range (Octaves)	Max Edo
1	128
2	64
3	42
4	32
5	25
6	21
7	18
8	16

Note that N octaves of range means that each octave-equivalent pitch class occurs exactly N times. The table stops at 8 octaves because that covers the entire usable pitch range, from a bass guitar with extremely heavy strings to a professional glockenspiel.

It is also possible to use midi channels to increase range. This can be done by either assigning them to octave offsets, steps of an edo superset, or a combination of both. The former is available in Surge synth by default, but the others tend to require custom scripts like the in-progress TuneLoon.

Notation

MuseScore has a few plugins for microtuning. It would be appreciated if an active MuseScore user would explain any of them here.