Conference napalm::commusic_v1

57.0. "Music Languages" by NOVA::RAVAN () Mon Jan 28 1985 12:33

I have recently agreed to score some traditional music for a local
talent show.  The person who is running the show asked me to do it
because she wanted something other than the rather simple piano
accompaniments she had used in the past.  I agreed to do it because
I wanted a concrete goal to work toward as an incentive to get some
music hardware and software working.

I have a M68000 S-100 system.  I went out and bought a Roland MPU-401
MIDI CPU to handle the real time MIDI interface for two reasons: a)
there is no existing S-100 MIDI interface card available that I know
of, b) the MPU-401 also has the ability to sync-to-tape, a feature
which I intend to use heavily.  Many thanks to John Sauter for the
weekend demonstration of his APPLE system which showed me this piece
of gear in action.  It turns out that I have to build a hardware
interface to the 401 box anyway, but it is simpler than a straight
MIDI interface, mainly because the 401 has a parallel interface to
the host CPU.

The problem I have now may be common to you folks out there interested
in traditional music (you know, twelve pitches per octave, sharps, flats,
time signatures...).  I want to be able to create orchestrations of the
music, but I need a way of entering the pitch and rhythm data.  I'm not
too keen on writing a MIDI keyboard input program, since I would have to
be able to quantify the ryhthmic information and be able to play the music
somewhat reliably, even at a reduced tempo.  Two strikes here.

What I want to do is write ASCII text files containing (minimally) the pitch
and rhythm data for each part, and then write a program to translate this
information to MIDI commands.  At least in principle, this should be relatively
straightforward.

So now my question: Does anyone know of an existing syntax for capturing
scores of traditional music?  Leland Smith undoubtedly has a syntax for
his music scoring program, but I assume his syntax is more like a music
typesetting system than a music performance system.

I have come up with a realtively simple syntax which I would be willing
to share with folks in this notes file, but I would like to know of any
leads on existing languages.

-jim

	I came upon this problem in reverse; I used to write various
composing programs for systems with no graphics output. I needed some
kind of ASCII output.

	I remember doing some research, finding out about someone who
had done just that, writing to them and getting a huge master's
thesis in return. 

	That was years ago, but I never throw anything out. I'll
check my files and see what I can come up with.

	It's a trickier problem than it seems at first. Traditional
music notation is like natural language - it evolved over a long time
and has almost as many exceptions as it has rules.

						- Karl

With my system I have bypassed this problem.  I enter music from the MIDI 
keyboard, then edit the MIDI representation of it, in hex.  I have a 
graphic display feature, but I find that I don't use it.  The procedure is 
somewhat clumbersome, but workable.  Over the last couple of weeks I have 
entered the first 40 bars of John Denver's "Annie's Song", using three 
instruments, and sync-to-tape with my Fostex A8 to hear it.  Someone who 
could play the piano could unquestionably do it much faster than I can.

My software all runs on an Apple, of course, but the algorithms are pretty 
straightforward; I expect you could recode them for an S-100 system easily 
enough.  The Roland MPU-401 does a lot of the work.
    John Sauter