rodmur@csuchico.edu (Dale Andrew Harris) (05/09/90)
Halloo,
I have recently discovered Scores (yes, I'm fairly new at using the NeXT) my
first thought was WOW, after listening to that piece by Bach. Then I thought
"gee, it would be neat to put in some of my own music and listen to it",
anyways I started reading the man pages relavent to the topic and discovered
what a major pain it would be to write a piece. With all the faculties the
NeXT has for sound and music I can't believe it doesn't have a Sheet Music
Editor, in which I can enter a real score which the computer would interpret
and then play. There is just no substitute to actually seeing the music.
Does anyone know of one that exists. Danke schon.
Dale H.
rodmur@cscihp.csuchico.edu
dharris@next.csuchico.edu
{both Internet}doug@dept.csci.unt.edu (Douglas Scott) (05/09/90)
In article <1990May08.233140.9693@csuchico.edu> rodmur@csuchico.edu (Dale Andrew Harris) writes: [portion deleted] >what a major pain it would be to write a piece. With all the faculties the >NeXT has for sound and music I can't believe it doesn't have a Sheet Music >Editor, in which I can enter a real score which the computer would interpret >and then play. There is just no substitute to actually seeing the music. >Does anyone know of one that exists. Danke schon. > There is at least one major music notation program being ported to the NeXT by its designers (Finale for example). Though these products are primarily for music printing, they also have the capability of producing MIDI data files which can be used to control external MIDI equipment--but which can be converted (via some nifty homemade programs) into a score format readable by NeXT synthesis software. Now, there is still a tremendous amount of interpretation involved here, in terms of how a given musical passage is converted into sound, but it is a start. None of this matters until the third party products are released. At that time, I guarentee I will post regarding this process. -- ___________________________________________________________________________ Douglas Scott doug@dept.csci.unt.edu
eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) (05/10/90)
I was seriously considering writing one of these a few months ago. What stopped me? Not having the Sonata font, that's what stopped me. I don't think it's in Adobe's $500-for-the-fonts-people-who- bought-Apple-LaserWriters-for-their-Macintoshes-already-have-for- free disk, and there's no way I'm going to get our University- with-a-budget-freeze to shell out for the so-called Developer's Disk. NeXT really should bundle Sonata. -=EPS=- -- Can you find what NeXT DID bundle in the way of support for displaying music notation? Hint: %!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-1.2 %%Creator: Adobe Illustrator 88(TM) 1.6 %%For: (Jeff Yaksick) (NeXT) %%Title: (Symbol ) %%CreationDate: (10/3/88) (5:44 PM) %%BoundingBox:-2 0 75 174 %%EndComments
jstewart@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Jack Stewart) (05/31/90)
In article <15282@s.ms.uky.edu> libacct@ms.uky.edu (John Coppinger) writes: > >I think there's a gold mine to be claimed by the person or people who can >come up with a system that can scan sheet music and convert the bitmap >... (stuff deleted) >... This also solves the problem of wear >destroying sheet music. Forget loaning it out, just reproduce the >original sheet music on a laser printer for a couple cents per page. >Even starving artists can afford that. I wish it was that simple. Unfortunately, Music companies (and copyright law) is very protective about making unauthorized copies of any work. I remember one choral work that I performed in where the sheet music was out of print. We still had to get permission from the publisher to make copies and had to pay a small fee for the copies (in addition to the copying cost). I believe this particular publisher was overzealous. I have recieved copies of sheet music from other publishers for free. However this publisher was within their rights. I don't remember exactly when a copyright is no longer valid but I believe when something is out of print for 25 years then it falls into the public domain. There really isn't much music that falls into that category, but I agreed that the music that does, should be preserved. Just because a piece of music may have been written a few hundred years ago doesn't mean that a particular publication is public domain. Usually someones edits the music. There may be 4 or 5 different versions of the piece by the composer. From this (and sometimes with his own "corrections" and interpretations) the editor prepares a score. Hence there are often several copyrighted versions (from different publishers) of the same piece (I told you it was complicated). So, I'm afraid that your idea, as nice as it is, won't work. However it might work to convince some music publisher to issue a complilation of some of there works on CD-ROM - especially if the publisher uses a computer to prepare their sheet music (like Finale by Coda). >The real added benefit is >the ability to select a piece in the library and be able to hear it >played IN THE LIBRARY. The library could be placed online and be No. It isn't that simple. Sheet Music gives a "skelton" picture of the music. Some composers, like Brahms, give the muscian a fair amount of information while others like John Cage (or a gregorian chant) leave a lot up to the individual muscian. But whoever is the composer, there is still a lot of intrepretation that is left up to the performer. No two performances are every exactly alike. A muscian is strives to make each performance better than the last. And different muscians often have quite different intrepretations of the same music. The same piece of music can either be sad or joyful depending on who is performing it. So you could have the NeXT play a piano (or other instrument(s)) version of a particular piece, but why? I don't think a student would learn that much and I don't believe it would be very enjoyable compared to a live performance. This is what I mean when I say that "Is the NeXT a Musical Instrument?". I know the NeXT has a great DSP chip. But in a sense the NeXT is no more than a Tape recorder. A fantastic Tape recorder I'll admit. Yet when you program a piece of music into the NeXT, it will always play the same tune. I think you can write programs that will make the NeXT an instrument by having the NeXT interact with a midi-keyboard or the mouse or the keyboard or all three. But when you are playing a score or midi file on the NeXT is isn't doing anything more than being a Tape recorder. Now don't get me wrong. I like the NeXT. I wish I had the money to buy one. In fact, I keep hoping that Ed McMann will show up at my front door just so that I can buy one. And a tape recorder like the NeXT can be tremendously helpful. I am a singer and I can use it to warm up and reherse (until I learn the notes). But there is a big difference between a program that plays a file and one that interacts with a muscian. I agree that a program that could take a scanned image and covert it to some electronic representation (like the file structure used by Finale) would be useful but I don't think it would be a goldmine. ---Jack Jack Stewart Jack@HMCVAX (Bitnet) User Support Coordinator, jack@hmcvax.claremont.edu (Internet) Harvey Mudd College, jack@134.173.4.32 (also Internet) Claremont, Ca. 91711 714-621-8006 -- Jack Stewart Jack@Hmcvax (Bitnet) User Support Coordinator, jack@hmcvax.claremont.edu (Internet) Harvey Mudd College, jack@134.173.4.32 (also Internet) Claremont, Ca. 91711 714-621-8006
hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) (06/02/90)
In article <1990May21.153705.25726@dept.csci.unt.edu> doug@dept.csci.unt.edu (Douglas Scott) writes: >In article <15282@s.ms.uky.edu> libacct@ms.uky.edu (John Coppinger) writes: >>I think there's a gold mine to be claimed by the person or people who can >>come up with a system that can scan sheet music and convert the bitmap >>into a flawlessly reproduced music representation file, such as a ScoreFile. > Glad to see I'm not the only one in the world thinking about this. I don't particularly care if I can get a flawless score out of it, but it would be a lot more convenient for getting large amounts of music into electronic format, for, say, MIDI playback. >[much stuff deleted] > >> Building the library doesn't seem trivial, though. The variety >>of musical notations would make it a computer vision expert's >>nightmare, or dream, depending on his attitude, I guess. Maybe, with >>the help of massively parallel systems like Danny Hillis' Connection >>Machine, the problem would become a simple one. > >Think how long it took to develop the technology to just read in typed >characters! The trouble I see with just "reading in" musical notation is >the degree of complexity in even a straightforward, standard score. What >about slurs that run across two pages, for example? Anyway, I am sure that >at some point anything will be possible, but I shudder to think of the first >20 versions of the software...given how many mistakes a professional music >copiest (who supposedly understands the context) makes, what will the program >be like? Well, at least it wont be ME doing the R & D. Just because it'll take maybe 20 or more revisions to get it "perfect" doesn't mean it's not worth doing, eh? (I mean heck, look at Emacs! Er, on second thought... }-) Recognizing typed characters seems to be a pretty reasonably solved problem now. At the very least, you should be able to recognize printed musical scores. And even if the first pass isn't perfect, if you mate this with a decent scoring/editing system, it'll be a lot faster to use than for a poor human to enter an entire score by hand. The music industry seems to be doing a good business selling prerecorded tunes on 3.5" floppy disks. Maybe it won't be a gold mine, but I think there'd be a pretty substantial market for music scanning software... And again, it's no good if all you can do is scan it - you need to be able to manipulate the score once it's in memory. I'd like something along the lines of Audio-Light's Music Studio program, or C-Lab's Notator. Something that lets you assign parts to MIDI instruments/channels, etc. It's pretty tedious using these programs to enter music by hand... This sort of thing would be a godsend for electronic musicians... -- -- Howard Chu @ University of Michigan ... the glass is always greener on the side ...