Music notation in ASCII text?
swetonic
See the example below, of a half note (the example below may not look
correct based on the font you're using in your newsreader).
Just wondering if such a tool exists, and if not, do you think a tool like
that would be useful?
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Philip Delaquess
From your subject line, I thought at first you were looking for
something that creates music notation from a text *input* file. In that
case, you should look at Mup, by Arkkra Enterprises. This little gem
reads a plain text source and spits out really beautiful PostScript.
After I paid my shareware reg fee, I wrote a nifty wrapper GUI for Mac
OS X. I use the result for all of my finished notation.
Arkkra Enterprises: http://www.arkkra.com
In article <pi8K9.1339760$O87.1...@news.easynews.com>, swetonic
Charles-Emmanuel
First, you have to use fixed pitch fonts like courier new and there is plenty
of stuff there:
Lou Cohen
I have written such a program. I use it as aid to composing, so it may
not do everything you might want. The program allows you to represent
single lines of music on staves, and you can set up any number of staves
(within reason.) The program has many features you're probably not
interested in: such as assigning tone-row notes to rhythms, but of
course you don't have to use those features.
The program doesn't create music notation directly. Instead it generates
a MIDI file. You can read the MIDI file into a music notation program or
a MIDI sequencer.
The program (which I call "Composer Tool" runs on Macs only, system
9.2.2. It has only one user (me) and therefore someone else using it
might find bugs I haven't come across. The documentation is more than
adequate for me, as the author of the program. You would have to
experiment with the program to learn how it works beyond the
documentation (which is in a Word file.)
You may have a copy of the executable file and the documentation if you
wish.
-Lou Cohen
lou-...@attbi.com
Al Stevens
"swetonic" <du...@blah.org> wrote in message
news:pi8K9.1339760$O87.1...@news.easynews.com...
> Is anyone aware of a tool that will produce music notation using ASCII
text?
Not the same as your example, but check out the abc musical notation
language.
http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/
Larisa
> It'd be way WAY too low resolution to be useful, in my opinion.
Not to mention wasteful of bandwidth. I like Mup, too; I wouldn't
mind seeing that become the standard ASCII notation for music. It's
pretty simple to read once you learn it, and it's very complete (and
by the by, the Postscript output does look amazing).
Incidentally, any chance of that wrapper GUI making its way into
Windows? Or <hint hint> Palm? I use my PalmPilot to enter all my Mup
data (that way, I can work on my soon-to-be-selfpublished collection
of piano works while sitting in boring meetings), but it is kinda slow
to write in all the text. It would be nice to just poke my stylus at
a stave and get an automatically-generated Mup file that I could then
tweak. I'm not a programmer, alas... <sigh>
LM
Al Stevens
"Larisa" <purple...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:34e2d56d.02121...@posting.google.com...
> Incidentally, any chance of that wrapper GUI making its way into
> Windows?
It has. The Mup ftp site includes a user-donated Windows front end called
Winmup.
Philip Delaquess
<purple...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Incidentally, any chance of that wrapper GUI making its way into
> Windows? Or <hint hint> Palm?
None whatsoever. There will be no Windows version because I hate
Windows. I will write Windows code when necessary to feed my family,
but I'll do it for fun when hell freezes over.
There will be no Palm version, because... Well, maybe I finally found a
good reason to learn to write Palm software. The thing is, the Mac OS X
interface almost wrote itself. That's because the OS X graphical model
is built around Display Postscript. The GUI runs Mup in a background
process. I added a command-line switch to Mup so it knows it's running
under my GUI and slightly modifies its output. The GUI takes the text
from your editing window and pipes it to Mup's standard input. It
captures Mup's standard output, runs it through a simplified PostScript
interpreter (PostScript is way easy to interpret) and slaps the result
up on your screen or printer.
To write a Palm version I would have to modify Mup's output routines so
that they drive the Palm screen directly instead of emitting PostScript
code. This would be a huge bother. In fact, I started to do that on OS
X before I hit on the background-process solution. On the Palm it would
be even worse because the Palm's graphical model is not based on
PostScript.
But I share your desire for a decent Palm-based notational program. The
only ones I've seen totally suck eggs.
Philip.
Sam Yorko
>
>
> But I share your desire for a decent Palm-based notational program. The
> only ones I've seen totally suck eggs.
>
> Philip.
Sucks >eggs<? That's a new one.
Sam
Paul Craven
news:3DFFB574...@computer.org...
>
> Sucks >eggs<? That's a new one.
Not if you're teaching your grandmother.
Alabaster
chris.
"Larisa" <purple...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:34e2d56d.02121...@posting.google.com...
Al Stevens
"Alabaster" <noe...@nofreakingemail.net> wrote in message
news:7moM9.69353$hK4.5...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> what does MUP offer that Finale or Sibelius don't?
It's shareware, a lot cheaper it you decide to register it ($29), and it's
open source.
Atte André Jensen
IMHO two other formats beat mup:
Abc which is very fast to type and process and free software is
available for most platforms (incl. windows, mac, linux/unix and palm)
Lilypond, which is free and produces the most beautiful scores I ever
saw. Note that there's a comparison between MUP and lilypond on MUPs
webpage, which is not exactly fair (lily 1.0.17 in the comparison, 1.7.9
is out now).
I basically think the syntax of MUP is too clumsy, and don't really like
shareware that much.
--
peace, love & harmony
Atte
G
Atte André Jensen
Han-Wen Nienhuys
>See the example below, of a half note (the example below may not look
>correct based on the font you're using in your newsreader).
>
>Just wondering if such a tool exists, and if not, do you think a tool like
>that would be useful?
Such a tool exists.
My co-developer once had an insane mood, and added ASCII output to
LilyPond. Relevant doco reproduced here. I think it still works in
LilyPond version 1.4.
Why anyone would actually want to use this is completely beyond
me. It's much clearer to attach a .png or .pdf with an example and (if
necessary) notation editor/compiler source files.
****************************************************************
ASCIIScript output
LilyPond can output ASCII Art. This is a two step process, LilyPond
produces an ASCII description file, dubbed ASCIIScript (extension
`.as'). ASCIIScript has a small and simple command set that includes
font selection, character and string printing and line drawing
commands. The program `as2text' is used to translate an .as file to
text.
To produce ASCII Art, you must include an ASCII Art paper definition
file in your .ly, one of:
\include "paper-as5.ly"
\include "paper-as9.ly"
Here's an example use for ASCII Art output (the example file
`as-email.ly' is included in the LilyPond distribution), the staff
symbol has been made invisible:
$ lilypond -fas as-email.ly
GNU LilyPond 1.3.144
Now processing: `as-email.ly'
Parsing...
Interpreting music...[3]
Preprocessing elements...
Calculating column positions... [2]
paper output to as-email.as...
$ as2text as-email.as 2>/dev/null
|\
|/ |##|##| | | | | |
/| | | | | |\ |\ |\ |\ |\ |
/ |_ 3 | | | | 5 | )| )| )| )| )|
| /| \ 8 * * * | 8 * * * * * |
\_|_/ | |
*_|
lily
BUGS
The ASCII Art fonts are far from complete and not very well
designed. It's easy to change the glyphs, though; if you think you can
do better, have a look at `mf/*.af'.
Lots of resizable symbols such as slurs, ties and tuplets are missing.
The poor looks of most ASCII Art output and its limited general
usefulness gives ASCII Art output a low priority; it may be dropped in
future versions.
****************************************************************
--
Han-Wen Nienhuys | han...@cs.uu.nl | http://www.cs.uu.nl/~hanwen
Han-Wen Nienhuys
No, it's not. Sources are included, but (quoting the license)
You may not sublicense, rent, lease, convey, modify, or
translate this software for any purpose.
This is a far cry from Open Source
(http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php)
Al Stevens
"Han-Wen Nienhuys" <han...@blauw.xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:3e044958$0$154> >It's shareware, a lot cheaper it you decide to
register it ($29), and it's
> >open source.
>
> No, it's not. Sources are included, but (quoting the license)
>
> You may not sublicense, rent, lease, convey, modify, or
> translate this software for any purpose.
>
> This is a far cry from Open Source
> (http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php)
I said "open source" not "Open Source." There's a difference.
Al Stevens
Larisa
> On Thu, 19 Dec 2002 20:44:19 GMT
> "Al Stevens" <nob...@home.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > "Alabaster" <noe...@nofreakingemail.net> wrote in message
> > news:7moM9.69353$hK4.5...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> > > what does MUP offer that Finale or Sibelius don't?
> >
> > It's shareware, a lot cheaper it you decide to register it ($29), and
> > it's open source.
>
> IMHO two other formats beat mup:
>
> Abc which is very fast to type and process and free software is
> available for most platforms (incl. windows, mac, linux/unix and palm)
Yes, but it does not have as many options for dynamics marks and other
such things. Also, the printed output looks ugly. It's a nice
compact way to communicate music in ASCII, yes, but it's not a good
way to generate printed scores.
> Lilypond, which is free and produces the most beautiful scores I ever
> saw. Note that there's a comparison between MUP and lilypond on MUPs
> webpage, which is not exactly fair (lily 1.0.17 in the comparison, 1.7.9
> is out now).
Haven't tried Lilypond. The syntax looks a little less clear to me
than Mup, but it could just be inexperience. I agree that the scores
do look nice.
> I basically think the syntax of MUP is too clumsy, and don't really like
> shareware that much.
I rather like it; but I figure you're used to Lilypond and not used to
Mup, whereas I'm the other way around.
Another thing I like about Mup is that the software is very compact.
It fits on a single floppy, and can be run from a floppy at the
friendly local Kinko's, if one happens to be away from one's computer.
LM
Larisa
> In article <34e2d56d.02121...@posting.google.com>, Larisa
> <purple...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Incidentally, any chance of that wrapper GUI making its way into
> > Windows? Or <hint hint> Palm?
>
> None whatsoever. There will be no Windows version because I hate
> Windows. I will write Windows code when necessary to feed my family,
> but I'll do it for fun when hell freezes over.
>
> There will be no Palm version, because... Well, maybe I finally found a
> good reason to learn to write Palm software. The thing is, the Mac OS X
> interface almost wrote itself. That's because the OS X graphical model
> is built around Display Postscript. The GUI runs Mup in a background
> process. I added a command-line switch to Mup so it knows it's running
> under my GUI and slightly modifies its output. The GUI takes the text
> from your editing window and pipes it to Mup's standard input. It
> captures Mup's standard output, runs it through a simplified PostScript
> interpreter (PostScript is way easy to interpret) and slaps the result
> up on your screen or printer.
>
> To write a Palm version I would have to modify Mup's output routines so
> that they drive the Palm screen directly instead of emitting PostScript
> code. This would be a huge bother. In fact, I started to do that on OS
> X before I hit on the background-process solution. On the Palm it would
> be even worse because the Palm's graphical model is not based on
> PostScript.
Actually, I'd even settle for (and may actually prefer) some kind of
software where I poke my stylus at a musical staff, and Mup code is
automatically generated in a window (and can then be copied and pasted
to a text editor for further tweaking). Kinda like PocketSynth, only
with Mup code, and with a staff interface instead of piano keys. I
wouldn't necessarily need to see a Postscript score on the screen.
All I'm trying to get away from is writing out the actual code into a
text editor in Graffiti.
Ah well. Guess I have to go get myself a Palm programming book.
LM
Larisa
Nicer-looking output (at least nicer than Finale)
Portability of input files (it's ASCII) - thus, you can email a Mup
file or post it on Usenet or edit it on your PalmPilot or on any
platform
Cheap ($29, including any upgrades)
Compact (fits on a single floppy)
Outputs rather listenable MIDI files for "proof-listening"
I dumped my copy of Finale the moment I got Mup. Sibelius, I never
even considered - too expensive and too complex.
LM
swetonic
someone via email, without worrying about their setup on the other end.
ASCII is the lowest common denominator. I know good musicians who use email,
but are otherwise low on the computer curve. I don't want to worry about
whether or not they can render a GIF or JPG, or PDF file.
And to the "waste" of bandwidth concern: who the hell cares about bandwidth?
A GIF or JPG would probably use as many or more bytes than ASCII. But who
really cares about bandwidth? What, are you worried there's not enough out
there? Voice your bandwidth concerns in alt.binaries.svcd where people post
800 megabyte movies!
Al Stevens
"swetonic" <du...@dude.org> wrote in message
news:hIqcnaeX6IB...@speakeasy.net...
> And to the "waste" of bandwidth concern: who the hell cares about
bandwidth?
There are people in some countries who have low speed lines and pay for
Internet connection time by the minute and who do not have substantial
income or reliable connections. My brother in Jamaica, for example. He cares
a lot about bandwidth. We do not exchange binary files or other unnecessary
content because of the cost, which is indeed a function of bandwidth.
Thunder9...@dsemail.net
>The reason I would want to do this is to quickly send a musical idea to
>someone via email, without worrying about their setup on the other end.
>ASCII is the lowest common denominator. I know good musicians who use email,
>but are otherwise low on the computer curve. I don't want to worry about
>whether or not they can render a GIF or JPG, or PDF file.
In this case, using ASCII is even worse. You'll run into problems
where their email won't default to the necessary fixed-point font.
And you'll run into problems with lines wrapped.
GIF and JPG are pretty universal these days. GIF would be the
preferable format for an image containing notation. (GIF is generally
better for raster line-art and JPG for real life pictures.)
You seem to be willing to go out of your way to make it easier for
your friends. Why not set up a little web site on a free site? Then
just upload the GIF and send your friend the link to the GIF. You can
be sure their browser will render the GIF.
You may want to check out this site which talks about all kinds of
formats for music notation.
http://www.music-notation.info/en/compmus/notationformats.html
Note that when they talk about ASCII format, they generally are
talking about the standard format - not ASCII art. In particular this
one looked interesting since it has a public server:
http://www.noteserver.org/
The most promising standards for the future are the ones based on XML.
Regards,
Thunder9
xx_NOSPAM is antispam
Sally Whytehead
format has to be the best bet.\
See
http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/
abc music notation was developed originally for folk tunes and there is
a wide variety of notated tunes on the net as well as free software to
turn the abc format into midi or pdf etc.
Its format is readable as text too.
It has been extended to cater for multiple voices so could be used for
more complex stuff.
Sally
bob
news:34e2d56d.02122...@posting.google.com:
> Atte André Jensen <at...@wanadoo.nl> wrote in message
> news:<20021219230112...@wanadoo.nl>...
>> On Thu, 19 Dec 2002 20:44:19 GMT
>> "Al Stevens" <nob...@home.com> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > "Alabaster" <noe...@nofreakingemail.net> wrote in message
>> > news:7moM9.69353$hK4.5...@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
>> > > what does MUP offer that Finale or Sibelius don't?
>> >
>> > It's shareware, a lot cheaper it you decide to register it ($29),
>> > and it's open source.
>>
>> IMHO two other formats beat mup:
>>
>> Abc which is very fast to type and process and free software is
>> available for most platforms (incl. windows, mac, linux/unix and
>> palm)
>
> Yes, but it does not have as many options for dynamics marks and other
> such things. Also, the printed output looks ugly. It's a nice
> compact way to communicate music in ASCII, yes, but it's not a good
> way to generate printed scores.
>
The output quality of .abc files depends entirely on the quality of
software used to create the score. Melody Assistant is OK, esp. if you
want to add dynamics and whatnot. It's hard to beat the price. I find the
output of abc2ps to be pretty good, esp. with the right command line
parameters.
The real "draw", or "killer app" for .abc files is obviously the the fact
that it has been very widely adopted in "celtic" music circles. You can
find thousands (possibly 10's of 1000s) of Irish and Scottish tunes in
.abc format, and it has features designed specifically for that idiom.
For people into other types of music, well, ymmv.
I haven't used Mup, but it sounds pretty interesting. Thanks to whoever
brought it up -- I'm going to check it out.
Bob