At the Sounding Edge: Music Notation Software For Linux (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

At the Sounding Edge: Music Notation Software For Linux (Linux Journal)

Posted Oct 26, 2005 19:45 UTC (Wed) by gilb (subscriber, #11728) [Link]

This is only the first of a series of columns, so I expect that Lilypond will be treated in the future. He hinted at this by saying "As we shall see, a music typesetting language such as LilyPond or Mup is easy to learn".

Lilypond

Posted Oct 27, 2005 15:27 UTC (Thu) by utoddl (subscriber, #1232) [Link]

Actually, he said, "As we shall see, a music typesetting language such as LilyPond or Mup is easy to learn, and with a little practice, you quickly can enter complex scoring indications." I like to think I'm not stupid, but tricking Lilypond into doing what I want has proven very difficult for me. Don't get me wrong, Lilypond can produce beautiful output. I'm sure if I knew the right incantations I could get what I wanted, but divining the incantations from the docs was no easy task. Granted, I haven't tried it in the last 10 months or so, so things may have improved. More examples would be nice, too. (I'm mostly trying to do four-part vocal stuff, btw.)

Lilypond

Posted Oct 28, 2005 7:37 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]

I haven't done much with lilypond lately, either ...

I think the main problem is that the project leaders are steeped in European Classical tradition. From my POV (British Brass Bands) pretty much every damn default is wrong - from the layout of the header to the rehearsal marks to ... well whatever.

Don't get me wrong - it's great software, and the authors want it used, but if us members of other traditions don't speak up and, more importantly, contribute, then it won't improve. Unfortunately, I think it suffers from the same problem as another of my hobby-horses - Pick/MultiValue databases. The people who use and need the software aren't trained programmers - they're musicians (or database-literate end-users) - so they aren't in a position to contribute code, which is what is really needed.

Cheers,
Wol

contributing to LilyPond development

Posted Oct 28, 2005 9:46 UTC (Fri) by hanwen (subscriber, #4329) [Link]

Don't get me wrong - it's great software, and the authors want it used, but if us members of other traditions don't speak up and, more importantly, contribute, then it won't improve

You can also contribute with money of instead of code. If you want something changed, then you can hire the project leaders to implement features or templates on request. See lilypond-design.com for more details, or check out the v2.7 NEWS file for features that have been sponsored up to now.

Han-Wen Nienhuys
hanwen@lilypond.org

At the Sounding Edge: Music Notation Software For Linux (Linux Journal)

Posted Oct 26, 2005 23:29 UTC (Wed) by darthmdh (guest, #8032) [Link]

As a musician I have to say - all this software sucks! I mean, I was very tempted not to even RTFA as the biteline mentioned "human readable" and "XML" in the same sentence without negating, which instantly sends alarm bells ringing.

The closest thing I've seen so far to what I need is Rosegarden, and I've had to dump it every time I've tried as its KDE dependencies have brought my system to its knees and/or conflicted with the usual things I run (which obviously isn't KDE ;)

I've had to work with many musicians who, although talented with their instrument, have had no formal training and so "Esus4" means nothing to them. So please tell me how they are supposed to comprehend syntax like "G/2" which is introducing time as well as chord. I don't want to know how that kind of syntax, if it is even possible, represents inversions, octaves, dropped notes, accidentals, and notes in the bass clef (so you can pull a chord pattern like D over F# et al). Sure, you could represent it all in an XML format, but no-one in their right mind is going to manually sit there and type out raw XML when its much faster to grab a paper, pen, and ruler if you have no staved sheets and scribe real music.

Perhaps more importantly, before this problem is solved perhaps something should finally be done about the state of base audio support in Linux to begin with. Each desktop environment provides their own "proprietary" interface to an asynchronous audio daemon they provide. GNOME has esd, KDE has aRts, both of which were written more or less to compensate for lack of functionality is OSS that ALSA now provides. But real audiophiles need the capabilities of jackd ... so you end up with a large, incompatible, conflicting mess of software and you need it all as the best audio software combo has programs written specifically for one of those environments.

I'm also surprised at how difficult it is to even get a simple MIDI channel working. I have not managed to ever get any MIDI program in Linux to talk to my piano. I'm now of the opinion that MIDI is basically unsupported (which is hilariously disturbing considering how entrenched it is in the music industry for connecting devices together) and one should instead jack in with a phono plug and manipulate waveforms/samples.

Okay, rant over.

At the Sounding Edge: Music Notation Software For Linux (Linux Journal)

Posted Oct 27, 2005 7:37 UTC (Thu) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]

"I've had to work with many musicians who, although talented with their instrument, have had no formal training and so "Esus4" means nothing to them. So please tell me how they are supposed to comprehend syntax like "G/2" which is introducing time as well as chord."

It's all very well ranting, but I'm afraid the above quote shows that you didn't even read the first paragraph properly!

It really pisses me off when people come to me for help with their computer, and then when I try to get them to explain what's wrong, they expect me to be psychic and "just know". If you don't know computer jargon, then you cannot expect me to understand your computer problem! Fine, I know people have difficulty grasping it (and the popular press love to muddy the water), but when someone's attitude is they DON'T WANT to learn the jargon, then my attitude tends to be "if you can't be bothered to try and explain your problem properly, then I can't be bothered to help you!".

There are a lot of talented musicians out there who play by ear. But there are a lot of talented musicians who don't. And if you can't be bothered to learn "the language of music", then don't be surprised when many of those talented musicians can't be bothered to listen to what you're trying to say.

By the way - I agree with you about XML. It's a great way for PROGRAMS to talk to each other, but it was not designed (nor should it be used) for humans. I think lilypond is great, because if you understand music notation then lilypond is simple to understand too, and it uses the keyboard, not that damn mouse! Every WIMP music program I've ever used is just too damn fiddly and too much hassle ...

Cheers,
Wol

At the Sounding Edge: Music Notation Software For Linux (Linux Journal)

Posted Oct 27, 2005 8:06 UTC (Thu) by hanwen (subscriber, #4329) [Link]

Perhaps more importantly, before this problem is solved perhaps something should finally be done about the state of base audio support in Linux to begin with.

No, this is an unrelated subject. Music notation and MIDI/audio have very little in common on a technical level.

At the Sounding Edge: Music Notation Software For Linux (Linux Journal)

Posted Oct 27, 2005 8:36 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

I don't know...

Hooking midi stuff up to programs has been dead easy for me. But maybe that's because I am coming from the 'experianced linux user' angle instead of a 'experianced music guy that uses windows' angle.

I have 2 audio cards, a el-cheapo midiman usb kerboard, and that's about it.

I plug the usb midi controller keyboard into my regular usb qwerty keyboard.

Then I run qjackctl, which is a gui interface for jackd sound server and related command line utilities.

I configure the jackd sound server to use which audio card I want, then I configure the latency I want, then I start it. As long as I use jack-aware applications everything works fine. For isntance if I start ams (alsa modular synth) it automaticly hooks into the jack interface. Then from qtjackctl I can hit 'connections' button or something like that (don't recall the actual button name right now) then I select the 'midi' tab, click on my keyboard, click on the ams input and hit 'connect'.

Works that way on most jack-aware programs. Some midi-related programs have to be configured to expose the input/outputs thru jack, but that's not to difficult usually. Rosegarden is one that I've had trouble with though.. but I prefer to use smaller programs and hook them together rather then use one big thing.

right now my favorite thing to do is start qsynth (a fluidsynth front end), pick a nice sound font, hook up my keryboard to that, turn off all the reverb/echo stuff for it then send the sound output to ams were I have some nice filters and ladspa plugins that I try to use to get a more 'realistic' large room effect out of my stereo.

Now I never used a 'real' midi plugin thru my card.. my audiophile 2496 should handle that fine, but I don't know if I have my Audigy configured to do that correctly. The Audigy has some midi proccessing features that are common to all sound blaster style stuff, but I don't use any of it.

I think that if I mucked around with just command line stuff or just with a single application trying to hook it up to my sound card's midi features, I'd have a much more hard time. A very hard time actually.