alda-lang / alda

A music programming language for musicians. :notes:
https://alda.io
Eclipse Public License 2.0
5.63k stars 291 forks source link

Add support for alternative notations (e.g. guitar tabs) #182

Closed sdroege closed 8 years ago

sdroege commented 8 years ago

It'd be great if instead of only allowing notes given by name, one could provide them in alternative notations like guitar tabs. For many people it's a more natural representation for playing music on the guitar, and provides some more information over alternatives (like specifying which string should be used).

daveyarwood commented 8 years ago

I agree, this would be awesome for guitarists who are more used to tablature than standard notation.

We're planning on implementing a plugin system (#37) at some point -- this will allow you to define your own syntax features to use in Alda scores. Basically, it will work by translating your score (with special syntax) into an ordinary Alda score, and then evaluating it like usual. I think this plugin system should be the way to implement things like this feature.

I don't think guitar tab notation is something we will support in the language itself, though.

daveyarwood commented 8 years ago

Closing this issue since #37 covers this and other use cases for alternate syntax.

I'll be keeping guitar tab notation in the back of my mind as we work towards plugins, though. This would definitely be a killer plugin!