Enkerli
commented
3 years ago Partly in response to a prompt @SteelWagstaff ... and discussions with Gavin Goodwin.
Open Enkerli opened 3 years ago
Enkerli
commented
3 years ago Partly in response to a prompt @SteelWagstaff ... and discussions with Gavin Goodwin.
Enkerli
commented
3 years ago To expand on (and possibly reframe) this idea…
My shift from “musical notation” to “visual representation” can imply a very significant difference in how this would work. After all, the “problem to be solved” isn’t necessarily that we need to display staff notation. That, in itself, can work relatively well with image formats (including SVG), and the Music Sheet Viewer mentioned in pressbooks/ideas#154 could solve that fairly easily.
Perhaps a controversial take: part of the “problem to be solved” is musical notation itself.
While it’s known by a relatively large number of people around the World (pretty much anyone who’s spent any amount of time in a music school), “Western Musical Notation” in staves with all sorts of special symbols is ill-suited for the broadest type of musical learning. For one thing, it obscures some of the most obvious connections between musical elements. The exact same musical structure might have a very different representation based on its key (a D major triad in a C major context doesn’t look at all like C major triad in that same context). Conversely, the exact same visual representation can work for, say, a minor and a major triad depending on the clef or alterations. A musical engraver (who was much better-known for philosophical work) was complaining about those issues and devised an alternative… back in 1742.
At a technical level, staff notation is very demanding. For instance, it contains so many curves that it requires a very high resolution to be legible. Yes, it can work through responsive design and there are (surely) ways to make sure it complies with some broad accessibility standards (which could link this idea with pressbooks/pressbooks#3645 ). Still really far from ideal in terms of the technology used. Especially in terms of embedded files for offline use.
And don’t get me started on the Eurocentrism at the root of this system…
An alternative to so hegemonic a notation system could go a long way to enhance musical learning, in part by making that process a whole lot more inclusive.
Obviously, alternative systems exist. Some of those options might be more appropriate here.
At this point, I tend to favour grid-based approaches. The dominant grid-based approach is the one found in the “piano-roll” in any Digital Audio Workstation.
Such a system is really meant for editing MIDI content, and it works remarkably well for that. It’s also the basis for Catherine Anne Schmidt-Jones’s Learning by Doing: Music Theory for Digital Audio Workstation and it’s obvious to me that it could really help in learning. Especially among those who are already using DAWs… or who don’t fit the music school mold.
Among that system’s advantages is the fact that relationships between musical elements are much more obvious than in staff notation. In the example above, it’s immediately obvious which notes last longer than others. It’s also obvious when the line moves by a wider interval. Plus one could use the exact same pattern in any key. To understand what’s happening in this excerpt, one doesn’t need to know anything in advance in terms of key, time signature, or tempo. This kind of representation is also much simpler, technologically. Drawing rectangles is among the easiest things to do in computer graphics. No special symbol is needed.
Of course, the “piano roll” has limits. It tends to work best for melodic lines or for harmony. Anything which is based on notes (so, what staff notation mostly does). Another grid-based representation is widely used for music which isn’t based on notes: drums, percussions… and samples. I don’t think there’s really a standard name for it and it’s basically a version of the piano roll. For instance, from the latest version of my main DAW (Bitwig Studio):
In this case, it’s mostly about the relationships between “events” in terms of timing, which is what matters the most in this context. This is one where staff notation is particularly clunky. Especially when you get into the rhythmic use of samples, which is a huge dimension of music since the 1980s (because, Hip Hop).
That kind of representation is pretty close to what we call “TUBS”, in ethnomusicology.
(There are other grid-based approaches which tend to be similar to the other two, including step sequencers. Those have significant advantages for editing. Not so much in terms of representation.)
So… back to this here “Embeddable Music Player for Offline Use”…
I contend that using some form of grid-based visual representation would be more effective than Western Musical Notation in terms of musical learning, technological requirements, coverage of diverse musical practices or principles, and compatibility with current practice.
Enkerli
commented
3 years ago Ha! This might be a rather elegant solution. https://github.com/cifkao/html-midi-player (via https://reposhub.com/javascript/video-audio/cifkao-html-midi-player.html )
Feature Description
An alternative to the MuseScore embed could change the game for music-related books. Especially offline.
Ideally, this alternative could include ~musical notation~ some form of visual representation, MIDI, and recorded audio. More than ideal would be a way to interact with the ~musical notation~ representation, say by highlighting or answering H5P-like questions.
The MuseScore embed only works in a live page (and pushes readers to create MuseScore accounts). For instance, the PDF version of Open Music Theory displays the dreaded:
instead of:
In several parts of the text, there are links to external files, including MuseScore ones.
Suboptimal for learning.
(Also, Muse Group has been generating quite a bit of unnecessary drama in the Free/Libre Open Source Software world. Which isn’t to say that their software should be avoided. Just that it’s important to tread carefully… Especially since its embed’s “Download” button leads to a .com site which requires a freemium or trial account.)
Feature Use Case
People who want to learn just about anything musical get access to a neatly packaged document which includes musical examples with which they can play directly. It's a considerable audience, as any trip to an app store would make obvious.
It's also a significant audience on the publishing side. Obviously, packaging musical examples is an especially important task for music teachers. In this sense, it's not too dissimilar from math teachers' use of Geogebra and such. Packaged musical examples would allow other content creators to publish in a new way. A number of authors have enough of a music background to create this type of content even if it's not their primary work.
Other Notes
Those musical examples are also an excellent opportunity for collaboration by adaptation. In the OER world, "forking" can have a huge impact.
Unlike video, storage space used by such musical examples can be remarkably small (say, less than 10kB, so orders of magnitude smaller than the video version).