[Software] Écritoire à Musique

[sporniket]

A visual software focused on writing a musical score, with MIDI playback capability.

User Experience

The user experience would be like a spreadsheet with a touch of word processor, where :

• a line is an individual staff or tablature, infinitely long, and a collumn is a point in time, usually quantized at the shortest supported note.
• thus a cell will be a note/chord, with indications/annotations.
• As the visual of the cell is highlighted (typically, a note in the staff, with optionnal annotations over and under the staff), a input field show the actual code of the cell, that would ressemble heavily to lilypond markup code.
• MIDI input is supported, and will allow to change the note of the current cell. When the focus is NOT on the input field, the focus goes to the next cell on the right on a NOTE OFF event, and the default duration of the note has to be selected beforehand (to make the workflow smoother : using modifier keys like Control, Alt and Shift to alter note duration for the next note ; backspace to cancel the last input ; also, distinguish between legato play and a chord if sensible)

Unlike a spreadsheet :

• cell spanning/fusion will be automatically updated according to note lenght
• there are some concepts (directive to change some attribute of something) that need to be located in a cell, and that takes no visual space. ⇒ A visual annotation will still be displayed on screen, like a gear or something, that will be hidden when printing.
• There will be no empty line between two populated lines, only an empty last line will be available, to start a new staff.

The main work mode is thus the "spreadsheet view" with each staff infinitely scrolling to the right, and the only spot that show the underlying data as code through the cell content editor.

A second work mode, targeting printing on paper, will be focused on adjusting the rendering on paper, like a word processor. Typical actions : defining ensemble, global meta data, etc...

A third work mode will allow to focus on the project as a music project, with tracks and editing operation over a selection (copy/cut/paste), temporal zoom,...

Midi playback / transport

At any time, a control panel allows to navigate inside the duration of the project and to activate MIDI playback. A time range can be defined to loopback while playing back.

While playing back, a visual line will show the current location

Midi sysex

An interface MAY be provided to help creating/editing/displaying MIDI system exclusive message, but it will be at best a kind of HEX editor.

Target platforms

• Atari ST, as a tribute to the only computer that natively have MIDI ports.
• Thomson TO8 and maybe MO6, as a tribute to this family of computer (my Proust's madeleine being the MO5, but that model is to limited ; the TO8 has more memory and a finer graphical mode, and I own one ; the MO6 is also equivalent to the TO8 but would have less RAM, also I don't own one) ; MIDI playback/input is available if there a MIDI interface (logimus MIDI interface)
• At one point, a port on modern computer (Linux preferred)

File formats

• Native project file, to be specified.
• Standard MIDI File (import/export)
• Lilypond score (export, limited import capabilities)
• Printing to printer or PDF

[sporniket]

Color coded piano roll experience

Another visual representation of the music would be a kind of piano roll view, adapted to the graphical capacity of the MO5 (16 colors with proximity constraint -2 colors per group of 8 pixels-)

• Vertically, from top to bottom, the 12 tones of the occidental representation (DO/C, DO#/C#, up to SI/B).
• A playable note is noted as a filled cell
  • on the corresponding line (tone)
  • spanning multiple cell horizontally in proportion of the length (one half cell = one sixteenth, one full cell = one eighth, 2 full cell = one quarter etc...) thus the quantization of the representation is a half cell (one cell = 8 pixels width × 8 pixels height)
  • the octave will be indicated by a color (inspired by resistors color coding) : RED = octave 2, YELLOW = octave 3, GREEN = octave 4, BLUE = octave 4, PURPLE = octave 5 ; this representation would work on a TO7 by the way.

Using a mouse or a cursor moving through the matrix to, clic to draw/erase.

Choose a scale and highlight/enable valid tones only. Changing to a scale where some notes would be out of scale, the offending tone is highlighted in RED

[sporniket]

Roadmap

MVP 1

• Atari ST only
• Stick to the Sheet user experience, and cells are visualized as TEXT
• Only one score, but can write a chord of up to 3 notes
• The goal is to implement the management of cells (implicit append, split or merge)
• A simple replay routine, no visual feedback

MVP 1.1

• Visual feedback while playing
• Simple transport command ( |<< go to the start, << go back to the previous start of a beat, > play, >> go to the next start of a beat, >>| go to the end –the next empty cell–)

MVP 1.2

• Cells are visualized using musical notation (score, notes, etc...)

MVP 1.3

• some annotation appears above or below ; either as text that may overlap ; or as a "gear","wrench", or "info" icon to indicate an effect or modification that cannot be translated as music notation ; or a music notation like time signature