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I am by no means, an expert in music, I can't even read it, so forgive me if this comes as a silly question, but why this syntax? It looks very foreign to me, b

I am by no means, an expert in music, I can't even read it, so forgive me if this comes as a silly question, but why this syntax? It looks very foreign to me, but at the same time, being a programming language I would have expected something more... verbose? is there any practical reason to for something like this?

colomon 11y ago
I dunno, contrast it with ABC notation for something very much less verbose: http://abcnotation.com/examples http://abcnotation.com/examples
gtani 11y ago
this is a live coding language, so trying to achieve what tidal and overtone are. EDM type genres have recognizable formulas for the drum and bass, and then for pads and leads above so all these environments are trying to abstract over patterns at different levels of the music. i can't find a real tutorial, but there's lots of material to look at: https://github.com/overtone/overtone/wiki/Getting-Started https://github.com/overtone/overtone/wiki/Getting-Started and this is the 1st ref: http://akustik.hfbk.net/publications/LiveCodingInLaptopPerformance.pdf http://akustik.hfbk.net/publications/LiveCodingInLaptopPerfo... in this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_coding ___________ tidal: http://yaxu.org/tidal/ http://yaxu.org/tidal/ disclaimer: I've been playing synths a fair amount and i have a hard time understanding a lot of stuff on the overtone cheat sheet
kaoD 11y ago
It's just a bit of markup over ASCII abstractions of musical notation. It looks foreign because you didn't study the syntax (just like <?php ?> would look foreign to anyone not familiar with PHP) and don't know the musical conventions. E.g.: - Notes are letter notation[0] plus ASCII abstractions over duration symbols[1]. - Tempo assignment is just "130 => )", which means there are 130 ")" (quarter notes) per minute. - |: foo :| repeats, which looks like the repeat symbol[2] in a score. - Dynamics are the same as traditional notation[3], with an alternative level notation (which looks just like a digital VU meter[4]). - Conditionals are pretty much the ternary operator. There's not much else going on. Compare with MML[5] which looks foreign even if familiar with musical notation. Of course you could ask why traditional music notation is so dense (probably more than this, compare letter notation "Cdim" with how you'd write it in a staff[6]). Musical notation is dense because you have to convey a lot of information in a very small space (less switching pages while performing) and, well, because when you have to write by hand you become lazy (just like copyist monks had their own shorthands). Sometimes the notation is also better at conveying information: in the "Cdim" example, when laid out in a staff, I can quickly see it's composed of a bass note C plus 2 triads, with both 3rd and 5th being flat, which makes it a diminished triad chord. You can invert the chord (take the bass note up one octave) and it'd still convey lots of information, while letter notation starts to get complicated (Cdim/Eb, which isn't that easy to read since you have to calculate in your head that Eb is the 3rd therefore the chord is inverted once). Fortunately we humans are very good at reading notation as soon as we're familiar with it :) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_notation [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musical_symbols#Notes_and_rests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musical_symbols#Notes_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeat_sign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeat_sign [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamics_%28music%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamics_%28music%29 [4] https://securethumbs.ebay.com/d/l225/m/mcuRjwssh-op30lD6M7asow.jpg https://securethumbs.ebay.com/d/l225/m/mcuRjwssh-op30lD6M7as... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Macro_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Macro_Language [6] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Diminished_triad_on_C.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Diminish...

colomon 11y ago

I dunno, contrast it with ABC notation for something very much less verbose: http://abcnotation.com/examples http://abcnotation.com/examples

gtani 11y ago

this is a live coding language, so trying to achieve what tidal and overtone are. EDM type genres have recognizable formulas for the drum and bass, and then for pads and leads above so all these environments are trying to abstract over patterns at different levels of the music. i can't find a real tutorial, but there's lots of material to look at: https://github.com/overtone/overtone/wiki/Getting-Started https://github.com/overtone/overtone/wiki/Getting-Started and this is the 1st ref: http://akustik.hfbk.net/publications/LiveCodingInLaptopPerformance.pdf http://akustik.hfbk.net/publications/LiveCodingInLaptopPerfo... in this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_coding ___________ tidal: http://yaxu.org/tidal/ http://yaxu.org/tidal/ disclaimer: I've been playing synths a fair amount and i have a hard time understanding a lot of stuff on the overtone cheat sheet

kaoD 11y ago

It's just a bit of markup over ASCII abstractions of musical notation. It looks foreign because you didn't study the syntax (just like <?php ?> would look foreign to anyone not familiar with PHP) and don't know the musical conventions. E.g.: - Notes are letter notation[0] plus ASCII abstractions over duration symbols[1]. - Tempo assignment is just "130 => )", which means there are 130 ")" (quarter notes) per minute. - |: foo :| repeats, which looks like the repeat symbol[2] in a score. - Dynamics are the same as traditional notation[3], with an alternative level notation (which looks just like a digital VU meter[4]). - Conditionals are pretty much the ternary operator. There's not much else going on. Compare with MML[5] which looks foreign even if familiar with musical notation. Of course you could ask why traditional music notation is so dense (probably more than this, compare letter notation "Cdim" with how you'd write it in a staff[6]). Musical notation is dense because you have to convey a lot of information in a very small space (less switching pages while performing) and, well, because when you have to write by hand you become lazy (just like copyist monks had their own shorthands). Sometimes the notation is also better at conveying information: in the "Cdim" example, when laid out in a staff, I can quickly see it's composed of a bass note C plus 2 triads, with both 3rd and 5th being flat, which makes it a diminished triad chord. You can invert the chord (take the bass note up one octave) and it'd still convey lots of information, while letter notation starts to get complicated (Cdim/Eb, which isn't that easy to read since you have to calculate in your head that Eb is the 3rd therefore the chord is inverted once). Fortunately we humans are very good at reading notation as soon as we're familiar with it :) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_notation [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musical_symbols#Notes_and_rests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_musical_symbols#Notes_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeat_sign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeat_sign [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamics_%28music%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamics_%28music%29 [4] https://securethumbs.ebay.com/d/l225/m/mcuRjwssh-op30lD6M7asow.jpg https://securethumbs.ebay.com/d/l225/m/mcuRjwssh-op30lD6M7as... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Macro_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Macro_Language [6] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Diminished_triad_on_C.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Diminish...