4 ms·

Without looking ahead to see what's next, I would agree, there's no solid way to determine if the pitch should be displayed as C# or Db. If you are speaking in

by tjr 6y ago

Without looking ahead to see what's next, I would agree, there's no solid way to determine if the pitch should be displayed as C# or Db. If you are speaking in terms of a single melodic line, it could be a fair compromise to display C# if your previous note was lower than the current note, or Db if your previous note was higher than the current note, as it is traditional to spell with sharps when ascending and with flats when descending. If you are displaying a chord (or some other system of harmony; four staves of a string quartet or whatever), then you could make a reasonable guess based on the other concurrent pitches: if you have an A and an E, or an E and a G, then C# might make more sense than Db. Again, I think looking ahead to the next note/chord would offer a stronger heuristic for judging enharmonic spelling, but even then ... it's hard to know for certain what the arranger intended. MIDI just isn't robust enough for that. Whatever solution you come up with, THANK YOU for being thoughtful enough to try. Some software is comically lousy in this respect. -- Another thought: if you are dealing mainly with live/streamed data (maybe interpreting a live performance?) you could very likely detect patterns based on previous notes played. You might not know the next notes, but if your program was paying attention, it could probably make an increasingly good guess what's coming next, and thus get better at guessing how to spell the notes.

jacquesm 6y ago
Here is an example: https://youtu.be/o_wsSIuv_po?t=21 https://youtu.be/o_wsSIuv_po?t=21 That looks to me like a descending melodic line (D -> Db) but the score has it as C#. The workflow I have is something like this: mp3 -> wav -> midi -> score. And I'd like that score to come out as closely matched to what went in on the far side so that you don't end up totally confused if you ever do see the score as the composer wrote it up. > If you are displaying a chord (or some other system of harmony; four staves of a string quartet or whatever), then you could make a reasonable guess based on the other concurrent pitches: if you have an A and an E, or an E and a G, then C# might make more sense than Db. I think that is the beginnings of a workable system. So, when ascending -> sharps, when descending -> flats. For chords make rules based on the key they are played in and look ahead at least until you have all the notes in this chord so you can decide which one will fit better. Hm, maybe there is some body of music scores that could be used to figure out preference of composers depending on key/chord? That would be a pretty large lookup table but likely still doable or maybe as a database table with the pitch numbers in the chord as an index and the preferred spelling as the data for each entry. So for off-line I have a good chance of getting it right and for 'live' your history could help to figure it out, especially because pieces tend to repeat certain patterns and chords (but that might lead to extra confusion if it turns out you got it wrong a previous time).
- impendia 6y ago
  This particular piece is in D minor. (You will definitely want your program to figure this out; otherwise you will produce the "wrong" key signature, need to include a ton of accidentals, and it will look a bit kludgy.) Anyway, in minor keys you very often see the note below the tonic get raised. So for example, in D minor, the pitch C#/Db will pretty much always be C#. You also often see the note two below the tonic get raised. I'd say a "descending melodic line" should continue past the note with an accidental, so D-C-B is a descending melodic line, for which you could make inferences about the C, but not necessarily the B. If it goes down and then immediately back up again, the note in between is (in my experience) more likely to be sharp than flat, and vice versa. As another rule of thumb, it is somewhat uncommon to have two consecutive notes with the same letter, one of them with an accidental. For example, if you have a G#/Ab, and it follows or precedes an A-natural, it is probably a G#. If it follows or precedes a G-natural, it is probably Ab. Of course, exceptions to all of the rules can be found. :)

by tjr 6y ago

jacquesm 6y ago

Here is an example: https://youtu.be/o_wsSIuv_po?t=21 https://youtu.be/o_wsSIuv_po?t=21 That looks to me like a descending melodic line (D -> Db) but the score has it as C#. The workflow I have is something like this: mp3 -> wav -> midi -> score. And I'd like that score to come out as closely matched to what went in on the far side so that you don't end up totally confused if you ever do see the score as the composer wrote it up. > If you are displaying a chord (or some other system of harmony; four staves of a string quartet or whatever), then you could make a reasonable guess based on the other concurrent pitches: if you have an A and an E, or an E and a G, then C# might make more sense than Db. I think that is the beginnings of a workable system. So, when ascending -> sharps, when descending -> flats. For chords make rules based on the key they are played in and look ahead at least until you have all the notes in this chord so you can decide which one will fit better. Hm, maybe there is some body of music scores that could be used to figure out preference of composers depending on key/chord? That would be a pretty large lookup table but likely still doable or maybe as a database table with the pitch numbers in the chord as an index and the preferred spelling as the data for each entry. So for off-line I have a good chance of getting it right and for 'live' your history could help to figure it out, especially because pieces tend to repeat certain patterns and chords (but that might lead to extra confusion if it turns out you got it wrong a previous time).

impendia 6y ago
This particular piece is in D minor. (You will definitely want your program to figure this out; otherwise you will produce the "wrong" key signature, need to include a ton of accidentals, and it will look a bit kludgy.) Anyway, in minor keys you very often see the note below the tonic get raised. So for example, in D minor, the pitch C#/Db will pretty much always be C#. You also often see the note two below the tonic get raised. I'd say a "descending melodic line" should continue past the note with an accidental, so D-C-B is a descending melodic line, for which you could make inferences about the C, but not necessarily the B. If it goes down and then immediately back up again, the note in between is (in my experience) more likely to be sharp than flat, and vice versa. As another rule of thumb, it is somewhat uncommon to have two consecutive notes with the same letter, one of them with an accidental. For example, if you have a G#/Ab, and it follows or precedes an A-natural, it is probably a G#. If it follows or precedes a G-natural, it is probably Ab. Of course, exceptions to all of the rules can be found. :)