Teaching & Learning Music Notation

There are a few ways this device could be used for producing music - using a linux based sequencer for example, but a while ago I did some messing with a music engraving app called Lilypond. It's GNU (& hence free) and makes use of of text-based input that is then compiled to produce pdf sheet music .... i.e it is very much like programming but with a very specific intended outcome.

http://lilypond.org/ is the main website but there is a very recent (July 2011) site that has an online environment http://www.omet.ca/

(if anyone wants to have a look?!)

Getting students using notation software is incredibly difficult as it requires specialist understanding of how to read/use music notation and then the software itself is usually very expensive. I just wonder if there is any scope to help develop an understanding of music notation by learning how to program it in this way - maybe as a joint project between the IT & Music depts.? The Lilypond syntax is quite easy to understand, so although very 'specialist' may have enough similarity to programming to perhaps make it a good introduction to some concepts?

Although take up in schools by music teachers might be a bit limited ( :( ) if there were any IT/Computing staff who were hobby musicians, they might find it interesting to try out??

As it's free, the R.Pi might be a good platform to use it? I will give this some more thought... maybe think about how a few lessons might be actually delivered.... :)

Mark

I'd think this is a great idea, really.

[liz]

I do too - I should admit a vested interest here; I used to work for Rhinegold Publishing, and I've worked on a number of GCSE, AS and A level Music text books (I also used to write for Music Teacher magazine, alongside some other music mags), and music education's one of my (many) big hopes for the device. Notation software is, as you say, pretty impenetrable for school students, but Lilypond is new to me and looks very interesting. Keep the suggestions coming!

Interesting... I have probably used your books at some time ... good resources from Rhinegold.

To perhaps take advantage of your vested interest..... :) ..... any chance if seeing if energyXT will run on the R-Pi (www.energy-xt.com). I am currently developing a resources website with cheap academic licensing so it would be great to know if the linux version would run. Although my usual platform is Win or OSX, I do have a basic install running on Ubuntu, but I don't know whether a separate compilation would be needed for ARM?

Quote from Mark Hudson on August 3, 2011, 09:54
There are a few ways this device could be used for producing music - using a linux based sequencer for example,

an output from a sequencer to the current incarnation of MIDI would be highly useful. If it could come with onboard General MIDI sound files/synthesis that would be fantastic.

but a while ago I did some messing with a music engraving app called Lilypond. It's GNU (& hence free) and makes use of of text-based input that is then compiled to produce pdf sheet music .... i.e it is very much like programming but with a very specific intended outcome.

I think lilypond is too advanced for little benefit, it's for writing a score, or appears more particularly for writing classical scores. The primary benefit from reading the site would be for university level composition courses, and sheet music engraving printers.

Whilst there are some examples for education, they seem more along the lines of a teacher scoring for students than for student learning.

A much more useful app would be something along the lines of the iphone app Gakufu released by Kawai this week which allows you to use a camera to grab an image from printed or handwritten notation. http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/.....them-back/ Unfortunately it is japanese app store only at the moment.

As an aside, I got into computing by having access to a great music teacher, a 128k+ spectrum and a borrowed from school casio CZ-101... never did get my hands on a yamaha DX-7, though.

Mark

@ Mark - Thanks for the link to omet.ca. Lilypond seems a bit steep for Theory I students notating part writing examples. I wonder how something like Denemo would work on a RaspberryPi. It does MIDI in and playback.

Yes I agree it is perhaps a bit specialist, but the idea of having to code a text file and then compile is kind if in the area of programming, so fits the educational/programming ethos behind the R-Pi - and the Omet website does this really nicely as an introduction in a kind of IDE manner...

Denemo might also be a possible front end .. will have a look at that ... :)

(it may be too specialist though and there is also the recent/free http://www.noteflight.com which is a very nice Flash score editor - as a graphical interface app.

Mark

My wife is a recorder teacher and is developing new ways to teach children. (http://blofluitklas.ganassi.nl , in Dutch)

For score-editing we are now experimenting with musescore .
It's free software (gpl) and runs on Windows Mac and Linux. Also most linux distributions support it including debian so it will most likely run on the r-pi without much trouble :-)

If you want something programming like that could generate music, I'd think something like CSound would be a better fit.

Could the onboard DSP be used as a basis for a synth?

Luke.

I've used lilypond to a small degree and liked it as once you get used to the command driven interface it is quite quick and results look very professional, it's also great if you want to insert some music notation into some text as there is a front end/plugin available for open office http://ooolilypond.sourceforge.net/
I haven't used the other suggested software so I don't know if this is available in them also...

Hi all, please take a look at my collection of music apps for learning and teaching, with a teachers' corner, at

http://musicappsforlearning.weebly.com/

There's a general blog, and a special forum on most pages to discuss

specific items.

I'd love to get your input.

thanks

Anita Pincas

London University

I found this a while back http://linux-sound.org/ when looking around to see what kind of guitar related stuff (as thats my thing) could end up on pi. There's a section there on the left devoted to Notation.

I am trying to install MuseScore (because of it's similarity to Sibelius, children will be able to use ti right away, and the XML feature will also allow them to port their files to Sibelius)

I found the Debian Squeeze version. I downloaded the tar.gz file, tar'd it, but when I type

$ make release

As specified in the README, I get errors:

/bin/sh: cmake: not found
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/pi/musescore-0.9.6/build'
make[1]: ***No rule to make target 'lrelease'. Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/musescore-0.9.6/build'
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/pi/musescore-0.9.6/build'
make[1]: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory 'home/pi etc etc
make: *** [release] Error 2

It's even worse if I try and install as root, I just get a whole list of

Can't cd into build

and then the whole system hangs.

The file I used was 'musescore_0.9.6+dfsg.orig.tar.gz' from the Debian Squeeze section.

Any clues? What am I missing?

squeaky3 did you try the instructions on
http://musescore.org/en/developers-hand ... -12.04-git

[rurwin]

Did you unzip the files as root (using sudo)? Because you don't want to do that.

Python in conjunction with Reaper, a digital audio workstation program

July 9-13, 2012 - High School

http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/ice-gt/1889

What Is Music21?
Music21 is a Python-based toolkit for computer-aided musicology.

Applications of this toolkit include computational musicology, music informations, musical example extraction and generation, music notation editing and scripting, and a wide variety of approaches to composition, both algorithmic and directly specified.

http://mit.edu/music21/doc/html/examples.html#examples
http://mit.edu/music21/doc/html/what.html

Sann Francisco Symphony

http://www.sfskids.org/templates/home.asp?pageid=1

The Music Lab

Meet the Notes,Symbols,Pitch,etc