Music notation software has long been seen as a two-horse race, a Pepsi versus Coke stand-off between Finale and Sibelius. But not only are there other alternatives, too, here’s one tool that’s making free and open source notation viable. I’ve spoken previously about engraving tool Lilypond, but it’s not entirely graphical, even with GUI front ends. MuseScore will look more familiar to users of something like Sibelius, and just as the latter released a major upgrade, it also had a big 1.1 release with major new enhancements.

MuseScore has a robust notation engine, capable feature set, and it’s even catching on in a number of academic institutions around the world. There’s an iPad-based score reader, which in turn is a revenue source (no reason open source software can’t generate income). You can enter music with keyboard, mouse, or MIDI, use the usual complement of symbols and layout features, and import and export both MusicXML and Standard MIDI files. You won’t find a big orchestral sample library as in Sibelius 7 and Finale’s Garritan-based sounds, but there’s still support for soft synth playback, and you can run for free on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’s been translated into some 43 languages and counts more than 2500 downloads daily.

Given the coincidence of Sibelius and MuseScore getting their upgrades at the same time, I asked the MuseScore developers directly how they thought they compared. Let’s bring on the fighting words – after all, a little friendly competition drives better tools. (Ask the engineers on contests like Robot Wars.)

Improved interoperability also means you don’t have to choose sides. With MusicXML import/export in MuseScore and recently expanded in Sibelius 7, you can exchange files between the two tools – as you should. (After all, the whole point of notation is the ability for anyone to read it — for the exchange of ideas.)

First, here’s what’s new in MuseScore 1.1, with improvements like jazz and lead sheet functionality:

• Lead sheet enhancements, including MuseJazz jazz font, chord symbols on bars without notes, keyboard shortcuts for moving between bars, more chord symbols, and slash notation (via a plug-in) … see the beginner and advanced tutorials, and separate blog post.
• Connect is a Web-baed social feature for sharing scores, checking out tutorials, and following Twitter MuseScore discussion, all within the program. (Actually, I’m surprised more music software doesn’t do something like this.)
• Improved stability and reliability, including 60 bug fixes. To be honest, that’s probably what has held me back from spending much time with MuseScore, so I’m intrigued. This isn’t a review, but I’ll have to do some scoring work so I can try it out.

MuseScore isn’t as fully-functional as tools like Sibelius and Finale. For may purposes, it will do the job; it just lacks some of their maturity and extensive feature set, which means you should research its current features if you have particular notational needs. But that’s changing. On the roadmap for a more significant version 2.0 are critical notation features like tablature, and linked parts so you can edit music simultaneously in extracted parts and full score.

Sibelius versus MuseScore?

I asked MuseScore developer Thomas Bonte to follow up on how MuseScore relates to Sibelius with news of the two coinciding:

Well first off all, we have to be honest about it, Sibelius is a superb product. Many of my friends use it and I dropped the ambition to convert them to MuseScore However I learned that every year there is a new group of aspiring musicians following music education. The way we see it, is that MuseScore is growing up together with them.

MuseScore strongest selling proposition against Sibelius and others is it’s price: $0. While that seems an unbeatable price, MuseScore faces very steep competition from pirated versions of Sibelius or Finale. When I go around in music conservatories and I ask who has a legal version, only the teacher raises a hand. So MuseScore needs to do better than just the price and that’s where the Open Source kicks in.

If you look at it economically, it’s all about reducing production costs. Translations, documentation, import & export filters, plugins, … The only thing we (the core team) need to take care off is that the contributor community can work together. To facilitate this collaboration, we invested a tremendous amount of time in building a full featured community website on musescore.org using Drupal CMS. It is the main reason why the contributor community around MuseScore has doubled every release, up to 150 people for 1.0. You may have an open source project, but without people, that means nothing. And that’s how we really compete. With our community of contributors and users. The former improves the product, the latter does the promotion.

It’s just a matter of time before MuseScore can handle professional typesetting work. Via initiatives such as the Open Goldberg project, we want to show that MuseScore is getting ready for more demanding work.
Open Goldberg @ Kickstarter

One more thingy related to Sibelius: finally, Sibelius 7 has MusicXML export on board! A huge amount of users were asking us how they could convert their Sibelius files to MuseScore. (e.g. https://www.facebook.com/caleb.foreman/posts/10150374776437678 ) The Dolet plugin was obviously way overpriced to be a democratic solution. This is a huge relief now for e.g. educators, who have lots of material in Sibelius and wanted to convert it for their students who are using MuseScore.

Some of Sibelius 7′s features do have comparable features in MuseScore – and in some instances, MuseScore was first. Thomas observes:

MuseScore had a tabbed document interface (like a web browser) since the start of the project
MuseScore is of course native 64 bit (if compiled on a 64 bit machine)
PDF export has also been there from the beginning
Multi core playback is not available in MuseScore but the synthesizer runs in a second thread (so at least dual core)
MuseScore had import of SVG images since many years now
Upcoming MuseScore 2.0 has full screen support

Version 2.0 is likely to be the big release, in my mind; we’ll be watching. Thomas says they’re also working on improved branding and visual appearance in preparation for that release, and all of this is boosted, he says, by revenue from the iPad score reader. That makes an interesting new model for free and open source software.

A side note, as my biggest criticism of the free engraving tool Lilypond at the moment is its lack of two-way MusicXML file interchange. Thomas notes:

MuseScore has been able read and write MusicXML for several years now.

MuseScore exports Lilypond. It used to have Lilypond import as well, but that was dropped in 0.9.6 because it was better to spend out limited resources on improving MusicXML import. We expected to see MusicXML export in Lilypond anyway, but apparently that’s far from trivial since it still didn’t happen.

And what about compatibility for ABCjs, a JavaScript-powered, text-based notation format so simple it’s been implemented on mobile phones and Web browsers?

Yes there is. And the way this works is a very nice example of how hackable MuseScore is. It’s written out nicely in this post here but basically what happens is: a plugin in MuseScore let’s you browse for the ABC file, it then sends the ABC file to a web service at http://abc2xml.appspot.com which is made by one of the MuseScore developers, and finally that web service sends MusicXML back. Et voilà. (Note: as stated on the announcement: The webservice uses ABC4J. ABC4J supports ABC 1.6 only)

And for more comparison:

We made a comparison table between Sibelius and MuseScore:
Google Spreadsheets Comparison

This may help you to get an idea where MuseScore is and where version 2.0 is heading.

One note: MusicXML export is not available in Sibelius Student or First. Only in Sibelius 7. Bummer.

I think it should be plainly obvious: there’s room for more than one notation tool. There’s room for more than two notation tools. Competition between tools can drive capabilities forward, and better motivate tools to match what users need. Free and proprietary tools can both learn from one another, and even exchange files – there isn’t a gulf between free and open source and proprietary as some may have found in the past. The availability of better tools means the expanded ability of musicians to express themselves.

And MuseScore is becoming a viable option for notation. That can only be a good thing. If you use it in your work – or you have anything you’d like to share about how you create digital … scores – we’d love to hear from you.

http://musescore.org/

From the intrepid grid-playing monome producers comes a whole bundle of goodness: a free album, and along with it, a nice video that illustrates what’s happening on some of the tracks, some reflections on how 15-second samples can bind together a community of music makers, and even, as a bonus, some tips on running Windows software in Linux under WINE. (Whew!)

Via Joshua Saddler, who illustrates his music creation techniques in the video at top, we learn of the monome Community Remix Project album, available as a free download via Bandcamp. (Full track lineup embedded below.)

MCRPv10: MCRP​-​RP, by monome community [Bandcamp]

Josh explains how the “meta-remix” came about — by limiting to 15-second samples, and pooling results, an entire community of producers was able to work collaboratively:

I admit that this is slightly in my own interest, since I’m on this album (as “ioflow”). But even though this is the first album I’ve ever appeared on, being new to the world of electronic music production, what’s really newsworthy is that it’s another outstanding effort by all the monome artists. these guys are super-talented.

This MCRP theme: the meta-remix project. Each participant grabbed a 15-second sample from a previous MCRP track, and submitted the unaltered clip to the pool. the participants then used the pool to craft their own original tracks.

Man, what they did is crazy. I had access to the samples and I still can’t tell how they got those sounds. they’re a fine buncha talented
folks, so maybe this is a news item of interest: monomers around the world coming together to create a free album, created at least in part
with free software (i even used Windows software on Linux), using tracks previously made freely-available on other MCRP albums.

Thanks, and happy listening!

Here’s Josh’s track, too, via SoundCloud:

lines and angles by ioflow

Linux + WINE Tips

Josh also, after my prompting, shares some tips on how he works with Linux and, for Windows compatibility inside Linux, WINE:

I ran Max/MSP under Wine. I ran the “Ricochet” performance patch for the monome, which was tied to Linux-native Renoise via JACK (WineASIO transports audio/midi from Wine to the system JACK daemon). Renoise hosted the samples as sliced instruments, with some more open-source software DSSI plugins loaded (Calf Vintage Delay, etc.)

Ricochet is based on the Otomata website that’s been covered on CDM previously. You can actually see how it translates to the monome on my video for “lines and angles.” Press a button to place an initial “token,” with each subsequent press indicating direction:

http://vimeo.com/25748942 [seen at top]

More details here:

http://nightmorph.livejournal.com/235021.html

(and more monome/controllerism/software/music-related stuff on the “music” tag!)

The Max/MSP stuff, especially MIDI-outputting patches, generally works on Linux exactly the way it does on Mac or Windows. Occasionally I have to do some hacking to get audio/sample-based patches to cooperate, but only rarely do I find something that doesn’t work at all. mlrv1 and mlrv2 are the only ones so far. Most of the challenges stem from the fact that Wine’s handling of Bonjour is broken. The zeroconf layer that’s used by serialosc poses the most problems. For zeroconf-based apps, I got the man himself, tehn, to create a “static” serialosc.maxpat, for which I use a plain text editor to manually specify ports, then copy that .maxpat into each serialosc-based Max patch I intend to use. serialosc itself is developed on Linux, but it uses Avahi there, whereas other platforms use Apple Bonjour. Can’t have two DNS stacks on one machine, so I’m forever hacking on and around Wine to get it to cooperate with the system DNS responder. So far, there’s no way to bridge the app’s zeroconf transport and use it unmodified on Linux.

Workarounds like customized .maxpats are a small price to pay, though, for the pleasure of being able to run monome performance patches. I’m not a coder, so I have to work with what’s available right now. Maybe in the future I’ll try porting some of these things to Python.

I recently got Aalto running under Wine — I posted that to the CDM article a week or so ago. Rules of the MCRP being what they were, though, no external sounds allowed, so I couldn’t hook that in, much as I wanted to. I had a lot of fun learning how to make music with samples for the first time, anyway.

Good to know, I think! For more on WINE, see:
http://www.winehq.org/

But personally, I’m delighted just to have some nice music to listen to – and the price is right. Thanks, monome community!

SoundCloud for iPhone from SoundCloud on Vimeo.

While it’s easy to focus on one platform or another, a profound trend in 2010 has been toward sharing media in the cloud. The basic concept is as old as the Internet, but from applications like Instamatic for photographers to syncing storage to tote around documents on iPads, this has been a year in which the server-shared media seemed to become a bigger part of our lives.

Sound could be next. Aptly-named service SoundCloud has added a big, red “record” button both to an updated iPhone app and the Web browser-based dropbox. That means you can tote an iPhone or iPod touch with the SoundCloud app, and record and upload, say, a field recording or rehearsal set all in one go. Or someone could leave a voice greeting or record a quick demo for you right on your site.

The service didn’t have to do anything to make this possible; it’s just a clever interface around recording, using native iOS features on mobile and Flash in the browser. (To me, actually, seeing HTML5-based support would be even bigger news, but a lot of HTML5 goodness requires waiting.) When you hit record, you use the same recording function that was always there; the app just takes care of the upload so there isn’t an extra step. SoundCloud confirms to CDM that there’s no change to the underlying APIs. For developers, there’s really nothing stopping you from building SoundCloud “recording” into any mobile or Web-connected tool.

The main questions for developers and users is, when is this the right choice? I had to explain to SoundCloud why I preferred Dropbox connectivity in mobile apps to SoundCloud – for me, the hierarchy and file system integration in Dropbox trumps the sharing features in SoundCloud for certain apps. I might want to record a bunch of samples to manipulate later in Dropbox; I don’t really need to share with anyone. Conversely, though, if sharing is your main goal, SoundCloud is easier. I expect we’ll see more of this kind of differentiation – and head-scratching about the best workflow – in the future. (Cue someone in comments mentioning free, old-fashioned, no-subscription-required tools like rsync.)

For the same reason, it’s worth noting that there’s more to the recent iPhone app and API SoundCloud updates than just recording. Apps will in the near future will be able to more easily connect to services like Facebook and Twitter. Those tools have been the “glue” that have made things like the faux-Polaroid and Holga apps for iPhone become so viral. It’ll be interesting to see if sound can make the same impression.

Then again, I think it’s worth noting that the biggest news this week came out of plain text you could copy and paste. The Google Translate beatbox, defying any rational explanation, became perhaps the biggest sound and music meme I’ve seen all year. And maybe that proves the point: the familiar copy-and-paste means of spreading it was something anyone could understand. There’s a lesson there, certainly.

In the meantime, SoundCloud is looking a lot more useful. Now, it’s just a matter of finding the most productive way to use it – and, oh yeah, finding some sounds.

The SoundCloud iPhone/iPod touch app is free on Apple’s App Store.

Sharing Note by Weatherman

Capture And Share Your Sounds [SoundCloud Blog]

I have no problem with copyrighting music. So I’ll be blunt: my ongoing impression of Creative Commons licensing is that you should either choose a license that allows for commercial use, or opt for traditional copyright and licensing. The popular “non-commercial” restriction is problematic. It does too little to prevent exploitation, and too much to prevent exactly the kind of use that’s the reason you’d choose CC in the first place. That’s not an effective compromise; it’s more like a lose-lose scenario. If you really want people to ask permission to use your work, you can use a standard copyright. (You don’t even have to do anything, under US law.)

Latest case in point: the CBC.

An off-hand comment on the (excellent, by the way) Spark podcast suggested that management had instructed producers to stop using Creative Commons-licensed music. After a blog post by Michael Geist, the story has spread around an angered blogosphere. Some even interpreted a later comment to mean the whole thing was the work of CC opponents, through licensing deals that explicitly forbade CC. (Don’t get excited yet – it seems clear that’s not what happened, and those organizations wouldn’t be able to do that even if they wanted.)

Let’s skip straight to the point. Techdirt’s Mike Masnick got the bottom line of this one, which is that CBC eventually gave up on CC-licensed works because of the prominence of non-commercial restrictions. They note this comment from CBC’s Chris Boyce:

The issue with our use of Creative Commons music is that a lot of our content is readily available on a multitude of platforms, some of which are deemed to be “commercial” in nature (e.g. streaming with pre-roll ads, or pay for download on iTunes) and currently the vast majority of the music available under a Creative Commons license prohibits commercial use.

In order to ensure that we continue to be in line with current Canadian copyright laws, and given the lack of a wide range of music that has a Creative Commons license allowing for commercial use, we made a decision to use music from our production library in our podcasts as this music has the proper usage rights attached.

That seems to me to sum up the story: whatever the wisdom of CBC’s solution, this is a failure of the non-commercial restriction. And that should hardly come as news to anyone who has followed the problems with “NC.” It’s a Saturday, so consider this a hastily-devised rant rather than a fully-researched story. But I’d like to see a more productive conversation start on this whole issue, so I’ll kick it off by sharing my own thoughts on this.

Here’s the problem. The whole idea of Creative Commons licensing is to provide a blanket license before someone has to ask permission. By streamlining the process in this way, the goal is to get wider distribution and reuse of your work. And as everything from samples to Flickr images can demonstrate, it works. Now, naturally, wide distribution will also raise fears about commercial exploitation, and as with any license, you’re the owner – you can provide whatever restrictions you like. People want to share, but they don’t want that sharing to be abused. I think the impulse to look for some sort of “some rights reserved” is a natural one. Unfortunately, using non-commercial restrictions as the solution can create more problems. The non-commercial rules are vaguely worded, implying a very broad definition. It’s never properly defined, and no one really knows what it means. The net result is that works with the restriction attached aren’t free for use. You have to err on the side of caution; if you think there’s any chance you may be violating the license, you shouldn’t use the work.

That’s the crossroads I reached on this very site. Chris Randall of Audio Damage and Analog Industries, who has released a significant amount of CC-licensed music, pointed out to me that CDM was blatantly violating the intent of the non-commercial restriction. Sure enough, I came to the same conclusion, as a survey undertaken by the CC folks found that many of the people using the non-commercial restriction considered use on a site with advertising revenue to be commercial use. CDM readers and Flickr users protested. But it doesn’t matter: I now almost exclusively use works without it, to be safe.

There is more to this story, though.

CBC ought to be able to use CC music. CBC is clearly overreacting if they’re avoiding all CC-licensed work. There is work out there that lacks the non-commercial use restriction.

…but the onus falls on CC advocates to face the non-commercial problem head-on. It seems to me that it’s the responsibility of the CC-using community here to point to work that lacks this restriction, and to build tools that make those works easier to find. (The checkbox pictured here is a great place to start.) It’s also about time to have a serious discussion of the non-commercial restriction, not just in the definition itself but, holistically, why people do want to reserve “some rights,” and how to define those rights. That conversation should be a frank and open one. Commercial exploitation is a real threat. It’s an issue brought up by CC users, by CC advocates, and CC critics alike. It’s something obviously all of us are thinking about. But we should separate the three dimensions of it:

1. A hypothetical problem — the potential exploitation of work in ways that CC users don’t like. (And that means we have to determine what kind of hypothetical exploitation has people scared.)

2. A real-world problem. (There have certainly been instances of what people might consider exploitation, both of copyrighted and CC-licensed works.)

3. A number of potential remedies — of which adding a “non-commercial” CC license is only one, and possibly not even an ample remedy for the kind of exploitation people want to prevent.

Some of the blame I think does fall on CC the organization. They used the non-commercial clause as a way to say, “hey, you can distribute your work for free and get paid by requiring licensing.” You can have your cake and eat it, too — or you can give away your cake, but also sell it. The realities of making that work are much messier than they admitted, and at the same time the organization sent mixed messages. “Here’s the non-commercial clause, which is a remedy to this problem you’re worried about. Oh, but we don’t think you should use it. And actually, we don’t know what it means, so we’ll have to do a research study.”

It’s time to clean up that mess and remedy the problem.

CC users should consider Share Alike. This is a much, much longer conversation, so let me simply quote the plain-English description of Creative Commons’ Share Alike principle:

If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

Unlike the description of non-commercial – there’s never actually a detailed description of what constitutes “commercial” use — Share Alike is very clear. Anyone using your work must license whatever work they make.

Yes, this is an issue for open-source hardware, too. I won’t go there today, because hardware incorporates other issues. It’s tangible, and that means legal licensing is different. The problems of interpreting the definition of “commercial,” however, remain, and there’s a threat that open source hardware makers will recreate some of the problems with Creative Commons-licensed media in the hardware domain by modeling their work on the same license. Consider the can of worms opened, but I’ll deal with that in a separate story.

The podcast’s great.

Anyway, go listen to Spark. It’s a fantastic podcast:
Spark October 3-6

And CC or not, speaking as a journalist here: if you want your music shared, send it to media outlets with an explicit license, CC or otherwise, making it clear they can use it however they wish. If publicity is valuable to you, it may be a worthy investment. (I’ve seen what publicists and PR people charge. “Free” publicity isn’t worth zero; that’s for sure.)

Thanks to Myles Ashley Borins for the tip!

Update – for our Canadian readers:
If you’d like to clarify the CBC’s policy, podcaster and producer Lily Mills tells me via Twitter that Canadian citizens and journalists can submit a formal request for information under Canadian law:
Access to Information Act

(CDM, as a US publication, is unable to do so.) If someone would like to volunteer to do so, shout out in comments. I think it would be useful to know the formal policy and reasoning from CBC.

Music scores remain one of the best ways to record or share many musical ideas. If you’ve done even casual notation, you’ve likely had the experience of scrawling something down on a scrap piece of paper, manuscript or otherwise.

Imagine, instead, quickly scrawling something in the now-ubiquitous web browser window.

Gregory Dyke writes with a notation project he’s built with Paul Rosen; he says that it’s further along in its development than the notation project we saw last week. As before, it employs JavaScript and HTML5, and the Canvas element SVG support, rendering quickly in any modern browser right inside a web page. (Correction: it’s SVG, not Canvas, that makes this work, thanks to the raphaeljs library.)

Abcjs is an open source parsing and rendering tool for ABC written entirely in javascript, so it allows sheet music to be rendered as both standard notation and MIDI entirely with the browser.

Here are a couple ways to use this:

For rendering any ABC notation found on a web page as standard notation,
see http://drawthedots.com/abcplugin

For the simplest ABC editor in a web page, see http://drawthedots.com/abcjs

For a free on-line editor and tune storage website, see
http://drawthedots.com

Enjoy! And we’d appreciate feedback of all kinds.

Notes:
1) ABC 1.6 is mostly done, and many parts of ABC 2.0 are supported. We are actively working on improving the rendering.

2) We know that the rendering in IE is not as pretty as Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, but we’re working it!

Here, the ABC notation format is a standard, so you can simply type in or copy and paste any ABC-encoded text and render it right away.

It looks ideal for dropping musical excerpts or examples into a page, but this project even in its early stage offers another idea: why not quickly type in your notes in simple text characters, then store and share that score with others? There’s even instant music rendering.

Simple, lightweight examples do have a way of opening the door to more technically-involved discussions, and this is no exception.

ABC is nifty and easy, but it isn’t capable of representing more sophisticated scores in the way that the free Lilypond format is. I noted last week that Lilypond is nonetheless readable and easy for basic entry, even as it adds sophisticated features with a little more work. I think even having a web window with ABC is nice enough, and it should be possible to go from the simpler format (ABC) to other, more complex formats (MusicXML or Lilypond). But this question of how to interchange files remains one of interest. After the post last week, the project we saw spawned a long discussion in its blog’s comments on how interchange might work. Greg, for his part, concedes that “abc is quite powerful, but stops at complex multivoice scores where voices move across staves (simple multivoice and multistave is possible).” That could make putting Lilypond in the browser a useful activity, and since it is possible to go from MusicXML to Lilypond, it should enable MusicXML, as well.

As with sound synthesis, putting notation in the browser demonstrates how both the “desktop” app and the “browser” app can differentiate themselves. The browser focuses on quick, simple entry and sharing. The desktop app remains the tool for connecting to MIDI hardware, performing more sophisticated entry and layout, and project management. Far from competing, each gives the other greater purpose and a clearer sense of how the two design approaches can differ. Because a Web rendering engine like WebKit is also embeddable, the line doesn’t even need to be absolutely clear. I can imagine, for instance, Lilypond editors that use WebKit for lower-quality, real-time notation previews, prior to doing a full Lilypond render in PDF. (There are real-time PDF rendering libraries like Cairo, too, so I have no idea whether that makes sense, but the array of options open to developers is nonetheless expanded.)

The project is free and open, so let us know if you modify it somehow. (JavaScript-controlled, 3D-produced generative scores, perhaps?)

http://code.google.com/p/abcjs/

Updated: Gregory replies with an email, and it was useful enough to me that I’m reprinting it in full. He notes most importantly that ABCjs is capable of more sophisticated rendering than seen here, even if it doesn’t yet do as much as, say, the Lilypond renderer does.

Thanks a lot. You’re spot on with the note taking idea – I wonder whether this would be a good way to create a mobile browser app – still runs a bit slow on mobile safari though – about 8seconds for rendering on my 3g. Nice to see you discuss abcjs as a full blog post.

Just a note: we don’t use canvas, but svg, using raphaeljs to bridge across browsers.

In hindsight, we should probably put a more sophisticated example on the landing page. For example, the tunes below render quite nicely (although not with complete midi playback). We should probably finds ourselves a demo score which runs the whole gamut of several voices, ornamentation, chords, guitar chords, dynamics, etc.

Thanks again for the heads up

Greg

X:3
T: TEST: Erev Ba % —
C: from Israel
M: C|
L: 1/4
K:G
V:1
“G”dgf g/b/ | “Am”a3z | “D7″ab c’/d’/ b | “G”b3z | dgf g/b/ | “Am”a3z |
“D7″ab c’/d’/ b | “B7″b3z | “C”ceg>g | f/g/f/e/ e2 | “Am”Ace>e | “D”d>c B/A/G/F/ |
“Em”G2 E2 | “Am”A2 “D7″A/B/ G | (“G”G4|G2) z2 | dgf g/b/ | “Am”a3z |
“D7″ab c’/d’/ b | “G”b3z | dgf g/b/ | “Am”a3z | “D7″ab c’/d’/ b | “B7″b3z |
“C”ceg>g | f/g/ f/e/ e2 | “Am”Ace>e | “D”d>c B/A/G/F/ | “Em”G2 E2 | “Am”A2 “D7″A/B/ G |
“G”G>A B c/A/ | “G7″d>e =f/d/B/A/ [K:C] ||”C”G2z2| “Dm7″d/e/f/e/ d/c/B/A/ |\
“G7″G2z2 | “C”z/ G/c/B/ c/d/e/f/ |
g g/a/ g2 | “Dm7″f/g/a/g/ f/e/d/c/ | “G7″B/c/d/c/ B/A/ G| “E”^G>B e/d/c/B/|\
“F”c2 a>a | g/a/g/f/ .f .e |
“Dm”d2f>f | “G”e>d c/B/A/B/ | “Am”c/d/c/B/ A/G/F/E/ | “Dm”D/E/F/D/ “G7″G A/B/ |\
“C”c3 e| .g.a.g e/d/ |
GcBc/e/ | “Dm7″d3z | “G7″def/g/e| “C”e3z | GcBc/e/ | “Dm7″d3z |
“G7″def/g/e| “E”e3z | “F”FAc>c| B/c/B/A/ A2| “Dm”DFA>A| “G”G>F E/D/C/E/ |
“Am”c2A2 | “Dm”d2 “G7″d/e/c | (“C”c4|”Dm”c2) “G7″d/e/c| (“C”c4| c2) z2 |]
%
V:2 gch=0
“G”z4 | “Am”z4 | “D7″z4 | “G”z4 | z4 | “Am”z4 |
“D7″z4 | “B7″z4 | “C”z4 | z4 | “Am”z4 | “D”z4 |
“Em”G2Bd | “Am”c2 “D7″c/d/ B | “G”B>ABd | B>A G/A/ B| d2 z2 | “Am”A/B/c/B/ A/G/F/E/ |
“D7″D2 z2 | “G”z/D/G/F/ G/A/B/c/ | d d/e/ d2| “Am”c/d/e/d/ c/B/A/G/ |\
“D7″F/G/A/G/ F/E/D/C/ | “B7″^D/B,/D/F/ B/A/G/F/ |
“C”c2 e>e | d/e/d/c/ cB| “Am”A2 c>c| “D”B>A G/F/E/F/ |\
“Em”G/A/G/F/ E/D/C/E/ | “Am”A/B/c/^c/ “D7″d e/f/ |
(“G”g4|”G7″g2)z2 [K:C] || “C”GcB c/e/ | “Dm7″d3z | “G7″de f/g/ e| “C”e3z |
GcB c/e/ | “Dm7″d3z | “G7″de f/g/ e| “E”e3z | “F”FAc>c | B/c/B/A/ Az |
“Dm”DFA>A | “G”G>F E/D/C/D/ | “Am”c2 A2 | “Dm”d2 “G7″d/e/c | (“C”c4|c2) z2 |
Gede/g/ | “Dm7″f>e f/e/d/c/ | “G7″Bcd/e/c| “C”c c/B/ c/B/c/d/ |\
e e/f/ ee | “Dm7″f>e f/e/d/c/ |
“G7″Bc d/e/ c | “E”B>A ^G/A/B/G/ | “F”F2 A2 | c2 FE | “Dm”D2 F2 | “G”B2 e2|
“Am”e2c2 | “Dm”f2 “G7″f/g/ e | (“C”e4| “Dm”e2) “G7″f/g/ e | (“C”e4|e2) z2 |]

The mobile question is especially interesting to me; it may be that you need non-JavaScript, “native” SVG libraries, but porting that shouldn’t be impossible either way. I’d love to have a mobile Android sketchpad, especially since my Droid has a keyboard. I’ll look into some testing.

The Music Bore – Video 2 from Nicholas Humfrey on Vimeo.

“I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t allow you to listen to Coldplay.”

What would radio be like if playlists were not only robotic, but had robot DJs pulling information from the Interwebs dynamically? That’s the question asked by the winning team at London’s Music Hackday last weekend, which created an epic mashup of data sources to produce a voice-synthesized IRC chatbot that researches and plays music for you.

Music Bore

Music Bore was just one of a number of projects developed in the weekend of musical hacking, some for listening, and at least one (a fantastic and free synth plug-in) for what we really like – production. With some of the world’s top musical coders in attendance, the results were amazing, even if not all projects were entirely finished. (Hey, that’s why they call it hacking.)

You can check out the full list on the wiki, but here are some favorites — and if you were there, do shout out to us as you put more documentation up of the event and projects.

Harmony Box by Dave and Mike is a synth plug-in for Mac (AU/VST) and Windows (VST, thus also Linux) that quickly creates lovely chords. I love the simplicity of the instrument – really lovely work, gents – and I think I may actually use it on a project. They accept donations if you’d like to see this instrument mature. Of course, with everyone else doing Web mash-ups, this didn’t win, but it’s more up our alley. (Web 2.0 – meh, whatever.)

The synth has its own project blog:
http://davenoise.com/blog/

Other winners (in our book, and as recommended by Harmony Box co-creator Dave Gamble):

LonelyHarps by Jamie Hollingworth and David Padbury is a Last.fm-based tool concept that helps you find dates – and choose the right tracks to set the mood – using music for compatibility. And, really, do you really want to date someone who doesn’t have musically compatible tastes? (I’m sure it’s just because they spotted lots of hotties on Last.fm, but…) The only bad news: the app didn’t actually get fully made yet, but we’ll stay tuned, gents. They do have impressive-looking formulas.

Music Zeitgeist by Cristiano Betta visualizes lyrics by decade, such as the 1980s, above. (Yeah, it was all about wanting and karma, the 80s.) Check out the project directly.

Theremag by Jono Cole and Jonty Wareing of Last.fm is actually the app I most want to see, but there’s no documentation yet. It’s a Theremin emulator on the Google Android-based HTC G1, with an unusual sensor — the built-in magnetometer (the one that normally acts as the compass) which was used to pitch-bend Michael Jackson. Once they get documentation up, expect to see it here. (I love that magnet sensor, too. Good fun.)

iPhone Music Visualizer by George J Cook and Matt Biddulph grabs Soundcloud files, analyzes them with Echonest (which recently got an iPhone-friendly Cocoa API), and then plays them back with a visualizer. It looks like a great place to get started if you’re planning on building something similar yourself.

In fact, it’s well worth checking out the wiki not only because some of the projects have (okay, sometimes-sloppy) source code, but point you at the resources you’d need to tackle something like this yourself if you’re a coder. And the event prompted a lot of folks from Last.fm to Echonest and BBC and others to get their APIs together.

It’s a terrific idea, and it sounds like we need another music hackday here. (Press releases, ahem, claimed this was the “first” music hackday, even though we’ve done a global event ourselves, but who cares — let’s do more!)

New York would make a nice base of operations for a similar event because a lot of folks with interesting APIs are here (or in nearby East Coast towns), but I think it’d be great to get more people online and not just in one locale.

What think you, sirs and madames? Tips on how we could make an online event work?

What if you could record directly online from a Web browser – no additional software needed? It’s not a new idea, but online music community Indaba has an interesting new Java-based tool that gets one step closer. We took a first look at the tool last month, but it’s now publicly available at indabamusic.com today. Indaba shared with CDM some video walking us through the feature set, and the company founders also answered some of my questions. For the musicians in the audience, we’ll have some more hands-on time with this tool to see if it’s something you can use. (My guess is, it’s something you might use alongside your existing tool of choice.) For the developers and Java fans (or skeptics), I also want to dig a little deeper in the Java and JavaFX platforms behind the scenes.

What can you do when making music in a browser?

• Work online or offline.
• Record directly online and share immediately.
• Work across platforms, directly in the browser.
• Add real-time effects, mixing, and even multitrack automation for adjusting levels.

Indaba isn’t alone in some of these features, but the ability to have high-performance, non-destructive audio effects and to record directly into the program without the typical browser restraints is definitely a step forward from other solutions.

Pricing will include a relatively full-featured free plan, plus $5/mo and $25/mo tiers adding additional clips, online storage workspace, and real-time non-destructive effects. (Video sharing service Vimeo recently adjusted their free/Pro distinction, a subject Jaymis covered for Create Digital Motion yesterday.)

Here’s our own Q&A to get things rolling:

CDM: Obviously, we have readers who are very comfortable with some existing, non-browser-based tools. But I can see them having a place for a browser tool as a supplement. How might some of those kinds of people use Indaba, as you envision it?

Indaba: The Indaba console is fully integrated with our global community of musicians, so it’s much easier to share work and collaborate on mixes. Even if your readers currently use non-browser-based tools, the Indaba console enables them to work together seamlessly from any computer without having to transfer files from machine to machine. What’s more, because the Indaba console is web-based, it can capture inspiration that strikes when artists are on the road or otherwise away from their studios. For musicians who don’t currently use complex DAWs, the Indaba console can be even more – a turnkey solution for recording, editing, and mixing.

Why JavaFX? What specifically was possible with JavaFX versus, say, Flash – given that at least some basic DSP functions we have seen in Flash?

The real decision was to build a Java application. A signed Java app gives us the freedom we need to tap into client-side hardware (sound-card, hard drive etc) and the power we need to handle multiple non-destructive effects. Other client-side technologies simply can’t offer this level of access. JavaFX gave us the ability to develop a sexy interface that wouldn’t look/feel like the stereotypical java apps of yesteryear. Going forward, this will enable us to do some pretty amazing things.

Ed. – note, that generally answer leads to some follow-up, specific development questions I have regarding implementation on Mac, Windows, and Linux, so we can talk more about those details – feel free to pass along your own thoughts and I’ll see what I can learn.

CDM: It’s nice to see the Creative Commons license on the sample materials. Will there be ways for artists using Creative Commons to release their own clips / share their own loops?

Not in this release but shortly thereafter. For now there are hundreds of clips available to our members.

Will there be an API for other sites to hook into what Indaba users are doing / what they’re doing on the Java-FX-based editing platform?

It’s definitely something we’re planning on releasing at some point. At the moment, we have private APIs for corporate partners.

What are some likely workflows with the new tool? How does that differ from previous versions?

It cuts a tremendous amount of overhead out of the process and is a simple and quick way to capture your ideas in high quality. Previously you had to download tracks, record locally, bounce them out of your DAW and upload them to the site… Now you can pop open the Console, record in high quality and mix your song all within Indaba.

Stay tuned for more details. And, of course, Indaba does have some competition on the Web; it’ll be interesting to see how it all stacks up.

Kongregate is a bit like public access, only on steroids and for games. The idea is this: get indie game makers in one place contributing games, then get lots of people playing those games, then support the system with ad revenue shared with the game makers. The model has grown rapidly, with millions of users and over 15,000 original games.

The newest project from Kongregate looks to connect artistic talent on projects, including musicians, composers, and sound designers wanting to work on game projects. The Collabs section will see artists and sound and music creators uploading their work to find collaborators. Initially, there’s a contest on, with competition for attention, cash, and studio prizes.

http://www.kongregate.com/collabs

The competition aside, this could be the beginning of a successful community for collaboration in the indie Flash gaming world. Assets are often uploaded under a Creative Commons license, and I see one of the top sounds draws on samples from Freesound.org. While career success is an obvious goal, the contributors so far appear to see sharing as a way to get there – in stark contrast to the model in the mainstream, big-business game industry. Quality is, of course, variable, but ask anyone in the game industry how to become successful and the answer is always make as much as you can. Getting work out there, even primitive, can be part of a learning process. So I’m eager to see what transpires as these kinds of communities grow.

There is an invariable comparison to Deviant Art – and you’ll see they’ve already begun to invade.

Oh yeah, and I quite like these glassy tendrils, rendered in Cinema 4D. Image (CC) Chaodeath. Now, make that run real-time. Or, erm, imagine those are virtual renderings of artists … collaborating.

Fritzcrate Project / RGB Color Mixer from Michael Schieben on Vimeo.

As you can see, people have already begun playing with ideas for tangible interfaces. Oddly enough, two German gentlemen each named Michael (not aware of one another) have gotten a headstart, including the first experiment above in progress. We’ll be experimenting with new interfaces in New York and around the globe. (If that isn’t enough experimentation with new interfaces, the NIME conference – New Interfaces in Musical Expression – is happening now in Pittsburgh, and we expect reports back from that, too!) The event has also been featured on Boing Boing and MAKE.

Follow the action at :

http://hackday.noisepages.com

Or via…

IRC: FreeNode #cdmblogs

Twitter: Hash tag #hackday or cdmblogs or follow the group of hackers at tweetknot.com/hackday

Live Streaming Video (we hope!): livestream

View Global Hackday in a larger map

Indaba Music, a community and suite of online tools for musicians, announced today they’ve revamped their online recording and production tool using Java and JavaFX. The result: a platform-agnostic, online interface that allows you to record music “directly to the Internet.” And the band Weezer is excited enough about it that they’re giving their official endorsement.

Indaba, along with some others, already had an online music production tool. The new version expands on that idea, allowing you to record audio signal directly online, and beefing up tools for mixing, editing, and looping. Just like tools like GarageBand, a pre-built set of loops is ready for people to quickly mock up songs.

With some help from Sun’s JavaFX technology, the browser/desktop barrier isn’t as noticeable. You get a graphical-looking interface that works the same anywhere, plus the ability to drag audio files to and from your desktop.

indabamusic.com

javafx.com

Interestingly, Weezer’s endorsement focuses on the fact that they don’t know how to use other music software. I have to admit some skepticism here – a lot of musicians I think are savvy enough to get to use creative new music software, and a lot of the basic functions of the Indaba software itself are straight out of tools like ACID and GarageBand. Nor do you have to worry about any JavaFX tool blowing away your REAPER, Logic, Live, Pro Tools… well, you know.

On the other hand, while this is basically just an ACID-style audio production station in the browser, I’m curious about what new applications might take advantage of in-browser collaboration that don’t look like existing audio tools. Maybe we’ll have specialized tools for working out specific ideas or sharing snippets in-progress. And there’s no question that building some tools in the browser makes sharing more immediate.

I’ll be talking to the Indaba folks and the JavaFX team a little bit about the technology, and with Sun in particular I’ll be sure to ask about some of the future potential here for other tools. If you have questions, let me know.