Basically coding notation supports recursive stuff...
# share-your-workx
xyzzy
03/01/2025, 6:21 AMBasically teaching code + music can solve many problems wrt education.
The real controversial position would be math must die :P
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Alex McLean
03/01/2025, 11:30 PMmusitude!
Alex McLean
03/01/2025, 11:32 PMI do like to think that learning staff notation blocks you from thinking about music in other ways. I'm not going to risk it anyway
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Andrew F
03/02/2025, 12:07 AMTo be clear, "Notation must die" is the position Tantacrul is lambasting. He makes a pretty strong and entertaining case. :D I know just enough staff notation to kind of hate it, but haven't been able to come up with an actual improvement. There are quite a few constraints.
I'll just pull out one of the arguments he would probably make here: code as music notation fails at one of the most central uses of notation, namely performance by humans on actual analog instruments.
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Ivan Reese
03/02/2025, 12:59 AM
To be a bit pedantic: a computer is an actual instrument. But that's besides the point :)
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Andrew F
03/02/2025, 1:01 AMAlright, you. 😂
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xyzzy
03/02/2025, 4:51 AMBasically staff notation can be ported into an ascii DSL that can be played from Javascript (code) to trigger (MIDI) events.
Humans can obviously read the DSL, so in theory humans can use live coding to both practice and play it automatically or play it live or play analog.
The real challenge is standardization of tracker notation.
xyzzy
03/02/2025, 4:53 AMFlexibility of using code is losing many constraints and adding your own code. I'm confident that with a few iterations I can even get better swing patterns than DAWs and hardware with randomization for each drum tick.
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Alex McLean
03/02/2025, 10:11 AM@Andrew F Yes I watched it and it's great! I think musitude is an excellent example of computer scientists trying to 'solve' pseudo-problems in other fields without understanding them
But I don't think the problem with staff notation is that it's difficult to read. It's that once you learn it, it makes it difficult to think about music in any other way. It's a standardising force that has wiped out a lot of musical practices.
Alex McLean
03/02/2025, 10:15 AMI think there is a trap when making computer music systems to make awkward reinventions of staff notation though.
Alex McLean
03/02/2025, 3:15 PMwith the computer person obsession with lists of lists you end up with a very two dimensional view of staff notation and music in general. MIDI makes things worse by forcing everything into a piano-shaped box
An alternative starting point is Canntaireachd or which are both very symbolic but are related through speech rather than notation, so a much better match for dynamic text
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xyzzy
03/02/2025, 4:19 PMYes of course.
Basically the idea is
Map each culture / instrument / genre to 1 DSL
drums -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drum_tablature
guitar -> https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/
irish folk -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_notation
indian -> bol
western -> staff dsl
A programming environment like mine or any other basically just provides primitives and accurate timing. People can build their dsls, custom scales what not.
In case of highly improvisational stuff .... you just use random numbers but mention them clearly inside the code.
The musician can thus compose music, play it with samples or even read the DSL to play it with an orchestra.
I think tracker notation can act as a more universal DSL but that is best done after all other DSLs are done. Tracker music already convers most modern genres quite well.