abcm2ps and microtonal accidentals

Hey MMM folk,

Sorry if this was announced already, but it appears that for a while,
abcm2ps has had microtonal accidentals. Someone named Hudson Lacerda
has done some postscript extensions. I downloaded the packge and it
looks promising: as Margo Schulter and I at least agree, abcm2ps is a
neat little program, packing professional looking ASCII music
typesetting in a flexible small package with an elegant syntax and
room (as proven here) for extensions.

Here's a message Mr. Lacerda posted showing his links:
http://www.mail-archive.com/abcusers@yahoogroups.com/msg00093.html

The above extensions include Sagittals!! (among others)

It should be noted that the current development version of abcm2ps
supports some built-in microtonal accidentals already---I think I
posted about this at one point already on this list, but it's worth
reiterating.

I'd like it to be able to do Huygens-Fokker style 31-tet notation,
like one sees here:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/pics/notatie.png

Yes, I know that I could write using traditional sharps, flts, and
doubles, but it's problematic to know that Gbb is lower than F# in
Pythagorean notation--and it would bother me to see the base-letter
rise on the staff as the pitch fell.

Someday, I'm going to extend 'et_compose' or write an entirely new
Python script for using abc syntax to micro-midi. It's nice and
intuitive to work with letter names.

Cheers,
Aaron.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Krister Johnson"
<aaron@a...> wrote:

> Sorry if this was announced already, but it appears that for a while,
> abcm2ps has had microtonal accidentals.

That's great! Starting with a midi2abc created file, this might
perhaps be a practical way of getting a mictrotonal score out of the
microtonal midi files we toss around.

> Someday, I'm going to extend 'et_compose' or write an entirely new
> Python script for using abc syntax to micro-midi. It's nice and
> intuitive to work with letter names.

Scala allows the use of letter names to some extent.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith"
<gwsmith@s...> wrote:
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Krister Johnson"
> <aaron@a...> wrote:
>
> > Sorry if this was announced already, but it appears that for a while,
> > abcm2ps has had microtonal accidentals.
>
> That's great! Starting with a midi2abc created file, this might
> perhaps be a practical way of getting a mictrotonal score out of the
> microtonal midi files we toss around.

That would be cool, but I doubt midi2abc is sophisticated enough to
know how to translate from a given pitch-bend to a given
micro-accidental, and even more problematic, to recognize when a pitch
bend is just a plain old pitch bend.

My own experiences with midi2abc have been disappointing....but that's
just me.

A big problem of course is if your MIDI file is at all expressive or
human, tempo-wise, getting an alogorithm that can intelligently parse
the rhythmic values so it doesn't end up looking like a Brian
Ferneyhough or Elliot Carter score.

> > Someday, I'm going to extend 'et_compose' or write an entirely new
> > Python script for using abc syntax to micro-midi. It's nice and
> > intuitive to work with letter names.
>
> Scala allows the use of letter names to some extent.

My one issue with Scala .seq files, and my motivation for writing
et_compose, was to be able to have lines of polyphony visible when
editing.

I suppose it would be easy to whip up a pre-parser that could
translate a polyphonic format into Scala .seq files, though....

-Aaron.