Notating heritage musics: preservation and practice in Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia

Historically, notation in Southeast Asia has been used for musical documentation and preservation rather than functioning as a medium for realising music during performance. As a consequence, today both heritage and hybrid forms of script such as Balinese ding dong notation and Javanese kepatihan cipher notation play only a minor role in the musical expression of this region’s predominantly aural-based forms. When musical notation is used, it may be found written on a variety of traditional and modern medium including palm leaves and plain paper to computer programs with specialised fonts or even cell phone text messages. In this article, I observe notation in three distinct traditions existing along a continuum from preservation to innovation. Despite technological advancements and the availability of Western staff notation, diverse forms of indigenous musical notation primarily serve to sustain traditions and aide the memory of musicians for teaching and learning

The Sounds of Vatican II: Musical Change and Experimentation in Two U.S. Trappist Monasteries, 1965−1984

The Second Vatican Council impacted the use of liturgical music within religious communities. Two U.S. Trappist monasteries, New Melleray Abbey in Dubuque, Iowa, and Gethsemani Abbey in Bardstown, Kentucky, evidenced distinctive approaches to the musical freedom resulting from the Vatican II reforms. New Melleray incorporated contemporary folk music and instruments. At Gethsemani, Father Chrysogonus Waddell pioneered the use of Gregorian notation and English psalmody. The musical changes had a profound effect on the Trappists’ celebration of the Mass and the praying of the Liturgy of the Hours

Using regular expressions to express bowing patterns for string players

The study of bowing is critically important for string players. Traditional bowing annotations are a valuable part of orchestral and individual documentation, but they do not help the performer to search a piece for other passages that should be bowed the same way, or to identify alternative bowing styles. We introduce a notation based on regular expressions that describes patterns of notes in the music, as well as the bowing to be applied to the pattern. These expressions support complex bowings, and not just single annotations without musical context. The notation is simpler than general tools for regular expressions used in some software, and is suitable for use by students and musicians. We have developed a music editor that implements the notation and edits documents in Lilypond. The approach has been evaluated by experimenting with the editor on six violin sonatas by Mozart. The experiments demonstrate that the regular expression notation is successful at finding passages and inserting the bowings; that the patterns occur a number of times; and the bowings can be inserted automatically and consistently

Language as a Geometry in Wittgenstein"s Tractatus

In TLP 4.011, while admitting that propositions expressed by the phonetic notation, or the alphabet, just like the written notes of a piece of music, do not seem at first sight to be pictures of what they represent, the Tractatus insists that those "sign-languages" (that is, the phonetic notation and the written musical notes) prove to be pictures of what they represent (that is, our speech and the piece of music, respectively) "even in the ordinary sense". (TLP 4.016 also says that "alphabetic script developed out of [hieroglyphic script] without losing what was essential to depiction".) So, contrary to the view of some commentators (e.g. Pears 1987, 115-121), instead of making an analogy here, the Tractatus holds that a proposition is a picture literally. How can a proposition be a picture literally

Investigating musical performance: Commonality and diversity amongst classical and non-classical musicians

The research project 'Investigating Musical Performance: Comparative Studies in Advanced Musical Learning' was devised to investigate how classical, popular, jazz and Scottish traditional musicians deepen and develop their learning about performance in undergraduate, postgraduate and wider music community contexts. The aim of this paper is to explore the findings relating to attitudes towards the importance of musical skills, the relevance of musical activities and the nature of musical expertise. Questionnaire data obtained from the first phase of data collection (n = 244) produced evidence of differences and similarities between classical and non-classical musicians. While classical musicians emphasised the drive to excel musically and technically and prioritised notation-based skills and analytical skills, non-classical musicians attached greater importance to memorising and improvising. Regardless of genre, the musicians all considered practical activities such as practising, rehearsing, taking lessons and giving performances to be relevant. However, while classical musicians attached greater relevance to giving lessons and solo performances, their non-classical colleagues considered making music for fun and listening to music within their own genre to be more relevant. Some underlying processes that may have accounted for the differences in attitudes are explored, including musical influences, age of initial engagement with music and educational background. Points of similarity and differences are discussed, and possibilities for the two musical trajectories to inform and learn from each other are highlighted

Calder's Violin: real-time notation and performance through musically expressive algorithms

Notation is a central issue in modern western music. Composers have often sought ways of expanding and refining the functionality of notation and, in doing so, have re-shaped the music that they were originally aiming to describe. Other musical traditions have very different uses for notation; some have no use for it at all; each approach creates contrasting musical experiences. The role that electronics and computers have played in music has also influenced the nature and function of notation. More traditional 'live' notation of note/pitch- based music generated algorithmically has proved particularly problematic: musical notation is itself a very complex subject. Composers and technologists have instead used libraries of images, algorithms for the pre- generation of material or simplified notations that can be used as the basis of more improvisatory performances. This paper presents work involving the live presentation of 'traditionally precise' music notation created through algorithmically generated material. This notation can then be performed by a human musician alongside computer-generated diffused sound or other 'real' musicians. Technologies used include the SuperCollider audio programming environment and the INScore notation project with the Open Sound Control protocol used to communicate between them. As well as providing a fascinating musical experience, the process highlights a number of issues concerning performance practice, instrumental technique, rehearsal, time and timing, as well as the nature of notation itself and its relationship to improvisation

Notating the non-notateable: digital notation of txalaparta practice

This paper explores notation practices related to the an- cient Basque musical tradition of the txalaparta. It will firstly present the txalaparta practice, introduce the im- provisational rules of txalaparta playing, and discuss attempts in creating notation systems for the instrument. Due to the nature of txalaparta playing, Common West- ern Notation is not a suitable notation, and we will pre- sent the notation system we have developed as part of the Digital Txalaparta project. This system captures the key parts of playing and serves for both playback and a rich documentation of what players actually perform

Melody to musical notation translating system

This paper presents a system that translates the captured or recorded melody into musical notations automatically and instantly into a developed stave whereby a musician can compose music directly without any extra process or procedure, in real-time environments. In this translating system, the frequency of a captured or recorded melody is first analyzed through a microphone or musical instrument for its fundamental frequency. The analyzed fundamental frequency is then compared with the predefined frequency of musical notes. The matched musical note frequency will be distinguished at the developed musical stave interface instantly. This developed system can facilitate a composer in automatically translate his melody to musical notes without having to manually writing it down based on the melody he plays

Pengembangan Aplikasi Konversi Representasi Not Balok Ke Not Angka Untuk Paduan Suara Campur

Beam notation is a notation that is officially used in the whole world as an intermediary to do musical communication. In Indonesia, notation that is more absorbed and mostly easy to learn autodidactly is numbered notation, while beam notation is more difficult to learn and tend to be avioded. Traditionally, beam notation can be converted to numbered notation by fully relying on human skills and abilities. It is obvious that the conversion process would require much time and energy. Therefore, a new conversion application is developed to cope the conversion from beam notation into numbered notation specally for mixed choir, with representated in a XML file called MusicXML. MusicXML is a representation of beam notation that are more easily to be compressed and has a universal characteristic, can be opened in a wide range of applications. The purpose of this research was to design a fast, reliable and accurate application to convert beam notation into numbered notation for mixed choir which consist of multiple voice parts, according to the prevailing theory of music. Kata-kunci: rekayasa perangkat lunak, konversi notasi musik, MusicXM