Re: state-of-the-art for algorithmic hooks and Lilypond+(La)TeX

[ul]

Am 2016-07-11 19:55, schrieb Kieren MacMillan:
> Hello all,
>
> This past week, I was in Pittsburgh on music business (a long-term
> commissioning project incorporating binaural recording technologies
> and a bunch of other exciting stuff).
>
> While there, I established a very strong relationship with a composer,
> sound designer, and electrical engineer who loves open source music
> technologies. He was thrilled to hear about Lilypond's recent
> improvements and successes: he only vaguely knew about Lilypond from
> its very first days (having always been heavily involved with
> MusiXTeX).

An important point. I regularly encounter people who should actually be 
typical representatives of LilyPond's "target audience" but who have 
only some vage recollections from an earlier time when LilyPond wasn't 
as good as it is now and when there wasn't such a widespread ecosystem 
of tools and environments available.

> He is well-connected (IRCAM, UCSD, etc.etc.etc.) and quite brilliant.
> He’s **extremely** interested in the possible hooks from Lilypond to
> algorithmic music generation, and the interweaving of music with text
> (e.g., LaTeX). I’m hoping to get him hooked on the ‘Pond, beyond the
> high-energy sales pitch I gave him in person.

Great! Just don't let the opportunity go by ...

> 1. On the topic of algorithmic stuff, I sent him the link to Abjad. If
> there’s a better starting place, or other links I should forward to
> him, please let me know!

I think Abjad is probably the starting point per se.

There may be some more blog posts of interest (please review before 
considering sharing them):
- 
http://lilypondblog.org/2013/07/creating-anything-you-can-imagine-with-finale/ 
plus
 
http://lilypondblog.org/2013/07/programmatically-generating-lilypond-input/
- 
http://lilypondblog.org/2013/09/automatic-generation-of-scales-in-various-modes-for-all-21-pitches/
- 
http://lilypondblog.org/2015/11/just-intonation-semantic-encoding-with-lilypond/

Another topic might be OpenMusic 
(http://repmus.ircam.fr/openmusic/home). As far as I was told there 
already *is* some link to make it work with LilyPond to some extent. I 
was recently introduced to the people behind OpenMusic, and - apart from 
the notorious lack of time and money - there is significant mutual 
interest in making this integration closer. Presumably in the context of 
our longstanding wishlist item, a proper "contemporary music notation" 
library for LilyPond.

Finally I'd like to mention nCoda (https://ncodamusic.org), a 
prototype-level new "notation program", or rather "music document 
management and editing system". One of the explicit use cases of this 
tool is (algorithmic) composition, as this is why one of the core 
members is actually working on it. Therefore Abjad integration is built 
right into its core. But it will surely take quite some time until this 
tool is really ready for practical use.

I'm afraid what *I* have to contribute to this is all about great 
potentials but not really about state-of-the-art. Maybe "bleeding edge" 
but no really usable solutions. This goes equally for 1. and for 2.

> 2. For Lilypond+(La)TeX, I want to send him to examples of the
> bleeding edge (or at least most stable state-of-the-art) work in that
> direction. What are the first links I should send him?

I think the blog post Jeffery mentioned is actually a good starting 
point 
(http://lilypondblog.org/2013/12/using-latex-for-a-musical-edition/).
Of course in that context pointing to version control (especially with 
regard to mixing text and music) might be a good idea.
- 
http://lilypondblog.org/2014/01/why-use-version-control-for-engraving-scores/
- http://lilypondblog.org/2014/06/what-you-miss-with-version-control/

lilyglyphs (insert LilyPond notation in continuous text) is of course a 
nice add-on when authoring text documents about music.

musicexamples is a pretty half-baked package so far because I didn't 
come across a problem where I *needed* to continue development (which is 
why I haven't released it to CTAN yet). Out of my hat I recall a few 
goodies it has over a regular LaTeX approach:
1) Providing a separate group for creating lists of music examples (OK, 
that's not really catchy)
2) Handling of missing scores.
  This doesn't error out but prints a very obvious placeholder which is 
very convenient.
  In addition it *does* add the example to the list of examples but 
highlights it (as missing)
3) Handling of full and multi page examples
  - prints the caption in the header/footer
  - handles examples starting on odd/even pages
    (can force an example to start on the next odd/even page)
What I'm missing most so far is the possibility to produce instructions 
for LilyPond to engrave the scores with the correct page layout. Of 
course it is much better to have examples that originally match the line 
width than stretching it upon include, even when that can be made 
automatically

One package that Jeffery failed to mention (presumably being too modest) 
is ScholarLY, which is basically a LilyPond package to create 
annotations so far. But during his GSoC project Jeffery is substantially 
enhancing it, for example by a sophisticate LaTeX package that can 
process the result of ScholarLY-LilyPond. It's surely out of scope for 
GSoC, but I can imagine that there is much more that can be imagined on 
top of that for the future.

As said: many bright prospects but little hard facts and public-ready 
tools from my side.

Urs

> Thanks,
> Kieren.
> ________________________________
>
> Kieren MacMillan, composer
> ‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
> ‣ email: address@hidden