What can Premusic do that others can't?

[have]

Well, let's think about this.

Sheet music, which I prefer to call sheet premusic, was developed over centuries to be comfortably written by hand. In the year 2017, premusic is encoded into a computer via really complicated file formats like MusicXML or Lilypond designed to describe sheet premusic written on paper exactly as it has been for centuries. There's no simple way to fully describe sheet music, because it isn't optimized for the computer environment. MusicXML and Lilypond are the .docx and .odt of the field, if you will, and Sibelius and Finale are Microsoft Words - where is the notepad.exe? There is none, because no equivalent of the .txt file format of full competence has been made. I'll look at all relevant formats here:

Lilypond

I have nothing to say about Lilypond. Sheet music will always exist and always be used, and it is important that there exist a free file format like Lilypond for computer composition of sheet music. I simply think there needs to be a competent plaintext option, and there is none.

MusicXML

MusicXML is especially odd to me... In an XHTML document, what comes after a <p>? Who knows? It could be an <img>, a <div>, anything. In music, what comes after a note? Another note - or a space where a note should be. Music is plainly linear where XML is not optimized for linear information. XML may seem the most obvious choice for an 'industry standard' file format for many things, but it is an unwise solution here.

In any case, it's not something you'd compose in a text editor.

ABC notation

X:1
T:The Legacy Jig
M:6/8
L:1/8
R:jig
K:G
GFG BAB | gfg gab | GFG BAB | d2A AFD |
GFG BAB | gfg gab | age edB |1 dBA AFD :|2 dBA ABd |:
efe edB | dBA ABd | efe edB | gdB ABd |
efe edB | d2d def | gfe edB |1 dBA ABd :|2 dBA AFD |]

ABC is simple, likely quickly intelligible by most everyone with a music theory background, but it is a shorthand form of musical notation. This already implies it is lacking in some way: namely, it lacks the perfect and intuitive vertical extensibility of Premusic.

GUIDO notation:

[ \clef<"treble"> \key<"D"> \meter<"4/4">
 a1*1/2 b a/4. g/8 f#/4 g a/2 b a/4. g/8 f#/4 g
 a/2 a b c#2/4 d c#/2 b1 a/1 ]

GUIDO is simple, but not quite as quickly intelligible without explanation as ABC or my format. GUIDO lacks the perfect and intuitive extensibility of my format, and isn't nearly as easy on the eyes.

MIDI:

MIDI is not plaintext, where plaintext would suffice. It is a black mark for a file not to be legible in a text editor. It's more code before any software dealing with it can be functional.

Premusic

These are the first measures of Beethoven's Fifth in premusic.

Symphony no. 5 (Page 1)
Beethoven
#!sh  key=Cm

Clarinet
#!pi  --G4G4G4||e4||--F4F4F4||D4||--||--------||--------||--------||--||--------||--------||--------||--||--------||--------||--------||
#!rh  --dadada||da||--dadada||da||aa||--------||--------||--------||--||--------||--------||--------||--||--------||--------||--------||

Bassoon
#!pi  --------||--||--------||--||--||--------||C4------||--------||--||--------||B3------||--------||--||--------||C4------||B3------||
#!rh  --------||--||--------||--||--||--------||daaaaaaa||aaaaaaaa||aa||aaaaaaaa||daaaaaaa||aaaaaaaa||aa||aaaaaaaa||daaaaaaa||daaaaaaa||

Violin I
#!pi  --G4G4G4||e4||--F4F4F4||D4||--||--------||--------||--e5e5e5||C5||--------||--------||--F5F5F5||D5||--G5G5F5||e5------||D5G5G5F5||
#!rh  --dadada||da||--dadada||da||aa||--------||--------||--dadada||da||aaaa----||--------||--dadada||da||aadadada||daaaaaaa||aadadada||

Violin II
#!pi  --G4G4G4||e4||--F4F4F4||D4||--||--G4G4G4||e4------||--------||--||--G4G4G4||D4------||--------||G4||--------||--e4e4F4||G4------||
#!rh  --dadada||da||--dadada||da||aa||--dadada||daaaaaaa||aaaaaaaa||aa||aadadada||daaaaaaa||aaaaaaaa||da||aaaaaaaa||aadadada||daaaaaaa||

Viola
#!pi  --G3G3G3||e3||--F3F3F3||D3||--||--------||--a4a4a4||G4------||--||--------||--a4a4a4||G4------||D4||--------||e4e4e4F4||G4------||
#!rh  --dadada||da||--dadada||da||aa||--------||--dadada||daaaaaaa||aa||aaaa----||--dadada||daaaaaaa||da||aaaaaaaa||dadadada||daaaaaaa||

Cello
#!pi  --G2G2G2||e2||--F2F2F2||D2||--||--------||C4------||--------||--||--------||B3------||--------||--||--------||C4------||B3------||
#!rh  --dadada||da||--dadada||da||aa||--------||daaaaaaa||aaaaaaaa||aa||aaaaaaaa||daaaaaaa||aaaaaaaa||aa||aaaaaaaa||daaaaaaa||daaaaaaa||

Bass
#!pi  --G3G3G3||e3||--F3F3F3||D3||--||--------||--------||--------||--||--------||--------||--------||--||--------||--------||--------||
#!rh  --dadada||da||--dadada||da||aa||--------||--------||--------||--||--------||--------||--------||--||--------||--------||--------||

My format is intelligible to anyone with a music theory background, with minimal instruction besides perhaps to read pairs of characters rather than individual ones.

"rh"ythm - You need no background to pronounce "dadadaaa", and having done so, you will have conveyed to yourself a rhythm equivalent to two quarter notes and a half note in sheet music. Why therefore should one convey rhythm in any other way than a formalized "da" proportional in length to the length of the note (necessarily, then, a square character)? Note that measures without many fast notes are subject to collapse - ||da|| is a single note as long as a measure.

"pi"tch - As a musician, you recognized the note names, and you likely recognized the scientific pitch notation I built upon as well. Scientific pitch notation permits for all the natural notes in a single square character. I simply lowercase the letter for a flat a4 and uppercase the digit for an A$ (A4 sharp).

Extensibility speaks for itself. Premusic invites extensibility from the start, in the most obvious conceivable manner. Every column of squares can be elaborated on by putting more information above it. There's nothing like it.


I have actually identified a fully-fledged and perfectly vertically extensible plaintext method of displaying premusic. It looks to be compatible with even the most complicated music. It's very easy to read and compose using only a simple text editor, even though none are optimized for a parallel square environment yet.

That simply doesn't exist... But I made it. I have invented the perfect plaintext file format for premusic. Is there anything about music at all that couldn't be represented as one of the 8836 square characters available with two intuitive strokes of the keyboard everyone has? Besides lyrics - those are accounted for with stacking, as seen in "Happy Birthday".

Is there any fundamental change at all to be made to how I encode premusic that results in a smarter way than parallel squares?

Why don't I ask you to name a notation that does something that Parallel Squares could NOT do? Or, if I reversed the roles, and every tune on http://abcnotation.com were in my notation, and I approached, telling you about the ABC or GUIDO notation I invented, would you see any merit in it, or any real reason to implement ABC or GUIDO... Ever?


But in any case, I am not a programmer, and have never participated in the creation of free software. I seek only to release my format from the shell I had placed it in while I had been wanting to profit off of it. I would love any help or direction that I can be given. I don't even know where to start talking about it besides this mail list. Before you dismiss my format, and now that you have a sense for how it works, I implore you to at least try composing in a text editor, any piece of music, simple for now, to feel how natural it is. Think about what this could do - one could comfortably convey all the information conveyed by sheet music, using only notepad.exe. There's nothing like it.