Clarification of Question by
johnkeller-ga
on
15 May 2005 04:58 PDT
Hi sublime1,
I had a look at the Anfy link, but wasn't sure where to go in it, so
I'll try to describe what I want in more detail.
I belong to a web organisation who are inventors of new ways of
notating music that would be easier to learn and read.
Traditional music notation has bass clefs, treble clefs, sharps,
flats, leger lines, 15 different key signatures, etc. These make
learning to read music very difficult, and are not really necessary,
so many people over the last centuries have put forward ideas for
simpler ways to write music. There are currently hundreds if not
thousands of people all over the world using graphics programs to
'write' music in their own systems. Look at www.mnma.org to see some
of these notations.
I am one of these notation inventors. We don't use music software like
Finale, because our notations are all different to traditional, and
different to each others.
In order to show pieces of music 'written' in my system, I have used
the drawing facility in Word, using 'Snap to Grid' so that notes can
be placed in the exact places (such as on lines or in spaces) easily.
Many inventors have either different shapes or colours for various
notes. For example, in my notation, middle C note has white fill,
while C# (sharp) has a grey fill. I have made a macro to quickly
change the note from one type to the other. But the process of
'writing' in my system is still slow and labour intensive.
Others use 'Illustrator' or other graphics programs, but it is always
slow to write a piece of music with lots of notes, all correctly
placed and filled. Some inventors have different shapes, such as an
oval for C but a triangle for C#. We all would like to find a good
graphics/drawing program in which more procedures can be automated.
In the commercial traditional music writing programs, a note can be
dragged across the stave and as it jumps into each line or space you
hear the correct sound of that note. So there is an automatic
programming of a midi note depending on where the note is.
While we don't expect to have audio connected to our notations yet, we
would all like to have a powerful graphics software recommended, one
which can be programmed so that writing music in each different
inventors notation can be done quicker.
So in my case, I would like to set up a stave with snap to grid, draw
a note then set up an automatic program or macro which makes the note
change its fill automatically and correctly for each position it snaps
to. It may even be possible to do this in Word by learning the macro
language Visual Basic, I don't know.
The instruction might be something like:
'compare top of note with grid'
'if aligned with horizontal gridline 0, 2, 5, 7, or 9, change note
fill to grey 40%'
'if not, leave white'
Thats about it. We dont need animation or morphing or anything, just a
graphics package that is high quality resolution, and can be
programmed to the needs of each individual notation invention. Perhaps
as a start you could tell me how to start learning Visual Basic. Are
there tutorials for beginners on the Net? If this won't do it, do Anfy
have a software that could, and tutorials to learn it?
Hope this is clear. Thanks in advance, Johnkeller.
