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2016-05-30
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firesofmay18:05:25

Hi, I am just toying around with alda. I have no experience of music notes. And I was trying to play happy birthday. Its really exciting to hear music come out from a repl 😄 I am wondering what is Ab in the second line here in terms of notes? http://www.hindisongsnotes.in/2014/05/happy-birthday-piano-notes.html So this is what I wrote so far for the first two lines: piano: c+ c+ d+ c+ f+ f r c+ c+ d+ ab f+ ab part doesnt sound right. Can anyone point me to the right direction?

mateus.henrique.brum20:05:05

Are notes bmol represented as b ?

mateus.henrique.brum20:05:14

And sustain with + ?

mateus.henrique.brum20:05:32

Why not sustain + and bmol as - ?

dave20:05:41

@mbrum: i took the flat/sharp syntax (+/-) from MML

dave20:05:19

@firesofmay: glad you're enjoying it! 🙂

dave20:05:31

A-flat (Ab) is represent in alda as a-

firesofmay20:05:11

dave: Hmm a- doesn't sound right when I play it though 😕 piano: c+ c+ d+ c+ f+ f r c+ c+ d+ a- f+ It still sounds off to me.

firesofmay20:05:46

Where can I get the meaning of these notes in terms of alda? Is there some documentation that I can look up? or any link? Like I don't know what -F# means?

firesofmay20:05:10

Sorry, just a noob in music having fun with alda 😄

dave20:05:26

the notes in that link are expressed in kind of a weird way... it makes sense, but it's not very idiomatic for music

dave20:05:41

to explain why, i'd have to dive pretty deep into music theory

dave20:05:31

but, i would do "happy birthday" in F# like this: piano: c+8 c+ | d+4 c+ f+ | e+2 c+8 c+ | d+4 c+ g+ | f+2

dave20:05:59

-F# doesn't mean anything in music theory 😛

firesofmay20:05:15

dave: Sweet! Just watching your talk on alda. This is awesome! Would you recommend some link to understand basic of music notes? To basically map that to alda and write simple music code?

dave20:05:41

i've had this idea for a while -- at some point in the future, i'd like to write an introductory music theory book / alda manual, where i introduce each concept using alda code examples -- sort of a "music theory for programmers" 🙂

mateus.henrique.brum21:05:38

c d e f (f f) c d c d (d d) c g f e (e e) c d e f (f f)

firesofmay21:05:56

dave: That might be actually very helpful in learning both at the same time

dave21:05:14

@firesofmay: give this a read, if you haven't already -- http://blog.djy.io/alda-a-manifesto-and-gentle-introduction the introduction covers a lot of the same things as the clojure remote talk i gave, but the tutorial might be helpful for you. it has a bunch of examples of sheet music and the corresponding alda code

firesofmay21:05:31

dave: Yeah I read that. That article helped me get the power of alda but not in understanding how to go about creating something myself. Which is why I was asking about recommendation for music theory/notes. I'll read that wiki link and see if it helps 🙂

firesofmay21:05:25

dave: Have you noticed while running a score from a file sometimes it hangs for a split second at the start of playing? Rerunning it plays properly sometimes (I'm on Mac OSX 10.10.5)

dave21:05:46

ah, i see what you're saying

dave21:05:45

the "hanging" you're seeing might just be how long it takes alda to parse and process the score... it can take a few seconds, for larger scores, unfortunately

firesofmay21:05:15

dave: No there's this slight pause in between for a very simple score. Maybe its just my machine

dave21:05:29

ohh -- yeah, i have seen that sometimes

dave21:05:47

like, the tempo stutters for a second during the first few notes?

dave21:05:28

right. i'm not sure exactly what causes that. i think maybe what alda is doing can take up a lot of resources

dave21:05:14

i've found that the timing is generally pretty good, overall, but i've noticed some hiccups from time to time

firesofmay21:05:48

Btw is this still relevant to fix? To convert all dynamic defs to defonce? - https://github.com/alda-lang/alda/issues/160 I'd be happy to fix this

dave21:05:27

that would be great, if you'd like to take a look at it! i'm not totally sure if not using defonce is the cause

firesofmay21:05:53

dave: How do I reproduce the issue though?

dave21:05:55

i was mostly seeing the issue by doing this: 1. start an alda server, use it to play a score or two 2. close laptop and let it go to sleep 3. re-open laptop and play a score. usually there would be a delay of a few seconds

dave21:05:20

i actually just made some changes recently that might have solved the issue... i haven't tried to reproduce the issue lately

firesofmay21:05:08

Ohk. Is that change on master? Can you confirm if its still an issue?

dave21:05:54

i just tried -- definitely still an issue 🙂

firesofmay21:05:23

dave: okay will check this out then. Its time for me to sleep, quite late now. Will catch you later and update that ticket if defonce makes any difference.

dave21:05:48

awesome, that would help a lot! good talking to you

firesofmay21:05:18

same here. Cya! 🙂