[PD] Musical notation object on Pd

[João Pais]

>> don't forget that chromatic pitches is just a small fraction of what's
>> available.
>
> Don't forget that I have little interest in microtonal. Don't forget that
> this is an abstraction, and you can either modify it to support  
> microtonal
> and I accept, or you modify it and I refuse the changes and you rename it
> to [microtone] and then I accept it. (!)

in that case, I'll have little interest in your solution. I'm just  
alerting to what going on to this terrain might involve, as for long pitch  
hasn't been reduced to midi integers. like if someone releases an  
oscilator that doesn't accept values behind commas, no one will find it  
useful.


>> then there's quarter-, eight-, sixteenth-, etc. tones (just to say some
>> for which there exist already notation standards),
>
> Never seen those. We're getting close to the precision limit of the mouse
> anyway, so, you will have to figure out another way to get more precise
> than 100 ¢ (I never liked the single-pixel precision of Pd, so, when
> we're already down to 2 px per 100 ¢,
>
>> "natural" tunings (harmonic series), other tunings
>
> If you need any kind of just-intonation, it's better to write it in whole
> semitones at first and then use a translator that turns 64 into 63.8631
> and so on, isn't it ? Or are there any complications with that ?

the problem isn't the exit parameter, but the notation. I was pointing to  
the several standards that exist. and since the point made in this thread  
(not by me) was for this kind of tools to be of assistance to written  
music composers, they should be aware of the complexities these composers  
use.
it's perfectly possible to notate other intonations using a normal  
chromatic scale. one option is not to notate anything at all (and the  
result will just sound "untuned"), another one is to add the accidentals  
with arrows (which can mean a lot of different things, but it's usually  
accepted), another is to add the accidentals with arrows with the exact  
cent count for the deviation, ... main thing is, the tool should allow for  
these solutions.


>> cent notation...
>
> Why not use [nbx] or a plain numberbox (Ctrl+3) for that ?

I'm saying to notate these things in the picture. I only saw your object  
 from your screenshot, did you mean to add a numberbox over the note?


>> as I see it, no notation object is complete without being possible to
>> incorporate these as well (I didn't download your object yet, so didn't
>> see how you do it).
>
> And once it is completed, people will find another reason to call it
> non-complete, such as its inability to represent probability  
> distributions
> of pitches that are supposed to sound different each time you play them,
> or what if the pitch is a complex number, or a quaternion, or a matrix. I
> mean, I don't really believe in this "complete" word, unless I can see an
> end to the feature expansion.

you could display some of these with a cluster, indicating the top and  
bottom values, and the normal cluster line to notate it's a cluster. I  
have never seen a pitch as a complex number, but I don't really know what  
is a complex number, I didn't have much math in high school. as for the  
matrix, I guess the word you're looking for is "chord"? (or a cluster,  
which is a specific type of chord)

main point is, we're in the 21st century, and composers nowadays -  
specially the ones using pwgl, open music, and similar tools - have been  
for a long time not confined to integer midi pitch, and these tools  
reflect that. so if this subject is for a composition tool, this is the  
standard of these tools nowadays, and if someone wants to include  
something like that in Pd, it would make sense to consider the standards  
around us.
music with 8bits and 15Khz can sound nice and there's nothing wrong with  
it, but if pd would be confined to those standards (instead of being  
confined to another set of standards, which still aren't enough for some  
people), it's user base would be much smaller.

João