garncarz / muspl

Musical Prolog library

MusPl, a musical Prolog library

This is a beginning project aiming at logical construction/analysis of musical pieces. It's written in SWI-Prolog (version 7, using dicts). So far the construction phase is being developed.

Simple example

Load and export Flies's Lullaby (included in the project) as a Lilypond file and a karaoke text file.

$ swipl
?- [muspl].
true.

?- loadData('examples/wiegenlied').
true.

?- exportLy('wiegenlied.ly').
maxCount:144
count:100
count:0
true.

?- exportUS('wiegenlied.txt', 'wiegenlied.ogg').
true.

?- halt.

Now run Lilypond to convert it to MIDI and PDF.

$ lilypond wiegenlied.ly

You can use TiMidity++ or some other MIDI renderer to convert the MIDI to OGG (or MP3, if you like).

$ timidity -Ov wiegenlied.midi -o wiegenlied.ogg

If you use UltraStar Deluxe as your karaoke program, just copy the TXT and OGG files to the program's songs folder and sing it!

Construction

Simple melody line:

extra scale{root:f, quality:major}.  % scale of a song

m melody{start:(1, 1, v),  % bar 1, beat 1, staff 'v' (e.g. voice)
	relative:(a, 1, 8),  % tone a, octave 1, duration 1/8
	pitch:[0, 1, 0, -1, -2, -1, -2],  % relative pitches from the scale
	len:[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2]}.  % multiples of the relative duration

The same line with lengths described briefly:

m melody{start:(1, 1, v), relative:(a, 1, 8),
	pitch:[0, 1, 0, -1, -2, -1, -2], len:[1*6, 2]}.

Repeated pitch/length sequences can be reused by a name:

m [
	'6long' = [1*6, [4, 8, 4]],  % [4, 8, 4] = exact duration 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/4
	melody{start:(5, 1, v), relative:(g, 1, 8),
		pitch:[0, -1:1, 0, 0, -1:1, 0, 2], len:'6long'},
			% :1 = one semitone up, :(-1) would be one semitone down
	melody{start:(5, 1, g), relative:(e, 1, 8),
		pitch:[0, -1:1, 0, 0, -1:1, 0, 2], len:'6long'}
].

Bars can be copied, under a condition and transformed in a way:

m copyBars{from:6, to:10, count:2, cond:isStaff(f), action:pitchShift(5)}.

muspl's Issues

ASCII predicates/operators

♪ and ♪= should be probably replaced by some ASCII notation, so they're easier to type and work also on Windows.

LilyPond polyphony isn't bulletproof

For example wiegL, oneStaff(g), exportLy('onestaff.ly'). produces a jerky output.

Simplified input of exact duration values

Actual: len:[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, exact{dur:[4, 8, 4]}]
Could be: len:[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, [4, 8, 4]] – list denotes exact values

Notation as a dict

Actual format: notation((1, 2.5, v), (a, 1), 8)
Proposed format: notation{position:position{...}, tone:tone{...}, dur:duration{...}}
Maybe dur should be incorporated into tone.

Maybe there should exist "global" functions on notation, like those from data: allStaffs, allBeats... maybe even data should be a dict? (Similar to how notationDb works now, so it would be generally possible to work with several songs at the same time. The first "db" could be default.)

Construction: deduplicate pitch/length sequences

Actual:

♪ melody{start:(1, 1, g), relative:(a, 1, 8),
    pitch:[0, 1, 0, -1, -2, -1, -2],
    len:[1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2]}.

Could be ~:

♪db(pitchSeqA, [0, 1, 0, -1, -2, -1, -2]).
♪db(lenSeqA, [1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2]).
♪ melody{start:(1, 1, g), relative:(a, 1, 8), pitch:pitchSeqA, len:lenSeqA}.

Examples: add lyrics for Wiegenlied

Rename/refactor aux.pl{,t}

Windows forbids names like that, lol. http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/mailx_aux_c.html

MIDI import

Adjust to the new position/duration format and ensure it works by creating tests/song.midi which would be imported by a test.

Playback

play. and play(From, To). should be available to provide quick feedback of notation.

Unify construction predicates

extra title(...), extra composer(...), extra scale{...}, extra timeSignature(...) (maybe something else?) – all should go inside m.

Render tones right on time

So far, tones are rendered linearly, continuously, for the sake of demonstration. Their position should be respected, allowing multiple tones to sound at once.

Possibilities for storing both tones' and overall samples (hopefully it will be more saving than findall):

1. assertz – global
2. b_setval/nb_setval – global
3. setarg/nb_setarg – local