Python music interfaces

[James Harris]

Hi,

I am wanting to develop some software that

a) Reads existing files of music of a few well known types
b) Displays the music in traditional notation - i.e. on a stave
c) Displays the same music in my own notation that I am playing with
d) Allows both to be printed

I guess I can use Python with Tk for the display part but there seems to
be a plethora/cornucopia of Python music interfaces. (For example,
<http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonInMusic>.) I'd appreciate if you
could recommend which would be good for me to look at in order to do the
above.

 

[Lonnie Princehouse]

Are you talking about audio files (wav, mp3) or MIDI? Converting
audio files into discrete notes ("music recognition") is seriously
non-trivial, although there are some commercial products you might be
able to use for this. On the other hand, you could draw a
spectrographs without too much trouble. As

For reading the audio file, you could start with the built-in wave
module to read uncompressed WAV files, and worry about other formats
later on. Any external audio converter will be able to save as WAV
(sox on Linux is one such program)

Tkinter's Canvas will work nicely for display, particularly because
it's absurdly easy to convert Canvas contents into PostScript for
printing.

 

[groupstudy2001]

Are you talking about audio files (wav, mp3) or MIDI?

Strictly discrete notes or chords. I honestly don't know how the files
are made up but I guess MIDI would be more the thing. Can you recommend
a package for reading them (as arrays, perhaps)? The simpler the
better!

Tkinter's Canvas will work nicely for display, particularly because
it's absurdly easy to convert Canvas contents into PostScript for
printing.

I don't have access to a postscript printer but I guess I can use the
display and do a printscreen etc so I'll look in to this some more.
Tkinter has to be the way to go, I think....