Lokua/lokua.net.musicode

POC

musicode

(terrible name, placeholder for now)

Table of Contents

• API Commands
  • Instructions
    • every
      • meter
      • scale
  • reset
  • remove
  • register
  • unregister
  • log
  • log:scales
  • log:state
  • exit
• Development

API Commands

Instructions

Instructions are how you write music in musicode.

Available instructions:

every

The basic idea of the every instruction is: every N do X

e <meter> <scale>

You can enter as many every instructions as you want. They can be removed via the remove command.

IMPORTANT!

All metric and scale related numbers are not zero indexed in order to be more musical, however internally the numbers are zero indexed as is typical in all code and is the output you'll see if you run the log:state command. An option to use zero indexed values may be added in the future.

meter

meter is a three part value consisting of <bar>.<beat>.<sixteenth>. We will refer to one part within these three as a metric.

A metric can be:

• A single number:
  • [1-Infinity] for the bar portion
  • [0-3] for the beat and sixteenth portions
• The wildcard operator *, which means "every"
• The modulus operator % before a number, meaning "every other". For example %2 will play on the 1 and 3 beats / sixteenths
• A list of values holding to the same rules as the single number, comma seperated, ie. 1,3

scale

After entering a meter, you must specify a scale, which consists of a scaleNumber and scaleDegree.

# scale 1, scale degree 1
s1 1

The 1 after can be omitted when specifiying scale number 1.

# same as previous example
s 1

Scales can be registered via the register command

Examples:

# on the first beat of the first bar, play scale degree 1 from scale number 1
> e 1.1.1 s 1

# every beat
> e *.*.1 s 1

# every sixteenth note
> e *.*.* s 1

# every oher sixteenth note on beats 1 and 3
> e *.1,3.%2 s 1

# ...which is the same as
> e *.%2.%2 s 1

reset

Reset musicode's internal timing data. This is useful to when manually trying resync the program if it was started after a MIDI clock had started.

remove

> remove <instructionId>

Remove a previously entered instruction. You can see a list of all id, instruction pairs by running the log command.

register

> register major 1,3,5,6,8,10,12

Use the register command to enter your own custom scale. After entering your scale it will be printed along with scale number you can use to reference it in instructions

log

Print a list of registered phrases <id>: <command>. The id portion can later be used to transform and remove phrases

> log
1: e *.1.1 s 1
2: e *.*.* s 2

log:scales

Print a list of registered phrases <id>: <command>. The id portion can later be used to transform and remove phrases

> log:scales
1: major 1,3,5,6,8,10,12

log:state

This is mostly for development purposes. Prints out internal timing state and compiled instructions.

exit

Exit the program

Development

Basic overview:

Road to Version 1 TODO:

• export
• specify octave, duration, velocity
• transpose instruction(s)
• pass config file to program
• allow specifying scales in traditional notes
• add offset (bar|beat|sixteenth) command to resync
• cc
• make parsed types a constant enum

Expand syntax (thinking out loud):

# alternate scale degrees 1,2,3 each repetition (etc for velocity and duration)
# requires we keep a pointer to last played
> e *.*.* s 1,2,3 v 1,2 d 1

# play every 16th, but only 10% of the time
> e *.*.*/1 s 1

# transpose instruction 1 up 2
> x t1 2

# transpose instruction 1 down 2
> x t1 -2

# transpose all instructions down 2
> x t -2