AbstractMusic

Requirements

You will need the following packages from Hackage (and their dependencies):

• vector-space
• csound-catalog

You will also need Csound 6 installed to listen to the example scores, and Lilypond to render them as PDFs if desired.

Instructions

There is a single command-line program, readlily, that you can use out-of-the-box. To compile, type make readlily. Then run e.g. ./readlily -t tet19 example-scores/seigneur-dieu-ta-pitie.ly to listen to the piece written by Costeley in 19-division equal temperament. ./readlily -h will show you the other options.

General info

A general framework for constructing and manipulating different kinds of notes (degrees of scales; intervals that are members of some algebra; frequencies; etc.) and transforming between them (by applying a concrete scale; applying some tuning system; etc.).

As an example, the data type `AbstractPitch2` in `Music.hs` is the basic representation of musical pitch; it forms the points in an affine space, with the standard musical interval (denoted `AbstractInt2`) forming the associated vectors between points. The underlying representation of `AbstractInt2` is as a rank-2 free Abelian group (using a particular pair of intervals as a basis). Hence the easiest way of tuning these pitches/intervals is with a rank-2 (aka syntonic, aka meantone) temperament, of which the notable examples are Pythagorean and quarter-comma meantone tuning (see `Tuning.hs`). Rank-1 tuning systems (equal temperament, e.g. 12-TET) can also be used, by judicious application of the vector dot product – projecting the 2D vectors/points of `AbstractPitch2`’s vector space onto some 1D line, which is then split up into 12/19/31/etc. equal pieces (most commonly 12).