pypond

An overly ambitious pet project to generate sheet music algorithmically

In baby development stage! - A lot of stuff is still broken; don't try to use it unless you love to hurt Disclaimer: all this is subject to change at my very whim during baby development

How to install:

1. Install Python 3 [https://www.python.org] 1.a. (latest version is fine, though I'm developing on 3.6ish)
2. Install GNU Lilypond [https://lilypond.org]
3. Copy/clone this repository to some handy location on your computer. Github How-to

How to make it go:

1. composer.py is the main event. Until I make it more elegant, you need to modify a few variables at the top of this file.

# composer.py
# Change the below to match the install path of GNU Lilypond on your system
_LILYPATH = "\"C:/Program Files (x86)/LilyPond/usr/bin\""
# If using Windows, this should be "lilypond.exe"; if using MacOS/Linux, it should simply be "lilypond"
_LILYEXEC = "lilypond.exe"

2. (optional) Create your own configuration file. Copy cfg.ini to another file and modify the values (if you dare!).
3. Open a terminal (this is command-line only at the moment) and navigate to the directory where you extracted/cloned/copied the pypond repository (e.g. C:\repos\pypond or /home/me/pypond)
4. Run composer.py, passing your prepared configuration file or cfg.ini, like this: python3 composer.py cfg.ini on MacOS/Linux or py -3 composer.py cfg.ini on Windows.
5. If everything worked (fat chance), two new files are generated and auto-named based on the chosen melody algorithm and the timestamp. One has the extension .ly and is GNU Lilypond language script, and the other has the extension .pdf and is a pdf which pdfs when you pdf it.
6. If you hate the auto-naming, you can pass a name to composer.py as such: python3 composer.py cfg.ini this_name_is_my_favorite (note the lack of spaces or a file extension)

Known bugs/wackiness to work out:

• TODO: Something is wrong with measure/beat counting again. Occasionally produces fewer measures than requested. I'm looking into this.
• You may quibble with the way rhythms are notated. I have no idea if this notation scheme is standard but it makes sense to me. Let's talk about it.
• Poor pypond.Note class is just full of methods... I should clean up what I can at some point.

Unimplemented - TODO (hopefully):

• Polyphony!
• Lots of new algorithms...

Recent fixes/additions:

• Support for +/- infinity octaves (rather than 0-9 only).
• Support for multi-flat, multi-sharp notes (i.e. C###)
• Messy, but ultimately accurate notes in a given key/scale
• Added key awareness, complete with choosing the correct enharmonic equivalent.
• Added inclusion of key signature, clef, and time signature
• Added beatCount and measureCount to pypond.Note class to make the composer's code cleaner
• Added a logger so debug info goes to a file instead of stdout
• Added a "MeasureBuffer" based on a blocking FIFO, enabling processing of music in single-measure increments.
• Completely re-wrote the formatting algorithm by introducing an "Orchestrator" class which handles all of the output formatting so the "Composer" class can just loftily dream up melodies without worrying about how to write them down.
• Added key changing by circle of fourths/fifths or by any interval.
• Added support for diatonicity in MARandom
• Fixed note range within key calculations (I think)
• Added a step for the orchestrator to select the best enharmonic equivalent for each note

Cheers, Keith