In my compositional practice I generally start with a formal outline of the piece. I identify timepoints of interest and then draw an outline that looks something like this:
This is great, and works well for me for most situations. The trouble starts when I want to input these timing structures into a score. I use NoteAbilityPro as my engraving software of choice. If you don’t know it yet, it is free software and you can download it here: http://debussy.music.ubc.ca/NoteAbility/
It has a somewhat steep learning curve (what notation software doesn’t!!) but it was designed for New Music composition, and more specifically for communicating with external software over a network. This means NaPro (NoteAbility Pro) can send messages (notes, instructions, etc.) to Max, Pd, IanniX, or any other software capable of receiving network messages. Conversely, NaPro can also RECEIVE messages! This means we can start, stop, pause, change playback position of a score (this is VERY useful for score following). But it can also receive messages to write and delete notes and rests. This means we could create a score interactively.
This is what I am using here to send my outline information, which I usually calculate in seconds by hand to NaPro.
I wrote a little Max patch that converts my timing information from seconds to beats and formats a message that NaPro understands and then send it over a local network.
The patch itself is very simple.
1) Setup basic score information. This can, but must not match the NaPro score settings
2) Set Network to appropriate values (you could change your friend’s score over the internet if you like…)
3) Convert from seconds to beats according to the settings from 1) and put in a NaPro friendly message and send it over the network
That’s it! Simple! And it will save me a lot of time in the future by eliminating some math and a LOT of counting in the score. Hopefully it can be useful to some of you as well.
Here is a quick gif of the patch in action. To simply show the functionality I made sure all notes will appear on the first page 😉
And if nothing else, you now know that NaPro can be controlled by Max and you can write your piece algorithmically in concert as the musicians play…
Here is a copy of the patch for your perusal pleasure:
Very important!! Don’t forget to set your NaPro score to receive UDP messages!!!
Happy patching and composing everyone!
In case anyone was wondering about the filename MR.composer.* that’s part of a toolbox I am creating (mostly for myself) with simple patches and utilities that help me speed up some common compositional tasks… I might at some point introduce some of them if they get polished enough…