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Comment by dri_ft | Hacker News Reader

I think my idea of a perfect music program is closer to vim than an IDE, but you're on the right track.

Have a look at extempore, a lispy live music/notation language and environment. Only emacs bindings, no vim, but impressive preformance nevertheless...

[0]: http://extempore.moso.com.au/

[1]: https://github.com/digego/extempore

I played around with this a while back and there are Vim plugins for it. My biggest problem was having to compile the thing from source which involved also compiling a custom version of LLVM, which took forever. It's possible this is no longer a problem.

I'm aware of extempore; it's impressive. I actually use SuperCollider quite a lot (in vim), which is not lispy (more OO) but in a similar space. But what I want is something that can operate on music how vim operates on text, not just operating on music-written-as-text in vim!

IMO, classical notation is the Vim of music - it looks bizarre to outsiders, it's totally unintuitive, it requires a lot of memorisation and practice to use effectively, but it's extraordinarily efficient in the hands of an expert user.

How is it efficient? What exactly is the alternative?

It's very quick to read and write. It contains all of the vital musical information in a very concise format. Numerous alternative schemes for musical notation have been tried, but none have achieved significant adoption.

Use vim to compose an abc file, then play it with software listed at http://abcnotation.com or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_notation

Have you looked at Lilypond? http://lilypond.org/

I have. "LilyPond is a music engraving program, devoted to producing the highest-quality sheet music possible. "

I don't need or want any of that. In fact when I write music, music engraving is the least of my concerns. Actually music engraving is generally the least of my concerns period.

Also I find the current music notation to be kinda idk outdated. I can read it, but I feel like it's a system designed by someone who had the mathematical knowledge of a 15th century farmer (which is probably how it came to be).

>Also I find the current music notation to be kinda idk outdated. I can read it, but I feel like it's a system designed by someone who had the mathematical knowledge of a 15th century farmer (which is probably how it came to be).

What specifically about it?

I can read (and prefer) standard musical notation but when handwriting I use Hummingbird [0] because I find it aides itself to handwriting. But I can't really imagine a "better" musical notation than what is the standard today, except a better way to communicate natural/flat/sharp notes.

[0] http://www.hummingbirdnotation.com/

This is a long discussion. But fundamentally music notation is very paper oriented and doesn't exploit the advantages screens offer.

> (and prefer) standard musical notation

Prefer it over what?

I wanted to bring up Hummingbird notation with a specific context in which I prefer it (handwriting) while still being clear that I prefer standard notation over Hummmingbird as a whole.

There's a lot of vim too :-).

Great. To be specific, what I dream of is something that can operate on higher-level musical constructs analogous to vim's text objects (works, lines, parentheses, etc). Chords, scales, rhythms, melodies? I don't really know exactly what this would look like but I suspect it could be very slick if someone got it right. I had some ideas and thought about implementing them a while ago but it got deprioritised next to making my own music and had to get to the back of the "some day I'll..." queue.

I've signed up to your google form, so I'll look forward to seeing what, if anything, you come up with :) I am on linux (and yes, I agree that music on linux is a pain), so I might not get to use it unless you port it, but I still look forward to seeing it, whatever it is.

Yes, you get it! That's exactly what this is. You sound exactly like me lol. I love higher order things and I've been chasing this "mirage" since I was like 12 but I never had the chops and time to really devote to this. Do you think that we could chat sometime? My email is my username at gmail.

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