General User’s guide

This guide covers the basics to write music with musiclang.

General considerations

All the object in musiclang are immutable, a method call on an object will return a new instance of the object.
Each part can only play a monophonic melody
The string representation of a score fully determines it. It means that if you import the library : eval(str(score))==score
There are many already instantiated object that you can call on the musiclang.library module. It stores for example chords and notes symbols
Played notes are always relative to a chord scale

To illustrate these two last points :

Example : Write a scale

Here is a simple script to show the C-major scale in musiclang

from musiclang.library import *

score = (I % I.M)(piano__0=s0 + s1 + s2 + s3 + s4 + s5 + s6 + s0.o(1))

score.show()

If we wanted to write the V of C-major (note that the first note is the root of the chord)

from musiclang.library import *

score = (V % I.M)(piano__0=s0 + s1 + s2 + s3 + s4 + s5 + s6 + s0.o(1))

score.show()

To write the Eb major scale we could have done

from musiclang.library import *

score = (I % III.b.M)(piano__0=s0 + s1 + s2 + s3 + s4 + s5 + s6 + s0.o(1))

score.show()

If we wanted to write this time the (harmonic) minor scale of D

from musiclang.library import *

score = (I % II.m)(piano__0=s0 + s1 + s2 + s3 + s4 + s5 + s6 + s0.o(1))

score.show()

Write symbolic music

MusicLang uses its own notation language to write music. To write a basic MusicLang score that can be translated to midi or any other format you need two ingredients :

Define the chords scale of your song
Define which part (with instrument name) plays which monophonic melody

This feature ensures that you write your music with as much context as possible. In that way you can really use advanced manipulations on your music.

Write notes

The specificity of MusicLang is that notes are always represented relatively to a chord inside a tonality.

Usually you won’t be instantiating notes yourself but use the builtin musiclang.write.library which already defines common symbols of musiclang. See the examples to get familiar with the notation library.

Warning

Notes are 0-indexed relative to a scale, so for example s0 is the first note of the scale.

There are different kinds of notes

Scale notes : s0, s1, s2, s3, s4, s5, s6 : relative to 7 sounds scale of the chord inside a tonality
Chromatic notes : h0, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, h7, h8, h9, h10, h11 : relative to the 12 sounds of the chromatic scale associated with the chord/tonality
Drum notes : bd, sd, sd2, ... See See the Drum notes for some detailed examples and whole library.
Chord extension notes : b0, b1, ..., b11 Arpeggio notes starting from the bass note of the chord, octaved if necessary. See Chords to get an overview on how to use chord extensions.
Chord notes : c0, c1, ..., c11 Chord notes starting from the root note of the chord, octaved if necessary. See Chords to get an overview on how to use chord extensions.
Absolute notes : C5, Cs5, Bb4, ... Absolute note that are not changed by the context of a chord and not transposable
Relative up scale note, su0, su1, su2, su3, su4, su5, su6 : Up relatively to the previous note of a melody
Relative down scale note, sd0, sd1, sd2, sd3, sd4, sd5, sd6 : Down relatively to the previous note of a melody
Relative up chromatic note, hu0, hu1, hu2, hu3, hu4, hu5, hu6, hu7, hu8, hu9, hu10, hu11 : Up relatively to the previous note of a melody
Relative down chromatic note, hd0, hd1, hd2, hu3, hu4, hu5, hu6, hu7, hu8, hu9, hu10, hu11 : Down relatively to the previous note of a melody

Octaves

You can specify an octave using the o() method of a note For example : s0.o(1) is s0 up one octave, s0.o(-1) is s0 down one octave

Rhythm

You can specify a rhythm to a note using properties :

h=half, w=whole, q=quarter, e=eight, s=sixteenth, t=thirty-seconds. By default the duration is a quarter so s0==s0.q
You can use n-uplet (3, 5, 7) : for example s0.e3 is s0 with a duration of a triolet etc …
You can use dots with d : For example s0.qd has a dotter quarter duration. You can use double dots. eg : s0.ed for a dotted eight note
You can use the augment() method if you want a custom duration that can’t be notated easily. For example s0.augment(8) for a duration of two whole notes)

Note

You must use the builtin python fractions.Fraction object to create duration otherwise you will get rounding errors when exporting to midi.

Dynamics

You can add dynamics to a note using ppp, pp, p, mf, f, ff, fff properties of the note Example : s0.fff is a note in triple forte

Silences

You can specify a silence using the r notation in the library, otherwise use the Silence class

Continuation

You can specify a note continuation using the l notation in the library, otherwise use the Continuation class

Mode

You can force a mode on a note that bypass the mode of the chord scale (same as tonalities modes)

For example

from musiclang.library import s0, s1, s2, s3, s4, I
score = (I%I.M)(piano=s0 + s1 + s2 + s3.lydian + s4)

score.show()

Accident

You can force an accident on a note that bypass the mode of the chord scale (same as tonalities modes)

There are four different accidents :

dim
aug
natural
min
maj

For example

from musiclang.library import s0, s1, s2, s3, s4, I
score = (I%I.M)(piano=s0 + s1 + s2 + s3 + s4.dim)

score.show()

Examples

>>> from musiclang.library import s0, s1, s2, I

You can learn what pitch is associated to a note in the context of a chord :

>>> chord = (I % I.M) # C major chord (first degree of first major tonality relative to C)
>>> note = s0
>>> chord.to_pitch(s0)
0

>>> chord.to_pitch(s1)
2

>>> chord.to_pitch(s2)
4

0 is the note C5 in musiclang, so 2 is D5

>>> (I % I.m).to_pitch(s2)
3

In minor s2 is eb (=3)

Write a melody

A melody is a time sequence of notes. It can only be monophonic. It is played by a part on a chord scale Without a chord scale a melody does not define pitches. It only defines degrees on a chord scale. It allows you to reuse a melody in a different chord (transposition invariance). For example

from musiclang.library import *

alberti_bass = (s0 + s4 + s2 + s4).e * 2

score = (I % I.M)(piano=alberti_bass) + (VI % I.M)(piano=alberti_bass)

score.show()

A melody implements common python operator to ease the writing of melodies :

+ : A a note to a melody or concatenate two melodies in time
& : Transpose a melody diatonically (will change the value of notes)
.<method> : Call any method of note to apply it on each note of the melody

Write tonalities

Tonality is a roman numeral with an optional accident (b or s) and a mode. The degree is relative to the C-major scale. So IV.s is an F sharp tonality

For the modes : - M refers to the major mode - m refers to the harmonic minor mode - mm refers to the harmonic minor mode - dorian refers to the dorian mode (C, D, Eb, F, G, A, Bb) in C - phrygian refers to the dorian mode (C, Db, Eb, F, G, Ab, Bb) in C - lydian refers to the lydian mode (C, D, E, F#, G, A, B) in C - mixolydian refers to the mixolydian mode (C, D, E, F, G, A, Bb) in C - aeolian refers to the aeolian mode (C, D, Eb, F, G, Ab, Bb) in C - locrian refers to the locrian mode (C, Db, Eb, F, Gb Ab, Bb) in C

Tonalities can have an octave with the o method.

Write Chords

Chords represents a chord in the context of a scale.

General structure of a chord

A chord is structured the following way : (<degree> % <tonality>)[<chord_extension>] The chord can have an octave with the o method.

The structure is detailed here : Chords.

Modulation

You can use the % again to modulate on another tonality. For example (V % I.M) % V.M Is the V/V in C major which is a Dmajor chord. When you modulate in a new tonality the final degree will be the addition of the two degrees and the new mode will be the mode at the right. For example (I % II.M) % II.m = (I % III.m).

Instruments

You can use any instrument of the general midi list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_MIDI) :

with _ (underscores) instead of spaces.
In lowercase
You can use any instruments starting by drums for your drums parts.

Note

To specify the part number of an instrument you can use the __<part_idx> notation. For example violin__0 means the part 0 of the violin instrument. All the instruments will be associated with a part number even if you don’t specify it.

Output a musiclang score into another format

You can output a MusicLang score in various ways. There are four main methods on the Score object :

to_pickle : Save the score to a pickle object
to_midi : Save the score to a midi object
to_mxl: Save the score to a musicxml format (For example for musescore)
show: This is for the time being a wrapper for the music21 show method

For example the to_midi method

from musiclang.library import *

score = (I % I.M)(piano=[s0, s2, s4]) + (V % I.M)(piano=[s2.o(-1), s4.o(-1), s0])

score.to_midi('filepath.mid')

Read an existing file (Analyze music)

The score loader is decomposed in two parts :

A chord analyzer that split the music in relevant chord scales
A parts analyzer that split the music in different monophonic parts

Here is a script that allows you to read a midi file called music.mid

from musiclang import Score

score = Score.from_midi('music.mid')

Transform music

See the Transformations library for some detailed examples.

Predict music

Warning

As of this time, the predict library is only partially released. You can train a model but you cannot use an already trained one.

The musiclang.predict module will store many classes that will help you predict some aspect of an already existing MusicLang score using models trained on a variety of musical data.

See the Examples gallery for some detailed examples.

Examples

See the Examples gallery.