Re: [abcusers] Keyboard layout
Randall J Elzinga wrote > I'm curious to know if anyone has ever written keyboard drivers to remap > the keys of a typical computer keyboard to something that would be more > accommodating to entry of ABCs. For example, characters that are used most > often can be mapped to keys in the home row, or the row above it. I realise you're really interested in physical keyboards, but as an aside: in the handheld world of skinnable virtual keyboards this kind of thing is easy. In fact it's so easy that I've done it, for my PalmOS machine. Specifically, I've written an ABC overlay for the VirtualKB keyboard manager, giving you two rows of keys C..B and c..b plus other abc symbols. It's free, and available from http://www.thomasbending.co.uk/palm Caveat: VirtualKB is a hack, so doesn't work on my spiffy new Sony Clie running PalmOS 5 8-(. I'm investigating alternatives ... Thomas Bending To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Digest #845?
Bert Van Vreckem quoted David Barnert as saying > > Recently returned from a couple of weeks away. I read this list as > > the digest. It seems that Digest #845 does not appear in my "in" > > box. 844 was 14Feb and 846 was 18Feb. I have nothing in between. > > It's possible I accidentally deleted it along with all the spam > > that accumulated while I was away. > > > > I've been to the archives at: > > > > http://www.mail-archive.com/abcusers%40argyll.wisemagic.com/ I receive messages individually, but recently have noticed some going missing. For example, on Mon 24 Feb 03 I sent a message to this list as part of the "Name that tune (in tune-finder)?" thread. It appears in the archive, but I haven't received it as a subscriber. I didn't receive David Barnert's message quoted above, either. Are we talking about symptoms of a common problem, perhaps? Thomas Bending To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Name that tune (in tune-finder)?
Christopher Myers wrote > What I'd like to do is enter the ABC (regardless of key) for the first > few notes or bars of a tune I have stuck in my head, and push "Go" and > get back a list of likely candidates for what my tune is. Not quite what you asked for, but: My Torus tune indexing system identifies tunes based only on whether the tune goes up or down from each note to the next. This is obviously less specific than the method you describe, but turns out to surprisingly effective, as well as easier to use IMHO. See http://www.ThomasBending.co.uk/torus JC's ABC tune finder at http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/music/abc/findtune.html can use a similar method. It can also search for ABC fragments, but I don't think it can do this "regardless of key". I've seen books with an index that uses a method closer to yours, by transposing everything to C and then sorting the note sequences alphabetically. One of these might have been Jeremy Barlow's "Complete Playford Dancing Master" (approximate title) but I don't have a copy so can't be sure. I don't know of an online resource that uses this method. Thomas Bending To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Any chance of print outs in bass clef?
John Chambers wrote > If you try to find music (that you can put on a music stand and > read) on the web, you find that it is buried in 100 times as much > music (that you put in your machine and sound comes out of the > speaker). Now, you'd think that it would be easy to distinguish paper > from sound. But it turns out that there is no English terminology > to clearly distinguish the two. Is there a non-English terminology, i.e. is there another language that makes this distinction more clearly or elegantly than English does? Not much help for the real US-dominated internet, perhaps, but I'm curious. Thomas Bending To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Sidmouth
> Anyone going to Sidmouth this year? I'm playing with Momentum for English social dance, including the Playford Ball on Wednesday night. I'd be glad to meet any ABCusers who wander by. Shameless plug: www.MomentumBand.co.uk Thomas Bending To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] The (illegal) sounds of silence
> > (Maybe we need an abc transcription of Mike Batt's "One > > Minute's Silence" to go with the version of Cage's 4'33" > > that's already online.) > > It's 4'11", John, not 4'33" ;-) Cage's original piece was 4'33": see the New Grove's dictionary at http://www.grovemusic.com/index.html for example. I believe it was written to occupy 273 seconds because absolute zero is about -273 degrees Celsius: Cage apparently thought this significant. The Musica Viva version is presumably just a quote from the complete work: yet another example of dumbing-down the classics for the short attention spans of today's audiences, I suppose 8-) Thomas Bending To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Intergalactic naming conventions.
> > Any other Brightons there may be need qualification eg Brighton, > > Planet Zog. > > When it comes to announcements on the web, it's safe to assume it > happens on earth. All other semi-civilized planets have their own > (mutually incompatible) networks, and as for *civilized* planets - I > guess they've got the sense not to mess with this mess at all ;-) ;-) ;-) Mutually incompatible? Surely not. Several sci-fi movies (mentioning no Independence Days) make it clear that it's easy to link your network to that of the aliens, even if they're presumably trying to stop you. So conversely we must assume the aliens are all using the abcusers list, even though we don't see many of their posts. Even now debate is raging over an illegal adaptation of the ":" control code by players of the octoventral heebiephone... Thomas Bending To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] MIDI to WAV (was Re: abcusers-digest V1 #668)
> > You need a program called Acoustica MP3 to Wave Converter (it also does > > Wav to MP3). It costs $19 or so, and you can get it from > > http://www.acoustica.com/mp3-wav-converter/download.htm > > > > Hi hope you don't mind one question, how can I turn a midi into a wave > > Depending on your machine, of course; that would be for what, Windows ? > > If you're on a linux box, "timidity" is what you need. > > > Wasn't the question about turning MIDI into WAV, not MP3 into WAV? > Do these programs really do a "play the MIDI and record it in WAV > format"? Timidity certainly does exactly that. It appears from its webpage that the Acoustica program does not, but I've never tried it. > But since MIDI is not audio, but a sequence of events, I wold think > one would have to play the MIDI and record it. Not at all. Clearly it's *possible* to take a MIDI file and produce a sequence of signal levels representing a waveform: this is what the combination of a MIDI-playing synthesiser program plus a soundcard do in order to play a MIDI file normally. Thus one can write a single program to do this job and then save the levels as a WAV file, rather than using them to drive a speaker, and this is what Timidity (for example) does. Of course, this means that the actual sound depends on the program's choice of waveforms, but then as you point out MIDI doesn't specify the actual sound explicitly anyway: there's always got to be an instrument-like choice made somewhere. Thomas Bending To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
RE: [abcusers] Re: abcusers-digest V1 #668
> On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, Karl Dallas wrote: > > > You need a program called Acoustica MP3 to Wave Converter (it also does > > Wav to MP3). It costs $19 or so, and you can get it from > > http://www.acoustica.com/mp3-wav-converter/download.htm > > > > Hi hope you don't mind one question, how can I turn a midi into a wave > > Depending on your machine, of course; that would be for what, Windows ? > > If you're on a linux box, "timidity" is what you need. Timidity has also been ported to Windows: I use it under Windows 95, and recommend it. Thomas Bending To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] ABC-friendly keyboard for Palm handheld
> On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, Thomas Bending wrote: > > > the VirtualKB keyboard manager, > > which is free (and not by me). > > I couldn't download it, it it just me, or is the file no longer on the > server? The two components you need, the overlay and manager, are both available directly from my site via the "PDB database" and "zip file" links in the last paragraph of the section. These seem to be working OK: I've just downloaded both files successfully, to a machine independent of the one on which I maintain the site. My page also has a link to VirtualKB's own page, and I agree it seems that the download link there isn't working. However, if you use the "zip file" link mentioned above then you shouldn't need it. Apologies if my page was unclear about where things are, and thanks for telling me: I'll try to improve things. Please contact me (off- list, perhaps) if you have any more problems. Thomas Bending Thomas Bending To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] ABC-friendly keyboard for Palm handheld
Recently this list discussed writing ABC on a Palm handheld computer, and mentioned the lack of a pipe=barline symbol on the standard keyboard. This kind of thing prompted me to design a replacement for the numeric keyboard that includes a section intended for writing ABC. It has keys for common header fields, two octaves of notes in C...B order, and various useful symbols. It takes the form of an "overlay" for the VirtualKB keyboard manager, which is free (and not by me). Both the overlay and the manager are available at http://www.ThomasBending.co.uk together with some screenshots. Share and enjoy. Feedback welcomed. Thomas Bending To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] New tune index (no ABC content)
This isn't directly about ABC, but I hope it's of interest: Over the years I've been developing an index that identifies tunes simply on the basis of whether they go up or down from one note to the next, called Torus (Tunes ORdered Using Shape). Originally hardcopy, it's now available online at http://www.thomasbending.co.uk/torus/ with a database of about 1100 tunes. Please try it out and tell me if it's useful and how it might be improved. I'm aware that other people have developed similar systems independently. I'm not claiming that mine is bigger, faster or better than any other, since it probably isn't. Thomas Bending To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
