Requirements for a Music Engraving Program: a Composer's Point Of
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Requirements for a Music Engraving Program: a Composer’s Point of View Jean-Michel Hufflen Abstract may be viewed as a compilation—and result in the complete formatted text. Of course, LATEX and It is well-known that some typesetting systems other programs built out of T X belong to this wysiwyg E are interactive, that is, , whereas some— second category. wysiwym—work like compilers and process in- The same distinction exists for music engrav- put files written using an input language. Interac- ing software, that is, programs drawing music tive systems provide interesting features, whereas scores. Some programs—e.g., Finale, MuseScore, other qualities are implemented by wysiwym sys- NoteEdit—are interactive: a score is built step by tems. We can observe the same points about music step by means of graphical interface, even though engraving programs. In this article, we summarise notes and other musical signs are progressively the properties of interest during the music com- written by hand on a sheet of paper. Some—e.g., position process and review some music engraving LilyPond, MusiXT X(Taupin et al., 2002)—are programs from this point of view. E clearly related to a wysiwym approach. Keywords music engraving, scores, music The advantages and drawbacks of these two typography, music composition, versioning, man- approaches have already been described in many aging musical instruments, building midi files, Fi- articles about word processing. However, writing nale, LilyPond, MusiXT X, NoteEdit, MuseScore. E music is a different task than writing texts, and some arguments relevant about written Sommario documents do not apply to music scores. Sym- metrically, a music composer does not have the È ben noto che alcuni programmi di elaborazione same requirements than a book writer. Since I di testo sono interattivi, cioè wysiwyg, mentre al- personally compose music during my spare time, cuni — wysiwym — funzionano come compilatori I judge interesting to give my point of view. I ed elaborano i file di ingresso usando un particola- experienced some music software, not all of them, re linguaggio. I programmi interattivi presentano so my study is not exhaustive. However, I tried to funzionalità interessanti, mentre altre funzionalità express what I like or dislike in some programs, sono fornite dai sistemi wysiwym. Possiamo os- as precisely as possible. servare le stesse caratteristiche nei programmi per scrivere musica. In questo articolo presentiamo le In the first section I explain what a composer funzionalità che interessano nel caso della com- expects from a music program. I begin this sec- posizione tipografica della musica e commentiamo tion by summarising the requirements for a type- alcuni programmi da questo punto di vista. setting system in order to show how different is musical composition. Then I briefly describe the Parole chiave Incisione della musica, spartiti, programs I practised in Section3. I report my ex- tipografia musicale, composizione musicale, con- perience about music engraving programs in Sec- trollo delle versioni, gestione degli strumenti mu- tion4. Readers of this article are only required sicali, creazione di file midi, Finale, LilyPond, Mu- basic knowledge of music. Readers interested in siXT X, NoteEdit MuseScore. E precise definitions of musical terms can consult Jacobs (1988). 1 Introduction Among typesetting systems, the clear distinction 2 Requirements between wysiwyg1 and wysiwym2 systems is In the following, I consider word processor basic well-known. In the first case, such programs—an tasks, and do not deal with specialised features example being Adobe InDesign—are interactive, such as tables, mathematical formulas, pictures of that is, the formatted text is directly displayed chemical molecules, etc. A word processor should on screen, and updated as soon as end-users en- allow its users to get high-quality print outputs. ter new characters or activate some menu oper- It should be able to implement basic graphical ef- ations. In the second case, a source file written fects, that is, the use of boldface types, italicised using an input language is processed—this step characters, etc. It should reflect a document struc- 1. What You See Is What You Get. ture, from a graphical point of view, by means 2. What You See Is What You Mean. of hierarchical headings using different character 32 ArsTEXnica Nº 24, Ottobre 2017 Music Engraving Programs: a Composer’s Point of View sizes. It should also implement cross references some limitations remain. As a consequence, a com- among some subparts of such a structure. Last poser must always deal with scores, either because but not least, a good word processor should allow these scores are written from scratch, or because different parts of a large document to be written they are derived but should be reworked. by several end-users, and the integration of these As a second important point, I think that parts should be easy3. getting a satisfactory version after improving or As mentioned above, many articles about the changing intermediate versions is a process longer advantages and drawbacks of wysiwyg and for music scores than written documents. That is wysiwym systems already exist, so I just sum up true for our personal production, and other com- some important points. Current interactive sys- posers I asked for this question confirmed that. tems have been improved in comparison with pro- The goal of such a process is to get the best ver- grams used 40 years ago, but they are still limited sion but, concerning music, there are some addi- by their interactivity: when an end-user types new tional points. First, some notes may be misplaced, characters, such a program must respond quickly as if they are mistakes within a musical dictation. and display a reformatted version of the current If you are able to compose music, you do only a paragraph. On the contrary, a wysiwym system few of such mistakes, but ‘a few’ does not mean can examine many solutions before choosing the ‘nothing’; in fact, they are comparable to typing best way to split a paragraph into successive lines. mistakes within written documents. In addition, So does LATEX: it explores some solutions with re- as I explained in Hufflen (2017), the use of ac- spect to criteria summarised into a badness mea- cidentals ([, ], \, . ) is error-prone5. A synthe- surement, the chosen solution being minimal bad- sised version of a score can allow a composer to ness. An analogous modus operandi is applied for detect such mistakes which will have to be fixed. splitting a chapter into successive pages. An inter- A second point is related to musical instruments: active system cannot explore many possible solu- even though a composer knows how to use them, tions and reach such efficiency. it is difficult—if not impossible—to master all of 6 More generally, wysiwym systems allow style the technical features of all of the instruments . and content to be clearly separated, so users can In other words, some extracts may be impossible 7 mainly focus on content when they are writing to play by the instrument planned for that . Ei- 8 a document; considerations about style can be ther such an extract may be suitably arranged , or examined separately. Interactive systems may be given to another instrument. Similarly, if some in- preferred for short documents, e.g., administra- struments are unavailable when a musical piece is tive letters, but for large documents, consisting of to be played, a solution can be to replace them by many parts, such a separation makes it easier to other instruments; this can yield changes in scores. merge these parts or to produce a new version ac- cording to another style. A very simple example: 3 Some music software building a two-column version of a document pre- First, let us consider the music programs built viously typeset using a one-column format is easier out of T X, briefly described in Goossens with a wysiwym system than a wysiwyg one. E et al. (2009, Ch. 9), with some examples. In Now let us go to music composition (first im- the late 1980s, an early attempt for typesetting portanto point). Roughly speaking, there are two musical scores by T X extensions was MuT X ways to get a score for a new musical piece: putting E E (Schofer e Steinbach, 1987), which influenced down all the notes and musical signs composing it, MusicT X(Taupin, 1992), definitively replaced or deriving it from piano keyboard or from synthe- E by MusiXT X in 1995. This program (Taupin sised music like a midi4 file. The second way out- E et al., 2002) has been maintained since the acci- puts scores not ready to use. Such scores must be dental death of its main creator, Daniel Taupin, in reworked in order to simplify them: they actually August 2003, but it seems that only minor devel- reflect one performance of a piece, too much ex- opment has been done. This robust program, still actly. In order words, it does not give the canonical in use, is usable with Plain T X or as a LAT X 2ε way to express how to play it. A simple example: E E all of the notes of a glissando are explicitly put 5. Besides, musicologists often have doubts about their down onto the resulting score, whereas the stan- interpretation. dard specification of this effect consists of giving 6. Many features are described in good orchestration manuals, e.g. Forsyth (1982) or Rimsky-Korsakov only the starting and ending notes, joined by a (1964). But they cannot be exhaustive. Besides, old manu- line. Like wysiwyg word processors, music pro- als did not incorporate recent progresses and new features. grams deriving scores from synthesised music have 7.