

Music notation in HTML5/SVG - Pistos2
http://www.vexflow.com/

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celoyd
I know nothing about music notation, but I was very interested in LilyPond’s
explanation of how and why it does some of the stuff it does:
<http://lilypond.org/about/automated-engraving/big-page>

I wonder how much of this sort of work will end up in VexFlow.

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barryfandango
I'm a lilypond user and I can tell you we're totally spoiled by the quality of
that project - it is just immaculate. The Vexflow samples look very primitive
by comparison but it's a great idea and with open work like lilypond already
having tread this ground, hopefully they will have a lot of resources going
forward.

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jasonkester
I think I asked for it last time we saw this here, but this really needs a way
to parse standard text-based tabs.

There are hundreds of thousands of songs already transcribed in a (somewhat)
standard format that this thing can't yet read. It would seem a logical step
to get it reading them.

The TabStave format that this thing reads might make sense to programmers, but
I'd bet your average guitar player couldn't make sense of it. As a result, I
can't imagine we'll see much music transcribed using this pretty library
unless somebody comes up with a graphical editor or a way to read the existing
format.

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muerdeme
Most of those hundreds of thousands of songs have no rhythm notation to parse.

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jasonkester
But then neither does the default notation for this thing. It has the ability
to specify note durations, but doesn't require it.

Tab at least has spacing that can be used to infer note durations relative to
others within a single piece.

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igorgue
Zed Shaw talked about it some time ago on The Changelog. See the blog post for
more details and examples:

[http://thechangelog.com/post/1097381443/vexflow-
html5-canvas...](http://thechangelog.com/post/1097381443/vexflow-html5-canvas-
javascript-library-music-and-guitar)

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aguynamedben
Classic music notation is pretty and all, but it's about 1000x easier to learn
(and read, even if you know how to read music) this:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O93rQtWJVM>

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freakwit
Have to disagree with you here. Classical notation is much easier for me to
read than that.

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corin_
Agreed. That (youtube) method may be better for non-musical people who haven't
actually learned but... if they spent the time learning to read music they'd
find it far better.

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Pistos2
This appears to be heavily geared towards guitar music. I'd like to be able to
write out piano music (or perhaps just any music in general).

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kjell
I'm hoping for an ABC parser to complement the tab. Unfortunately I can't read
music no matter the notation.

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EGreg
Wow, this is pretty awesome. What would people use it for, though?

Now if only we had math notation in all the browsers!

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spektom
Sites for sharing music note sheets can move to use this technology instead of
using static pictures. This allows collaborative editing of music sheets
directly on the site.

