Transcribing
Overview
Music encoded with Musicline is easy to transcribe into traditional musical scores, particularly when using beat-based event points.
In our not so baby beat example, we can observe the direct mapping between events and the music they define. The integer part of each event point represents beats — 1, 2, 3, and 4 — while the fractional part specifies the subdivisions within those beats. The note data corresponds to the drum kit's various percussion instruments.
Musicline's voice and tempo are equally easy to transcribe.
# A not so baby beat.
# not-so-baby-beat.dk.musicline
#
# -^-_ _
# / [_][_]_:_
# /| _||_ v
# | / \ |
# =/=\\__//=\=
#
1 k h
1.25 k
1.50 p h
1.75 S H
2 h
2.25 s
2.50 P S H
2.75 h
3 k h
3.25 k
3.50 p h
3.75 h
4 S H
4.25 s
4.50 p s h
4.75 h
By hand
Learning common beat divisions, like those illustrated in the table below, makes it possible to transcribe by hand efficiently. Calculating and memorizing other common divisions is also straightforward.
| Note types | Beat divisions | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| eighth notes | .0 | .50 | ||||||||||
| eight-note triplets | .0 | .33 | .66 | |||||||||
| sixteenth notes | .0 | .25 | .50 | .75 | ||||||||
By machine
Another solution is to automate the transcription process with software.
This can be done by writing a script that converts Musicline files to Lilypond programs.
NOTE
Lilypond is a free, open-source music engraving program that produces beautiful musical scores. It provides great control and power since the input method is a text-based markup language that can be written by humans or generated from other programming languages.