What are you doing with RISC OS?

Ain’t that the truth.

Dear AI, please make me Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat. ;)

mostly in terms of jobs.

Yes, and no.

A can see a lot of helpdesk and customer service personnel canned and replaced by a “helpful” AI that will be about as useless as the current “chatbot” style help is… which, let’s be honest, is designed less to help and more to get you off the line.

I don’t imagine AI will overly affect secretarial/clerical type jobs that much as, well, the lovely thing about AI is that it can daydream complete crap that it will tell you in all sincerity. Not something one should rely upon. Plus we all know how good swipe-type is when it thinks it knows what you meant…

The problem, however, isn’t whether or not AI is any good, the problem is bean counters and middle management will see wholesale adoption of AI (and firing loads of employees) as a way of making cost savings, which should net them some sweet bonuses, just so long as they’re out of the way by the time the chickens come home to roost. Because, you know, AI isn’t the great saviour some seem to be promoting it to be. It is at best a tool of varying competence.

As for jobs like mine, no worries. I’ll be long gone before they figure out a bot to replace me. Hell, it’s hard enough getting people to do this, never mind machines.

simplicity and focus.

Yup. You can get stuff done without being sidetr…oh, kittens!

not following suit would be a good move.

Thing is, even the bloated competition is extremely advanced in what it can do. I wonder how long it would take to create a layout engine that’s capable of matching something like Sibelius. There’s a lot of non-obvious stuff in music scoring, especially if you’re looking at some it the older things.

By the way – quick question: how does one score percussion? Rhapsody by default puts notes on a stave, but you can change the stage to a percussion one where it gets a single line (instead of five) but it’s still notes. Those notes only make sense in the context of MIDI.
But, let’s say you have a snare tap every beat, with the floor mounted drum every bar, anda cymbal hit at the end. How would that actually be written?

the engraving engine does the placing

That would seem logical, as it associates that expression with that note.

I cannot see a way to attach a picture to my message.

One typically puts the image on a site somewhere, then adds it into the form by placing the URL between two exclamation marks.

If you don’t have access to any sort of web space, you can email a copy to me (address on my blog at the top of the page).

One typically puts the image on a site somewhere, then adds it into the form by placing the URL between two exclamation marks.

As various of us keep saying, it would assist the users of the forum if someone with edit ability for the site would change the “Textile reference here” link to something that actually works.

I will waste my virtual breath once more and say that the Textile reference here link needs changing to point to this: https://textile-lang.com/ and the specific sub-page required this time is https://textile-lang.com/doc/images.

As various of us keep saying, it would assist the users of the forum if someone with edit ability for the site would change the “Textile reference here” link to something that actually works.

It appears to be stored in a public SVN repo and there are details of how to check files out elsewhere on the site. So I’d guess that one might just do that, create a suitable patch for the proposed changes, and then submit it to the folk at ROOL who probably have 1001 other things to be thinking about and would welcome a change that can be quickly applied.

Whether you email that patch to code@ or website@ may be a moot point…

An example edited with Rhapsody and used by musicians.

It’s so nice to see collaborative programming projects being discussed on the forum. This is just the right place for it! Maybe the General area is fine though. Not sure Rhapsody4 needs its own section?

An example edited with Rhapsody and used by musicians.

Oh my god, that must have taken forever to create!

PS: Error 27, “Missing )”
;)

Each note represents an instrument. you must therefore be able to identify it by the height on the stave.

Ookkaaaayyy… I guess I was expecting something more like guitar tablature.

Single line, for an instrument like triangle for example.

Ah, that explains the single line method.
I still have difficulty in taking the poor little triangle seriously as an instrument. It’s what used to be given to the hopeless and the tone deaf. Unfortunately, most of them had no sense of rhythm whatsoever and would just hit the thing randomly.
(the joy of music in a special needs school, oh yes, we are all bloody awful – myself included)

Please, do not use the little piano icon, there is a bug which requires you to quit Rhapsody :-(.

Yup. (of course I went and clicked it)

Another method now that we can enter notes with a piano keyboard is to use this memory aid

My keyboard has little symbols above each key. I note it also marks Middle C as C3 because Yamaha just has to be different…

This is very complicated, but these are features that can be useful.

Indeed. In SimpleSeq I have had to write two entirely different ways of handling how the timing is derived. The logical one in which the time signature gives the beat length and the number of beats to a bar, and the more modern way in which a beat is a crotchet and the time signature just specifies how to divvy up the score.
But, yeah, that sort of thing is to be expected in something that has evolved over a hundreds of years, and this is only looking at western music with equal temperament.
Head a little further east (Arabic, Indian, Chinese, etc) and things get phenomally more complicated. In this case we need Pitch Bend in order to have a hope of reproducing some of the music that doesn’t fit into the traditional twelve-keys arrangement. As for notation…

We should create a question/answer topic for Rhapsody4 on the forum, just an idea, maybe it’s not the right place?

I’m not sure the ROOL forum is the appropriate place for (semi) “official” support of a third party app. I think it’s fine to talk about it, as every step forward is a benefit to RISC OS users who may be interested, but a specific section for support for it? And Aemulor? Ovation(Pro)? Impression? Etc etc etc…
We have “Community Support” for help with RISC OS" itself, so as mikko says, putting stuff in “General” seems logical enough. Might want to start a new thread though, instead of carrying on in what we’re doing with RISC OS. ;)

Head a little further east (Arabic, Indian, Chinese, etc) and things get phenomenally more complicated

May I recommend The Other Classical Musics Fifteen Great Traditions (ISBN 978-1-84383-726-8). See, for instance here . There are not only many musical notations, there are many vocal systems (bol-taans) by which a lead musician can indicate to associates how they should be playing, and mutually untranslateable descriptions of genres, schools and approaches to music.

By the way – quick question: how does one score percussion? Rhapsody by default puts notes on a stave, but you can change the stage to a percussion one where it gets a single line (instead of five) but it’s still notes. Those notes only make sense in the context of MIDI.

A drum kit uses a five-line stave, as each part of the kit can be considered a note, in essence. A single, non-toned instrument can use a one line stave.

Thanks all regarding posting images on the forum. Thanks for the uploading offer, Rick, but I’ve got some Web space I can use.

Jean-Michel has already posted an example from a Rhapsody score, but he also posted one in one of my threads, and here are two screenshots from his PDF:

Example 1:

Example 2:

Collisions abound. Perhaps this can be manually edited, but in something like Sibelius or Dorico, it wouldn’t happen in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to have a go at Rhapsody 4 – it isn’t competing with Sibelius and Dorico, after all. I’m simply pointing out why for professional use, on RISC OS it would need to be Sibelius7 or something newly written or newly ported.

Thing is, even the bloated competition is extremely advanced in what it can do. I wonder how long it would take to create a layout engine that’s capable of matching something like Sibelius. There’s a lot of non-obvious stuff in music scoring, especially if you’re looking at some it the older things.

Clearly it would be a long-term project and the programmer would need to work with a composer or be one themselves. We have the talent here – it’s a matter of a talented programmer having the time and motivation to undertake such a project. For a start, they’d have to have some interest in composing music, I would imagine.

I wondered if something like LilyPond could be ported over and something built from that. It’s not quite Sibelius7 in its layout, but it isn’t far off:

https://lilypond.org/examples.html

Personally I prefer the output from Sibelius7 and Dorico, but LilyPond is undeniably capable and I’m sure it could be tweaked. Could a GUI be put over it and MIDI export later be added, theoretically? How would that compare to a brand new program?

This is just the right place for it! Maybe the General area is fine though. Not sure Rhapsody4 needs its own section?

You’re right, it was just a question, but the idea is to not lose information about Rhapsody and many other applications.

Oh my god, that must have taken forever to create!

No, with a “good image” or a pdf file, I use !Sharpeye. Much of the work has already been done. And !Sharpeye exports a Rhapsody4 file, nice.
But time is needed to reread, make corrections and add what has not been transcribed.

LiLyPond is a text Music Editor, for RiscOs there is !PMS (version 3.61).There are more recent versions, only for Windows and Linux.

LiLyPond is a text Music Editor, for RiscOs there is !PMS (version 3.61).There are more recent versions, only for Windows and Linux.

Indeed. However, I was wondering about the viability of using the engraving engine from LilyPond in a program that provided a GUI interface for entering the notes, later adding MIDI export.

Collisions abound.

Yes, the second example is particularly poor. However, isn’t this something that could be ‘fixed’ by simply putting more space in between the staves? Either programmatically by working out what’s there and leaving enough space for it all, or by simply increasing the spacing between each stave?

I’ve just played around with a conversion of a MIDI of The Winds of Change (The Scorpions) and some parts there have notes on the staves crashing into each other. I took a look at “Packing factor” and it didn’t seem to change anything. Maybe there’s an inter-stave spacing option that I missed?
Edit: Having bothered to read the manual… that’s what the little red handles around the staves are for. Arguably there should be some sort of warning if stuff is crammed together, but it looks like it is possible to shift things around.

BTW, the second Lilypond example (https://lilypond.org/ly-examples/granados.png) has that crescendo mark overlapping the stave below. So, even the big guys can make mistakes. ;)

I use !Sharpeye.

[googles] Ah, okay. A little outside of my budget as a no-talent person…

I was wondering about the viability of using the engraving engine from LilyPond

I doubt it. If the dev docs (4. Compiling → Overview of compiling) it says:
“Attempts to compile LilyPond natively on Windows have been unsuccessful, though a workaround is available.” The workaround is running “LilyDev”, a Linux set up to compile LilyPond in a virtual machine.
If it can’t be made to work natively on Windows, what hope a system as different as RISC OS?

In case you’ve not visited my blog in a few days, I’ve had two iterations of SimpleSeq recently.

The latest is v0.06, and the recent headline features are:

• MIDI export

• Transcribing – basically start it going and “play stuff” and it’ll reproduce what was played ¹ along with the sustain pedal and full note velocities (assuming your piano supports those).

https://heyrick.eu/blog/index.php?diary=20230916

¹ Remember that the smallest note SimpleSeq can handle is a semiquaver, so hammering the notes out as fast as you can might cause unexpected reaults. More info on my blog.

Edit: Having bothered to read the manual… that’s what the little red handles around the staves are for. Arguably there should be some sort of warning if stuff is crammed together, but it looks like it is possible to shift things around.

It’s good if you can fix it manually, but better if it simply doesn’t happen. Anyone producing scores, especially if they’re composing, doesn’t want to be distracted fixing things the program should have got right.

I’m guessing adding this into Rhapsody 4 would not simply be a tweak and would instead be something the whole engine would be designed around.

BTW, the second Lilypond example (https://lilypond.org/ly-examples/granados.png) has that crescendo mark overlapping the stave below. So, even the big guys can make mistakes. ;)

Yeah, that’s poor spacing. It’s definitely not Sibelius or Dorico. They say Sibelius 3 on Windows and Mac OS came as close to Sibelius7’s sublime output as anything, but it seems the original still sets the bar. Dorico looks pretty good, and it is what I’m using but I haven’t done much lately. Sibelius7 was my goto engraving software. Frankly, I wish I hadn’t sold it, but my RiscPC was so crashy (and it was a new, Castle one, too) that it was unusable as an every day machine. Had to switch to the dark side for a while.

I doubt it. If the dev docs (4. Compiling → Overview of compiling) it says:
bq. “Attempts to compile LilyPond natively on Windows have been unsuccessful, though a workaround is available.” The workaround is running “LilyDev”, a Linux set up to compile LilyPond in a virtual machine.
bq. If it can’t be made to work natively on Windows, what hope a system as different as RISC OS?

I must admit I didn’t look into the technical side at all, so thanks for doing so. I was thinking out loud. Anyway, that would seem to make LilyPond a non-starter :(

A RISC OS Pi with a screen on top of a piano is a compelling idea for composition. Cheap, efficient and geared to doing the one thing you want. With the MIDI development going on at the moment, there’s potential in sequencing, which is pretty cool, but as a bit of a RISC OS fan I suppose I’m keen for it all to be possible on RISC OS. To say that MuseScore would be sufficient if ported would be an understatement, but I know before you even check it out that it would be a beast to port as it’s essentially competing with Sibelius and Dorico and therefore does everything including the washing up.

I could put Sibelius7 on an old machine, but I’m not too keen on relying on vintage hardware and a floppy disk not biting the dust. Seems only a matter of time before something goes wrong.

At the moment wainting for a response from allocations before I release a new RISC OS applcication

At the moment wainting for a response from allocations before I release a new RISC OS applcication

Ooh, what’s it do? Or is it a secret currently?

Ooh, what?s it do? Or is it a secret currently?

An internatational phone number validater,

A RISC OS Pi with a screen on top of a piano is a compelling idea for composition.

Is it? I guess it depends on your workflow.

I have a digital piano, which has the screen and monitors (by ‘monitors’ in this context I mean monitor speakers) on top, with an integrated keyboard / trackpad. There’s a PC running Windows 7 (I intentionally haven’t upgraded this one as I don’t use it for anything other than music) that has Cubase and Audition installed. I have three stacked M-Audio Delta 1010 audio interfaces (24-channel analogue plus 3x SPDIF pairs, with 3x MIDI in / out) and an M-Audio MidiSPORT 4×4 USB MIDI interface.

As well as the piano I have a number of keyboards, synths and sound modules, as well as the VST instruments within Cubase.

The PC spec is a quad-core 64-bit AMD A6 with 8GB RAM, running 64-bit Windows. There’s enough power to run all the VSTs and all the real-time effects (reverb, compression etc) without glitching.

A Pi5 might have the power to do all that, but not running RISC OS (if it could be persuaded to work at all on a Pi5). The multi-core is needed for this kind of thing.

As to notated music, Sibelius 7 may be state of the art in that field, but RISC OS has never to my knowledge had anything comparable to Qbase – composing with samples. Which is strange since it has a pretty good sound system to start with and affordable MIDI Podules so the basic technology to cater for sample composition is present.

It would appear that Desktop Publishing for printing was pretty well covered way back when but lags as much as RISC OS itself in true follow-the-ARM- development – dead in the water for over 20 years. And ARM Ltd. make some pretty capable DSP’s, their M series. Since ARMV9 (the latest) doesn’t support 32-bit mode current RISC OS cannot run on them without custom-built emulation. Bottom line; being 32-bit freezes any true development. That isn’t sexy.

Since RISC OS is pretty lighweight in demand for resources it would be close to realtime responsive when converted to C and compiled for ARMV9 chipsets, the challenge would be to build some Desktop and Laptop hardware on which it can run. Given there’s a market big enough to justify design an production. Man, what a pickle we’re in..

Stop wittering. These utterings are tedious and unhelpful.