Creating printed music automatically

Abstract

Most users of notational software have little or no music copyist training, and musicianship does not guarantee notational skills. Even professional composers fail at many notational tasks if they have not had explicit copyist training. The ability to notate music has very little in common with the ability to compose or play it. Unfortunately, we do not have the rules for notating music in a prescriptive form, that is, one that a computer can use. Music copyists take years to learn them. For the most part, books present these rules in descriptive form using examples. Individual rules by themselves present little problem to notational software. It is the interaction between the rules that is so difficult to capture. The article presents a partial solution to this problem: how can users with little or no copyist training create publication-quality printed music? The solution, a program called MusicEase, applies constraints to notational information the user enters, automatically arranging graphical elements correctly. This can also speed up the notation process, since the copyist doesn't have to make as many decisions or enter as much data.