Idea: A Helper Tool for Music

[crimson]

Hi all,

I have been turning an idea over in my mind for some time now. It all started from a need to make composition easier for me (as I'm still a beginner). I figured how cool would it be if there was a tool, a free computer program, that would display scales and chords both on a piano keyboard and on the musical staff. It would be even more cool if users could add custom scales and chords to the program's database, and the program could search and construct a list of all the chords that fit a given scale. That would make composition so much easier and faster for people like me. And since the program would display the notes also on a staff, it could perhaps help people in learning to read music. I also imagine it would be handy for learing to play the piano or the keyboard.

Since I have some experience in programming in C++, I have already started working on this concept, and I currently have a crude, very early Pre-Alpha version up. I wonder if there are any other C++ programmers on this site, who would be interested in helping me in the effort.

I'm planning to make the program totally free and open-source, possibly under the GPL license, if I ever get it done. From the meditation I've done, I've figured that it shouldn't be too hard to make a program like this. It doesn't have to be all fancy with really cool user interfaces and stuff like that. Currently I'm programming it with standard C++ and Allegro, which is very easy to use.

Any thoughts about this idea? Is it worth pursuing, or should I just scrap it altogether? And like I said, if there are any programmers here interested in helping me in the project, let me know and we'll see what we can come up with

[Ron Ofir]

Hmm, interesting idea. I am a C++ programmer, and I've also used Allegro before (do you know Allegro.cc?), so I guess I could offer some help. I think that if we're going as far as having it show the scale/chords/whatever, let's have it play them too! Should be pretty easy using MIDI.

[crimson]

Hi Ron!

I also thought about having the program play the scales/chords, but I'm not quite sure how it should work. Since the user could import custom scales, it would be best if the program could generate a midi file from the imputed note set automatically. Another option would be to have it play predefined midi files, but that would be less cool, meaning that the user would have to create the midis on his/her own. I've never looked into midi programming so I would need some help if we were to make the program generate the midis.

I know Allegro.cc, I visit it often when doing Allegro stuff.

So, you'd be interested in helping me with this project? Do you have any suggestions as to how we should go about this? I guess that if you're on the Allegro.cc forums, we could have our development talk there (maybe a better place than here), or someplace else. I have the current source code on my computer, but I can upload it to my personal website if you want to take a look at it. I pretty much have the program planned out, or I have a 'vision' of how it should be. But if we really are going to work on this, I'll do some proper planning, like writing stuff down etc. And like I said earlier, I don't believe this will be too hard a project to undertake. It should be over pretty soon, especially if I get some help with it

[ascottk]

Have you tried Band in a Box?
PG Music Inc. - Band-in-a-Box, PowerTracks Pro Audio, and More...

It does what you're aiming for & then some. Although an open source program would be nice.

[crimson]

I have tried Band in a Box, but it seems to be a really vast program. Almost bloated I would say. And the usability isn't the most straightforward I've seen. Does it allow the user to search for all the chords that belong to a given scale? And can the user define his own scales and search for chords matching them? It clearly manages the displaying of the notes and playback part. But the program I have in mind is a lot simpler than BiaB. There would only be few buttons and the keyboard/staff graphics, no loads of complex menus and such. I mean that it would probably be far easier to look up the stuff from a program that was specifically tailored for that type of thing. I'm sure BiaB is good for the kind of stuff it was made for, and I might be wrong about the usability as I haven't used it much. But I'm not sure whether I should go on with my project if it's possible to achieve the same things in BiaB with reasonable effort. I agree about the Open Source thing, though. It's frustrating having to get a costly program just for some small feature and having no use for the rest.

[Ron Ofir]

Sure, I would love to help you. I suggest we continue the disscussion using e-mails. Upload your source code to your site and send me a PM with your e-mail and website address. After we finish the basic design document, I suggest we ask here for more ideas and critics, and then get to work. After that, we should open up a project in sourceforge.net (after finding a decent name, of course!), and go on to making a tablature program

[crimson]

Great! I actually tried to register the project in SourceForge but didn't go through with it yet. Asking more ideas here is a good idea, although I hope to keep the program concept relatively simple at first. Once we get the basics done, it should be easier to add more features. I'll PM you.