From: Ryan Pavlik <rpav@...>
Date: 2003-09-29T05:43:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Thoughts on yield

On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 17:31:23 +0900
"daz" <dooby@d10.karoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Like Jim, my feeling is that some parsing will be
> required.  There's no C# method in Ruby.
> 
> Allows for sharps, flats and naturals.

There are however unary +, -, and ~ operators, which might translate
appropriately.

However there are a lot of intricacies to music in general, and I'm
not sure any of the given methods quite handle them all.  Some
everyday things to think about:

   *  Tuples
   *  Multiple voices (not just simple chords)
   *  Note length tweaks (for slurs and the like)
   *  Rests (big one)
   *  Tempo changes
   *  Dynamics

Arrays might help some things, as well as combining voices on the fly,
but it may not be as straightforward as desired.

Hmm, a little method_missing magic and we could have a vaguely
track-like view perhaps:

    part {
      bar 16      # Set each _ to be a 16th, so ____ is 1/4
    
      v1  a____,     r_, ...
      v2  r_, b__, +c__, ...       # r is for rest

      v1  ...
      v2  ...
    }

In this case, you could chop off the _'s and count them in
method_missing to produce a length, call the method with that as a
parameter, returning a Note modified by the current key signature, and
then the +/-/~ would take over.  Each vN function would be a "voice"
function that was later collected and combined by part(), so you could
handle multiple voice movement without a lot of crazy arrays and
stuff.  Of course, you'd likely still want to allow [a_, +c_, e_] to
give you a chord in a particular voice for convenience.

Anyhow, just a thought, still a number of issues to be dealt with I'm
sure.

-- 
Ryan Pavlik <rpav@mephle.com>

"It's at the expense of some of my favorite organs,
 but it's worth it." - 8BT