Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

上星期六好朋友仔約了我一起聽 concert，未到之前，從網頁的描述看，一直以為是舞台劇，去到查節目表才知開頭有一半是 Stravinsky 的音樂（其實後半也是，不過加上舞蹈）。Firebird 想聽很久的了，之前一直沒心肝去買 CD 聽，剛好。

不過隔了這麼多年未進入過任何 concert hall，感覺不同了。我很想很想知道，香港小交響樂團是否一直如此「活用」舞台，還是最近才嘗試的？如果從網上的評論和媒體報導來看，似乎不是最近的事，那個《士兵的故事》兩年前已有公演（當時稱為《惡魔的故事》），還有和詹瑞文的合作等等，看來是我「大鄉里出城」啦。

幸好沒有出聲問，否則準會笑死人。半場休息前，還在一直打問號：為甚麼在樂團成員換座椅時會有燈光特地照着阿四的？為甚麼人家在演奏的時候，這個阿四會像 model 在旁邊穿來插去擺 pose 的？怪就怪自己沒看完場刊，dancer 當成是 model。表現值得一讚，不時會向觀眾揮揮手，不是普通 dancer 會做的，她有成為明星的潛力。 ;-)

還有葉詠詩的定力也值得鼓掌。身為一個指揮，如果有個人在自己旁邊篤篤篤篤扮指揮，換着是我一定忍不住笑。最後一個疑問，是白井剛拿的那幾個大小提琴——是否根本就是壞的？舞蹈是很精彩也很惹笑，但幾個提琴被他這樣揮來揮去開山劈石兼拖着走，受得住嗎？

小交很努力想開拓市場哩。

似乎最後一部蕭邦擁有過的鋼琴已在英國被找到了。不多說了，路透社的報導在這裏。

OK, this is my first Wordpress plugin (well, it isn’t strictly my plugin, since this is a heavy modification of FigureRender), so code can be ugly. But anyway, it’s stable enough to be released.

scorerender.abelcheung.org is intended to be the primary site for this plugin, as well as functioning as a demo site.

Like FigureRender, it renders inline sheet music fragments into images. But I have added support for several more music notations, as well as dropping support. The reason? I’ve been working with LatexRender author recently to merge improvements back to his plugin, thus leaving ScoreRender for a single purpose. Theorectically it can do a trillion things (like gnuplot, chemistry rendering, chess board rendering, and so on), but then it simply becomes mod_tex, an Apache module for rendering and everything in the world, but limited to Wordpress usage. Not worth the duplication of effort.

Anyway, for those insane enough to try my plugin, please enjoy and report any bug encountered! Please use the primary site for reporting bug, or better yet, use the TRAC system kindly established by wp-plugins.org.

今天在 PBX & VoIP 的講座完結之後在浸大的 canteen 吃東西，突然聽到 Prokofiev 的 1^st Violin Concerto，因為近來正好偶然會聽這首，還誤以為自己的 laptop 未關兼自動播歌，嚇了一跳；之後才想記可能是電話鈴聲，因為很快就突然斷了，否則我的電腦準會報銷（現在我的 laptop 也到時候了） #:-S

但真沒想到有人和我一樣笨，用這些做鈴聲，別人的確不會模仿沒錯，但自己也可能誤以為是聽音樂而不是電話響……

With help from Matt, a public subversion repository is set up now (or here for browsing). For now I would concentrate on making LatexRender better, but that needs a substantial amount of work, especially when Steve wants an independent page to turn on or off rendering for each individual comment.

I’d like to make sure things work under Win32 environment as well, but this definitely needs another machine (or a reinstall of my Windows XP, it’s not bootable for almost a year). MusiXTeX support is also planned. Not sure if using transparent PNG as default image is a good thing, since I decidedly ignore IE6’s incapibility, but… well, time to switch to IE7, or even better, Firefox.

But MusiXTeX is analogue to machine code to me. Can’t haste, especially when I have course to teach next Tuesday.

Basically, existing implementations of ABC music notation are almost usable. Indeed there are still some critical problems that prevent it from being production ready, but it’s already much better than GUIDO notation — well, to put it more accurately, it is the rendering that matters. One picture is better than a thousand words:

(more…)

Now GUIDO music notation is also supported in my (still) unreleased Wordpress plugin (subversion repository available though). It is basically a modified version of Chris Lamb’s FigureRender plugin, dropping latex support and adding support for other music notations; sadly it seems Chris has no time to continue working on it. Dropping latex support is due to my discussion with Steve Mayer about merging improved latex configuration back to his LatexRender plugin.

BTW, I start to recognize supporting GUIDO notation is not such a great thing. Before looking more deeply into GUIDO specification and putting it under practical rendering, everything looks wonderful to me — a web service called NoteServer, an open source implementation of parser library under SourceForge, plugin available for Sibelius and Finale… everything points to the conclusion that it is a greatly supported notation format.

But I didn’t notice other clues: this project is in articulo mortis. Not really dead (there is still a little CVS activity), but slow to a crawl. No news and no release since early 2004. So-called advanced notation spec never materialized. The source code doesn’t even compile on my Linux box (probably a bit better on Windows and OS X?). Last but not least, it doesn’t really live up to its word. See a real testing below.

The fragments below show how GUIDO and Mup renders the first 2 bars from Prokofiev 8^th Sonata 2^nd movement. First it’s GUIDO:

Now it’s mup’s turn. THIS is what people really should see.

No specific tuning for both of them, except adjusting font size for Mup (GUIDO doesn’t even allow that). No cross-stave barline, ugly slur by default (I don’t want to do any trial-and-error with bezier curve, not to mention NoteServer doesn’t conform to its own spec now), doesn’t support dynamics in between staves, doesn’t support more than one string on the same beat (notice GUIDO has eaten the dolce string). GUIDO is good for research interest, but in no way can it match publication quality.

Feb 22 edit: the GUIDO source fragment is available in comment.