hello everybody,
We now have a free encyclopedia. We now have a free library. We now have free pictures. Now we have to *free the music* (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimania05/Presentation-JW1 ) and make it available for everyone. But with the preservation of the wiki-idea: publishing music with a free license, or publishing music in the Public Domain.
Let's make a WikiMusic. A Wiki with:
- *both score and text* of a free piece of music - the *music itself* in a playable music file (in different versions, for example one version with trumpet, one with a whole orchestra, not MIDI) - the *sheet music* in a wiki-text format - *information about* the piece of music.
The WikiMusic has to be *user-friendly* as well. So NO WikiMusic just for expert musicians, but also for people who are just looking for a nice work of Beethoven. There has to be a system to *search* in this Wiki in a user-friendly way, too. Maybe the so-called Parsons codehttp://www.musipedia.org/pcnop.0.html( http://www.musipedia.org/pcnop.0.html) can be used?
The WikiMusic wiki has to *allow for growth*. Not just for experts, but rather also for people with little knowledge of the software. Lilypondhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_LilyPondis at the moment still too difficult, too technical, for this purpose. Maybe there are possibilities to make it easier to enter scores into a Wiki. Maybe it is possible to integrate some kind of keyboard (java applet) in the software, and have the software rewrite it into Lilypond-like formats. Perhaps a (java) applet to drag and drop the notes into the score can be developed, so a full score can be reproduced in a Wiki. And that such will be transcribed into the Lilypond format automatically is our dream.
The Wikimusic has to be *editable*. So not just the creation of new scores has to be easy, but also their editing. Maybe some way can be found to change the rather complex format of lilypond into a drag-and-drop idea, so the sheet can be altered easily. Later the sheet can be transcribed into the standard format again.
WikiMusic must, last but not least, be *able to survive*. Not only with its envisioned community, but also with a protection from vandals. It may prove to be be hard to maintain the usual wiki-way here. Some brainstorming about this issue needs to be done. How can vandals be checked best, by a mere possibility of *listening to the differences* perhaps?
You can help with this! Today a proposal is posted on meta (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikimusic_II and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimusic_II), and there are still a lot of technical issues to be solved. Plese add your comment, and get the project on it's way. Every bit of help and comment is welcome. I hope to see you there. Effeietsanders (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/gebruiker:Effeietsanders and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Effeietsanders )
ps: I sent this message as well from the wrong address, maybe you'll get it twice. My excuses for that.)
On 12/12/05, effeietsanders-list effeietsanders.l@gmail.com wrote:
The WikiMusic wiki has to *allow for growth*. Not just for experts, but rather also for people with little knowledge of the software. Lilypondhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_LilyPondis at the moment still too difficult, too technical, for this purpose. Maybe there are possibilities to make it easier to enter scores into a Wiki. Maybe it is possible to integrate some kind of keyboard (java applet) in the software, and have the software rewrite it into Lilypond-like formats. Perhaps a (java) applet to drag and drop the notes into the score can be developed, so a full score can be reproduced in a Wiki. And that such will be transcribed into the Lilypond format automatically is our dream.
Saying Lilypond is hard is like saying wikitext is hard. Lilypond is just one step above ABC and much more expressive, anything else would not be sufficient to produce and maintain a professional quality score.
I'm not convinced.
WikiMusic must, last but not least, be *able to survive*. Not only with its envisioned community, but also with a protection from vandals. It may prove to be be hard to maintain the usual wiki-way here. Some brainstorming about this issue needs to be done. How can vandals be checked best, by a mere possibility of *listening to the differences* perhaps?
Most people qualified to edit such work would be able to visually qualify such changes.. How could you expect to help out if you can't read music? For such a project all changes should be clearly explained. I don't see the problem with regular wiki procedures.
You can help with this! Today a proposal is posted on meta (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikimusic_II and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimusic_II), and there are still a lot of technical issues to be solved.
It is almost always mistake to ever think that technical issues are nearly as big as social or resource issues or to think that good technical decisions can solve problems of those sort.
There is already a great public domain score site, Mutopia. Tell us why what you propose would be worth anyones time when mutopia already exists?
hi Gregory, thank you for your imput,
2005/12/12, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
On 12/12/05, effeietsanders-list effeietsanders.l@gmail.com wrote:
The WikiMusic wiki has to *allow for growth*. Not just for experts, but rather also for people with little knowledge of the software. Lilypondhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_LilyPondis at the moment still too difficult, too technical, for this purpose. Maybe there are possibilities to make it easier to enter scores into a Wiki.
Maybe
it is possible to integrate some kind of keyboard (java applet) in the software, and have the software rewrite it into Lilypond-like formats. Perhaps a (java) applet to drag and drop the notes into the score can be developed, so a full score can be reproduced in a Wiki. And that such
will
be transcribed into the Lilypond format automatically is our dream.
Saying Lilypond is hard is like saying wikitext is hard. Lilypond is just one step above ABC and much more expressive, anything else would not be sufficient to produce and maintain a professional quality score.
I'm not convinced.
In short: I want not only "proffessionals" to add their information, but also people with little knowledge of music. This is very hard with Lilypond. Please take a look into http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/talk:Wikimusic_II for further discussion we already had.
WikiMusic must, last but not least, be *able to survive*. Not only with its
envisioned community, but also with a protection from vandals. It may
prove
to be be hard to maintain the usual wiki-way here. Some brainstorming
about
this issue needs to be done. How can vandals be checked best, by a mere possibility of *listening to the differences* perhaps?
Most people qualified to edit such work would be able to visually qualify such changes.. How could you expect to help out if you can't read music? For such a project all changes should be clearly explained. I don't see the problem with regular wiki procedures.
If there come a lot of edits, it'll be hard to determine if a edit is okey or not. I'm not saying it has to be done the way I mentioned, but that we have to think about it.
You can help with this! Today a proposal is posted on meta
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikimusic_II and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimusic_II), and there are still a
lot
of technical issues to be solved.
It is almost always mistake to ever think that technical issues are nearly as big as social or resource issues or to think that good technical decisions can solve problems of those sort.
There is already a great public domain score site, Mutopia. Tell us why what you propose would be worth anyones time when mutopia already exists?
There are even more small projects on the web, and the few I found, probably not even 10 % of them, don't have the infrastucture I would like to see in a wikimusic-like project. For example, they seem to have no talkpages, they seem to have no recent changes, they seem to have no "real music" files. They don't have possibilities for entering musin in an easy way as well, nor a way to find the music you search, as a non-musician.
I just hope so much that the music will no longer be limited to a small group of people, that everybody can enjoy it. I hope so much that if I have a tune in my head, and I want to find out whitch one it is, how it is calles, and who composed it, I can easely find it. Through a WikiMusic.
I really recommend you to take a look at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/talk:Wikimusic_II , because some of the things you mentioned are already discussed over there. (As well as some legal issues). If you think there might be some problems, please add them.
greetings, Effeietsanders
On 12/12/05, effeietsanders-list effeietsanders.l@gmail.com wrote:
hi Gregory, thank you for your imput,
No problem. I have also provided comment on the project talk page about copyright.
2005/12/12, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
Saying Lilypond is hard is like saying wikitext is hard. Lilypond is just one step above ABC and much more expressive, anything else would not be sufficient to produce and maintain a professional quality score.
I'm not convinced.
In short: I want not only "proffessionals" to add their information, but also people with little knowledge of music. This is very hard with Lilypond. Please take a look into http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/talk:Wikimusic_II for further discussion we already had.
Can you make an example for me of the sort of valuable addition which would be performed by someone who could not handle lilypond?
I haven't used lilypond in many many months, and never used it for much but here is the lilypond for mary had a little lamb in C "E D C D E E E D D D E G G E D C D E E E E D D E D C".
I'm not sure how much simpler you can get! :)
Most people qualified to edit such work would be able to visually qualify such changes.. How could you expect to help out if you can't read music? For such a project all changes should be clearly explained. I don't see the problem with regular wiki procedures.
If there come a lot of edits, it'll be hard to determine if a edit is okey or not. I'm not saying it has to be done the way I mentioned, but that we have to think about it.
If we demand that the scores be accurate and true, we can ask people to justify their edits. If we are only asking that they sound good then there isn't a clear model for success in the Wiki world. I've yet to see proof that Wiki's are a scaleable medium for material where there is not a set of fairly easy objective criteria.
There is already a great public domain score site, Mutopia. Tell us why what you propose would be worth anyones time when mutopia already exists?
There are even more small projects on the web, and the few I found, probably not even 10 % of them, don't have the infrastucture I would like to see in a wikimusic-like project. For example, they seem to have no talkpages, they seem to have no recent changes, they seem to have no "real music" files. They don't have possibilities for entering musin in an easy way as well, nor a way to find the music you search, as a non-musician.
True, Mutopia lacks performances... But it is not easy to get people to work on those in any case. They have also worked out much of the complex legal waters.
I don't see how talk pages would be all that useful.. We hardly use them for images....
Would music really see much fluid collaborative editing?
I just hope so much that the music will no longer be limited to a small group of people, that everybody can enjoy it. I hope so much that if I have a tune in my head, and I want to find out whitch one it is, how it is calles, and who composed it, I can easely find it. Through a WikiMusic.
Searching for 'tunes' is a hard subject. It is not at all remotely solved. Nothing you've proposed in Wikimusic will help people find some melody they half remember.
I really recommend you to take a look at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/talk:Wikimusic_II , because some of the things you mentioned are already discussed over there. (As well as some legal issues). If you think there might be some problems, please add them.
I have. :)
Took me some time to answer, sorry for that.
2005/12/12, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
On 12/12/05, effeietsanders-list effeietsanders.l@gmail.com wrote:
hi Gregory, thank you for your imput,
No problem. I have also provided comment on the project talk page about copyright.
2005/12/12, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
Saying Lilypond is hard is like saying wikitext is hard. Lilypond is just one step above ABC and much more expressive, anything else would not be sufficient to produce and maintain a professional quality score.
I'm not convinced.
In short: I want not only "proffessionals" to add their information, but also people with little knowledge of music. This is very hard with
Lilypond.
Please take a look into http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/talk:Wikimusic_IIfor further discussion we already had.
Can you make an example for me of the sort of valuable addition which would be performed by someone who could not handle lilypond?
I haven't used lilypond in many many months, and never used it for much but here is the lilypond for mary had a little lamb in C "E D C D E E E D D D E G G E D C D E E E E D D E D C".
I'm not sure how much simpler you can get! :)
We could add a function, for example, in whitch you have a keyboard on the screen, so people able to play a sound, but cannot handle the notation, can enter it into the database. I would like Lilypond to be the standardformat, maybe I wasn't clear about that, but I want more options to edit it. Dfferent interfaces, drag- and drop functions, so people with very little knowledge of music can reproduce a sheet of music, if they have it on paper to the screen etc.For you it might stay easier to edit directly into lilypond, but I think there are a lot of people not able to, and I would love this project to be as open as a wikipedia. Possibly the restriction could be editing the sheets, that could possibly be resptricted to a certain group of users.
And further: The Wikimusic I have in mind is not just sheet. It's also text, plain text (as for the anthems now in wikisource and/or wikipedia) and information *about* the music, so written in XXXX by YYYY, interpreation etc. (information now found in wikipedia sometimes as well. But that belongs as well in this kind of database. But I can think that some information wouldn't fit in WIkipedia, but would be wanted in a Wikimusic.) but also playeble music. So if someone can play piano, (s)he can play it, record it, and upload it. I'd love it to be multiple versions, one with piano, one with violin, maybe in different qualities. That are in my view the keys for a succesfull wikimusic.
Most people qualified to edit such work would be able to visually
qualify such changes.. How could you expect to help out if you can't read music? For such a project all changes should be clearly explained. I don't see the problem with regular wiki procedures.
If there come a lot of edits, it'll be hard to determine if a edit is
okey
or not. I'm not saying it has to be done the way I mentioned, but that
we
have to think about it.
If we demand that the scores be accurate and true, we can ask people to justify their edits. If we are only asking that they sound good then there isn't a clear model for success in the Wiki world. I've yet to see proof that Wiki's are a scaleable medium for material where there is not a set of fairly easy objective criteria.
Asking to justify will be hard, just as in Wikipedia it is already hard. Asking with every edit for justification will be the neckshot for a starting project. But as there is this newfunction in the software, semiprotection, that might be a good way to semiprotect automatically all sheets, with (maybe) the exemption of the original uploader? Just some policythings to think about.
There is already a great public domain score site, Mutopia. Tell us
why what you propose would be worth anyones time when mutopia already exists?
There are even more small projects on the web, and the few I found,
probably
not even 10 % of them, don't have the infrastucture I would like to see
in a
wikimusic-like project. For example, they seem to have no talkpages,
they
seem to have no recent changes, they seem to have no "real music" files. They don't have possibilities for entering musin in an easy way as well,
nor
a way to find the music you search, as a non-musician.
True, Mutopia lacks performances... But it is not easy to get people to work on those in any case. They have also worked out much of the complex legal waters.
I don't see how talk pages would be all that useful.. We hardly use them for images....
Would music really see much fluid collaborative editing?
I think talkpages will be usefull, because this will not be a imagedatabank. There will be more. There will be four kinds of data in every "entrence", at least (if it's a perfect "article"), and also information about, so discussion will be wanted. If you want justifications, you need talkpages. You can't discuss through summarylines, as some people think... ;-)
I just hope so much that the music will no longer be limited to a small
group of people, that everybody can enjoy it. I hope so much that if I
have
a tune in my head, and I want to find out whitch one it is, how it is calles, and who composed it, I can easely find it. Through a WikiMusic.
Searching for 'tunes' is a hard subject. It is not at all remotely solved. Nothing you've proposed in Wikimusic will help people find some melody they half remember.
I saw it on some other websites already happening. you could add a Parsons' code in the mediawiki. for more information about that: see the projectpage.
I really recommend you to take a look at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/talk:Wikimusic_II , because some of the things you mentioned are already discussed over there. (As well as some legal issues). If you think there might be some problems, please add
them.
I have. :)
great :)
i hope you understand me well: there has to be done a lot of things before such a project can start, because there are needed a lot of additions in the sftware, as i see it. I sincerely hope that the "technicians" will be looking to those points as well, which changes might have to be made, etc. That's an area I can't work on, as I have very little understanding of the complex MediaWiki-software.
Greetings, Effeietsanders
+ world-jam-wiki http://www.communitywiki.org/odd/WorldJamWiki/HomePage
mattis
effeietsanders-list schrieb:
hi Gregory, thank you for your imput,
2005/12/12, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
On 12/12/05, effeietsanders-list effeietsanders.l@gmail.com wrote:
The WikiMusic wiki has to *allow for growth*. Not just for experts, but rather also for people with little knowledge of the software. Lilypondhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_LilyPondis at the moment still too difficult, too technical, for this purpose. Maybe there are possibilities to make it easier to enter scores into a Wiki.
Maybe
it is possible to integrate some kind of keyboard (java applet) in the software, and have the software rewrite it into Lilypond-like formats. Perhaps a (java) applet to drag and drop the notes into the score can be developed, so a full score can be reproduced in a Wiki. And that such
will
be transcribed into the Lilypond format automatically is our dream.
Saying Lilypond is hard is like saying wikitext is hard. Lilypond is just one step above ABC and much more expressive, anything else would not be sufficient to produce and maintain a professional quality score.
I'm not convinced.
In short: I want not only "proffessionals" to add their information, but also people with little knowledge of music. This is very hard with Lilypond. Please take a look into http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/talk:Wikimusic_II for further discussion we already had.
WikiMusic must, last but not least, be *able to survive*. Not only with its
envisioned community, but also with a protection from vandals. It may
prove
to be be hard to maintain the usual wiki-way here. Some brainstorming
about
this issue needs to be done. How can vandals be checked best, by a mere possibility of *listening to the differences* perhaps?
Most people qualified to edit such work would be able to visually qualify such changes.. How could you expect to help out if you can't read music? For such a project all changes should be clearly explained. I don't see the problem with regular wiki procedures.
If there come a lot of edits, it'll be hard to determine if a edit is okey or not. I'm not saying it has to be done the way I mentioned, but that we have to think about it.
You can help with this! Today a proposal is posted on meta
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikimusic_II and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimusic_II), and there are still a
lot
of technical issues to be solved.
It is almost always mistake to ever think that technical issues are nearly as big as social or resource issues or to think that good technical decisions can solve problems of those sort.
There is already a great public domain score site, Mutopia. Tell us why what you propose would be worth anyones time when mutopia already exists?
There are even more small projects on the web, and the few I found, probably not even 10 % of them, don't have the infrastucture I would like to see in a wikimusic-like project. For example, they seem to have no talkpages, they seem to have no recent changes, they seem to have no "real music" files. They don't have possibilities for entering musin in an easy way as well, nor a way to find the music you search, as a non-musician.
I just hope so much that the music will no longer be limited to a small group of people, that everybody can enjoy it. I hope so much that if I have a tune in my head, and I want to find out whitch one it is, how it is calles, and who composed it, I can easely find it. Through a WikiMusic.
I really recommend you to take a look at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/talk:Wikimusic_II , because some of the things you mentioned are already discussed over there. (As well as some legal issues). If you think there might be some problems, please add them.
greetings, Effeietsanders _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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Gregory Maxwell wrote:
Saying Lilypond is hard is like saying wikitext is hard. Lilypond is just one step above ABC and much more expressive, anything else would not be sufficient to produce and maintain a professional quality score.
I haven't been heavily involved in the open-music community, but I've attended a few academic computer-music conferences on and off, and the people I've met are somewhat ambivalent about Lilypond. Basically, the main complaint is that it's intended to be a music-*presentation* language (or music *typesetting*), not a music-*representation* language. This makes it hard to use for a lot of things, like automatic manipulation, transformation to ther formats, and so on. It also makes it relatively hard to edit, since you have to specify a lot of the nitty-gritty presentation details yourself.
Of course, it's a poorly-funded area with only a relatively small body of interested people working on software, so there aren't many good replacements. There is one system called GUIDO, that was promising but still very early the last time I heard about it; it may have a release by now, but I don't know of it. One problem is that most people who are interested in this sort of functionality just give in and use Sibelius or Finale, both fairly full-featured but proprietary commercial programs---an "open source Finale" hasn't yet appeared.
There is also an MPEG working group trying to develop an open standard for music representation, but it works slowly. The main stumbling block, besides being a working group in the first place, is that music representation is a much harder problem than it seems at first---there are a *ton* of variations in how people have written scores over the years, many of them conveying substantive information that needs to be captured somehow.
-Mark
On 12/12/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I haven't been heavily involved in the open-music community, but I've attended a few academic computer-music conferences on and off, and the people I've met are somewhat ambivalent about Lilypond. Basically, the main complaint is that it's intended to be a music-*presentation* language (or music *typesetting*), not a music-*representation* language. This makes it hard to use for a lot of things, like automatic manipulation, transformation to ther formats, and so on. It also makes it relatively hard to edit, since you have to specify a lot of the nitty-gritty presentation details yourself.
Eh, hard to edit compared to what? There are two classes of music (vs sound) formats.
One is symbolic formats used for typesetting, analysis, and scores for humans. (Examples are lilypond, ABC, humdrum's format, commercial typesetting systems, etc). These convey the music at a fairly high symbolic level, and make it difficult to attack high resolution performance information. They generally make many forms of useful transformation fairly easy, and often provide hinting for logical grouping (ties) and other aids which either help perfomers working off a typeset copy or machines doing analysis understand the natural grouping of the music without hearing it.
The other is time series formats used for electronic music performance. (Examples, MIDI, Csound ORCs, PD's graphical score dohookey).
It usually trivial to convert from the symbolic to a kludgey low resolution performance type. The reverse is darn near impossible because the non-audiable logical grouping is usually lost.
Generally doing notation work in the symbolic type is pretty easy while in the second type you end up getting mired in the details. (0-127 pressure? I don't care I just want it louder than before!)
Of course, it's a poorly-funded area with only a relatively small body of interested people working on software, so there aren't many good replacements. There is one system called GUIDO, that was promising but still very early the last time I heard about it; it may have a release by now, but I don't know of it. One problem is that most people who are interested in this sort of functionality just give in and use Sibelius or Finale, both fairly full-featured but proprietary commercial programs---an "open source Finale" hasn't yet appeared.
There is also an MPEG working group trying to develop an open standard for music representation, but it works slowly. The main stumbling block, besides being a working group in the first place, is that music representation is a much harder problem than it seems at first---there are a *ton* of variations in how people have written scores over the years, many of them conveying substantive information that needs to be captured somehow.
Eh, What problem do you think Finale solves? It is pretty much as bad as lilypond from the perspective of storing a musical performance rather than a representation for typesetting. Have you heard the midi it produces? Yuck. Mr. Roboto.
The problem is largely that they are conflicting goals. For performance, we'd best want a flexible event time series format. For editing we want a highly symbolic format (like sheet music). Performance has the extra challenge in that we must somehow specify how to turn the notation into sound.
For an human compatible score, which works with all your notational wishes we could use PDFs.. but you lose editing and layout flexibility. There is lilypond, but it fails to capture all the interesting notations that have been out there. I expect it will be impossible to capture all notation in a format that still has a symbolic understanding of the music.
As far as performance goes, Lilypond will produce reasonable midi, but getting fine detail into the midi is impossible while keeping a readable score. As I said, conflicting goals.
As far as the conversion of notation into sound, thats what the MPEG4 structured audio group has tackled. Uses what is effectively midi for its score. It's totally useless unless you're in to the electroacoustic music scene.
Not that midi is an ideal performance representation.. lots of silly limits, problems of serialization, and poor resolution hinder that. Open sound control ( http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/OpenSoundControl/) fixes all that, but gets us even further away from something which can be converted to a symbolic representation sutiable for music.
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
As far as the conversion of notation into sound, thats what the MPEG4 structured audio group has tackled. Uses what is effectively midi for its score. It's totally useless unless you're in to the electroacoustic music scene.
That's not actually the MPEG group I'm thinking of. The one I had in mind is the Ad Hoc Group on Symbolic Music Representation, which is attempting to come up with a consensus symbolic-representation format. Some of their publications discuss in some more detail why this is a difficult problem, and why existing systems do not solve it: http://www.interactivemusicnetwork.org/mpeg-ahg/
-Mark
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org