Conference napalm::commusic_v1

re <<< Note 2501.0 by DECWIN::FISHER "I like my species the way it is" "A narrow view..." >>>
>                                -< Music OCR? >-

	I have joked in this conference about such a device from time 
to time  -  the only currently available implementation seems to be
appropriately trained humans; notoriously unreliable devices.

	R

    There was an exhibit (Well, a video of an exhibit) at Boston's Museum
    of Science a few years ago, showing a keyboard-playing robot, which
    had a camera and did have music in front of it.  I don't know for sure
    if the robot read the music or not ... I seem to remember a narrative
    saying that it did ... the actual exhibit was in Japan, I believe ...
    
    The robot was playing what looked like a modern organ: 3 manuals plus
    25 footpedals and expression pedals
    
    	-Jim

That robot is written up in Computer Music <journal.  The robot's on the cover.
Maybe the MIT Press bookstore still has old copies.
Tom

Pity...It seems like it should be easy compared to reading text.  The format
is much more consistent in music!

Burns

Hello.This is my first reply in this conference.(Writing
in English is very hard for me...but I love COMMUSIC!)

I have some info for music OCR in Japan.

Do you know? In Japan,most major computer music product is
Roland's "MUSI-KUN",That's MT-32+Ballard Sequencer software
+MIDI interface board for PC-9801.(PC-9801 is maybe called
"APC4" in USA,simular IBM-PC but incompatible...Japanese local
major Personal computer.)

Roland sells optional product of MUSI-KUN, named "YOMITORI-KUN".
YOMITORI-KUN is music OCR software + handy scanner set.
YOMITORI-KUN scans score on paper media, and converts to MUSI-KUN
format sequence data file.

YOMITORI-KUN's price isn't so expensive,retail 48,000 yen (about 300$+).
but I hear that YOMITORI-KUN takes many misreading, and convert is
slow. My friends say,"I prefer training Key-input than buy YOMITORI-KUN!".

Music OCR is possible, but difficult to using.but someday It will come
useful OCR product.
 
DEC-Japan,Hidemi Yamamoto

    Re -1: Your English is VERY good -- don't be shy anymore!
    
    I've been longing for this product to appear. It seems like a mere
    variant on the existing stuff for text, which is fairly cheap and quite
    effective. The market is probably teeny, though, UNLESS someone makes
    it into more of a consumer item. I'd like to be able to photocopy my
    Beatles songbook, tape the music end-to-end like a piano roll, and feed
    it to my MusicReader (tm) perched on top of the synth. Turning all the
    world's MIDI keyboards into player pianos would be cool and financially
    rewarding I betcha.
    
     - Hoyt

    re: OCR music being easy...
    
    Funny how when reading Finale documentation they point out that the
    incredible variety of musical notation prevents straightforward
    notation "rules" -- which makes me think OCRs might not be so "simple"
    to produce.
    
      As far as scanning the note heads and recognition of those, that's
    pretty simple, but it's the dynamics that make any song into something
    we want to listen to, and that's the notation part I'm thinking of
    (above). 
    
      All this is neither here, nor there... I too would enjoy having this
    tool around!!!
    
    Bruce Evans

                     <<< Note 2501.7 by SALISH::EVANS_BR >>>
>      As far as scanning the note heads and recognition of those, that's
>    pretty simple, but it's the dynamics that make any song into something
>    we want to listen to, and that's the notation part I'm thinking of
    
    Bruce, *IF* I were more into classical, and there was an inexpensive
    tool that would scan sheet music and put the time-stamped notes into a
    MIDI sequence for me, I hardly would consider [putting in expression in 
    the form of vol/velocity and a tempo map] an onerous task.
    
    karl

    Music notation doesn't tell you everything about how to play the piece
    anyway.  Even if you captured everything on the page, you still have to
    program in, or add later by hand, all the little nuances of
    performance.
    
    Like playing the first beat of each measure a little louder.
    
    For a fun time, take Tom's sequenced Beethoven.  This was entered on a
    notation editor and all the timing is perfect.  A little too perfect.
    If you play around with "humanization" it sounds much more life-like.
    You don't notice it at first, but when I flip humanization on and off
    during playback you can really hear it, and the "humanized" version
    sounds more realistic.