Skip to content

notation-and-score.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
107 lines (81 loc) · 5.24 KB

notation-and-score.md

File metadata and controls

107 lines (81 loc) · 5.24 KB
Raw

Notation, Score, Tabs, Arrangements, and Prompt Inference

theDAW turns audio into symbolic music and back: audio → MIDI → sheet music, guitar/bass tabs, and arrangements, plus an inferred Stable Audio prompt for any track. The symbolic side lives in the Score tab of the bottom panel and the Details panel; the backend is the notation and analysis modules.

The Score panel and notation artifacts

Open it from the bottom panel's Score tab, or right-click a library track and choose Open Score / Notation (which selects the track and switches to Score).

Every symbolic file a track produces is a notation artifact with a kind: midi, musicxml, abc, alphatex (tabs), pdf, or svg. The left rail of the Score panel lists them; click one to preview it (MusicXML renders as sheet music, alphaTex renders as tablature) or use DOWNLOAD to save it. Artifacts are stored per track under data/generations/<entry_id>/notation/ and tracked in the library database, with lineage relations back to their source.

A track needs a MIDI first. Right-click the track and choose Convert to MIDI (audio → MIDI via Basic Pitch, or the piano-specialized engine for piano stems). Once a MIDI artifact exists, the Score buttons become active.

Making sheet music (MusicXML)

In the Score panel, MAKE SHEET converts the first MIDI artifact to MusicXML using music21 (it quantizes the rhythm, splits parts, and infers a time signature). The result renders in the browser as standard notation via OpenSheetMusicDisplay. MusicXML is the canonical interchange format, so it also feeds tabs, arrangements, and exports.

Exporting scores (ABC, PDF, SVG)

With a MusicXML score selected, the toolbar offers export buttons:

  • ABC — a compact lead-sheet/folk text format, produced by music21. Always available.
  • PDF and SVG — engraved by the MuseScore command-line tool. These appear only when MuseScore is installed and detected (set the MUSESCORE_BIN environment variable to point at it if it is not on PATH). Without MuseScore, PDF/SVG are hidden and the action reports that MuseScore is required.

Exports are registered as new notation artifacts and can be downloaded.

Guitar and bass tabs

The Tabs section of the Score panel turns a MIDI into tablature. Choose the instrument (Guitar or Bass), a tuning (standard, drop D, 7-string, 4- or 5-string bass), a capo fret, and a difficulty (Easy / Medium / Hard, which caps how high and wide the fretting goes). Press MAKE TABS.

Because the same pitch can be played at several string/fret positions, the arranger chooses positions with a dynamic-programming pass that minimizes hand travel, prefers open strings and low frets, and keeps simultaneous notes on distinct strings. The output is alphaTex, rendered as interactive tablature by alphaTab. Notes that fall outside the instrument's range are reported as unplayable rather than forced.

Arrangements (lead sheet, piano reduction, band score)

The Arrange section produces a playable MusicXML arrangement from a track's MIDI(s). Pick a style and press ARRANGE:

  • lead-sheet — the melody (skyline) with chord symbols above it.
  • piano-reduction — a two-staff grand staff, split at middle C.
  • simplified — a single-staff melody only, quantized.
  • band-score — one staff per separated stem, combined into a full score.

Arrangements render in the same in-browser sheet-music viewer as MAKE SHEET and are saved as MusicXML artifacts.

Prompt inference from audio

The Details panel infers a Stable Audio-style prompt from a track's analysis. After a track is analyzed (BPM, key, loudness, pitch), the PROMPT INFERENCE box's INFER button generates a one-line prompt plus semantic tags, for example: "Approximately 118 BPM, in F minor, upbeat, danceable, moody, balanced, deep, full track, stereo." USE AS PROMPT copies it into the MAKE prompt field so you can regenerate similar audio.

The prompt is deterministic: it is derived from tempo, key/scale, energy (loudness/RMS), timbre (pitch), length, and channel count, and folds in any embedded genre/mood tags. A confidence score reflects how much analysis data was available. Genre/mood/instrument detection via dedicated ML models (Essentia/MERT/CLAP) is an optional future enricher; the deterministic prompt always works without it.

API reference

Notation endpoints (prefix /api/notation):

  • GET /api/notation — capabilities (music21, MuseScore, formats, tab tunings, arrangement styles).
  • GET /api/notation/{entry_id}/artifacts — list a track's notation artifacts.
  • POST /api/notation/{entry_id}/from-midi/{midi_id} — MIDI → MusicXML.
  • POST /api/notation/{entry_id}/export — {source_artifact_id, format} where format is musicxml/abc/pdf/svg.
  • POST /api/notation/{entry_id}/tabs — {source_artifact_id|midi_id, instrument, tuning_name, capo, difficulty} → alphaTex.
  • POST /api/notation/{entry_id}/arrange — {style, source_artifact_id | source_artifact_ids | midi_id} → MusicXML.
  • GET /api/notation/file/{artifact_id} — download an artifact.

Prompt inference (prefix /api/analysis):

  • GET /api/analysis/{entry_id}/prompt — {prompt_guess, prompt_confidence, semantic_tags}, regenerated from the stored analysis.