(no subject)

From: Catherine Faber <faberc at ohsu.edu>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 12:21:12 -0800

Larry Calwell wrote:

:  How much programming would a filk con have?
:A panel or two on song writing might be interesting.  For any of you
:who have written songs, you know that making up the song is a whole lot
:easier than getting the music scored - at least for an amateur like me.
:A friend of mine has set up some music software with a MIDI keyboard, 
:and scores his music by playing it.  Then he just prints it out on a
:laser printer, and there it is.

	Hmmm.  Dunno about others, but I don't play keyboard.  That

is, I can puzzle out which keys go to which notes, but play one of my melodies accurately and in time in order to score it? Much simpler to just use a music writing program like ConcertWare. If I make a mistake in that, I don't have to play the whole thing over and over until I get it right.

        (snip)
> One other thing about MIDI, it is a nice
>compact way to ship music around on the net.

        Have you seen the abc notation home page? It's a way to write music as ascii files--now *that's* a nice compact way to ship music around on the net.
If you want to take a look, it's http://www.gre.ac.uk/~c.walshaw/abc/

        There are even composer programs that will turn music (sheet music *and* midi files, I think) into abc notation, and player programs that will play abc notation and turn it back into sheet music. I haven't tried them out yet (only known about it for a week or so). In addition, abc notation is transparent enough that regular humans can learn to play it without turning it into sheet music.

        (snip again)

>Another topic for a panel discussion/workshop.
>
>Which brings up another question. Would this filk con be an overgrown
>house filk, or would there be non-musical programming? How about a
>panel on copyright infringement? (downer)

        Doesn't have to be a downer. Less a downer than finding out the hard way, certainly! :-). Add music composing workshops so people get an idea how to compose/alter tunes so they won't run into these problems in the first place.

        (snipped rest)

        Yours--Cat

replyP.S. Nobody liked the "music show" idea? Received on 11/27/96