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#5 Better Instruments list Edit
Hello SeeLook,
I have been playing with Nootka during the last days: so far so good.
I am practising tenor saxophone.
Ihave been thinking of a way to have the instruments list ina better shape and more useful.
Can the list be more complete and contains some ofthe instrument's characteristics (tessitura, transposition value, fingerprints chart,...)..
I can help to create such a list. Just tell me what is the format you want.
What do you think ?
Discussion
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Hi Dazgard!
Thanks for testing. I already marked Android branch as rc1 - I hope it deserve for it enough. Today or tomorrow it will be out.
It is very interesting that finally non guitar player is testing Nootka well.
BTW, feature of transposing concert pitch was inspired by some other saxophone player and I hope You was able to configure it easily.
I thought many a times to extend Nootka about more instruments, so I may answer You: yes, or even yes, yes, yes....
But what has been stopped me so far - it was lack of rhythms in the app and this is what I'm currently developing.
It is big task but I have idea how to divide it on smaller steps, so in meanwhile we may consider how saxophone support should look like, then I will squeeze it between.
I'm a guitarists and saxophone matters are not so familiar to me so, could You extend Your idea with more details.
What do You mean with term "format" of the list?
Last edit: SeeLook 2016-04-13
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Hi SeeLook,
when talking about the format, I mean something like JSON or XML.
something like:
for the UI, i was thinking of something like the attached image
what do you think ?
Hi
There is no any format so far, those a few cases of guitars all is hard coded (c++).
For sure there will be a need to create a structure with all parameters of instruments in Nootka code but not necessary file format. But If any, I would prefer xml - Nootka uses it to store leves and for musicxml.
Nice mockup!
For now, I prefer this monochrome glyphs (font symbols) of guitars head but with more instruments it may be not enough, so we could have both: glyph and full image of intruments of Yours.
As I understood, it would be good to have saxophone widget - interactive image of a sax reacting on mouse hovers and clicks - this is nice chalenge...
But to be concreete, if deploying of sax support we may divide on two steps...:
1)
x) tenor & alt support:
x) two buttons for them in wizard
x) settings transposition and other paramaters (clef, scale...) (this is only two conditions in the code)
x) some additional levels adjusted to practical tessitura (depends on alt or tenor)
x) recording with saxophone scale - If You can't record it, I will manage that
1a :-)
x) pitch detection, if it works well enough for You, forgot about this pointat at this stage
2)
x) sax widget
x) eventually more sahophones
x) list and instrument pictures
x) pitch detection imrovements, maybe some additional options of it
...then first step we may stick even to next stable release - it is rather safe, no risk of regresion or bug easy to skip and hard to catch.
Last edit: SeeLook 2016-04-17
Hi SeeLook,
The monochrome glyphs are OK.
For the saxophone widget, what about including that in the (possibly) XML file ?
I'm not sure implementing instrument per instrument is the way to go that being said I am not a developer :)
Maybe we can list nootka requirements for it to be able to implement an instrument :
- the instrument buton for them in wizard
- transposition settjngs and other paramaters (clef, scale...)
- pactical tessitura (depends on alt or tenor)
- The sax recording (what do you think of using Android's sytnth, and go midi?)
- ...
Maybe an approach by instrument family is better ?
If you can manage let say string instruments, changing from a banjo to a electric guitar is just a matter of changing some of the instrument's characteristics (the ones listed above) ?
Those are just ideas though
See ya
For the saxophon
Last edit: Dazgard 2016-04-20
I was bussy recenly but:
About the glyphs I made small preparations - only thing I've invented for saxophones so far were their whole shapes - are they distinquish-able enough?
This "instrument family" approach has been working already for guitars - adding other kinds (banjo, ukulele) is quite easy, so for saxophones approach could be similar but I didn't think yet how to implement saxophone widget exactly. I have to read more about differeces among them. Let's see.
About sound, we can start with midi samples to begin with, but my idea was to keep things like "analog" and have real sound but with many instruments it may be hard to manage. Let's see.
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Hello Seelook,
the glyphs are very fine :)
It's also good to read about the instrument family.
The saxophone family is made of 8 different instruments but the more frequent ones are the soprano, alto and tenor. The soprano doesn't have a curved body like the other ones thouh.
The fingering shape is the same no matter the sax.
I have attached the tenor fingering chart as a reference.
Last edit: Dazgard 2016-04-28
Hi Dazgard
Thanks for Your patience, current one and in advance :-)
I tried to figure out what should be changed in code to manage more instruments and I realised that required changes are quite fundamental. There is global variable representing the instrument and many thing depends on it. Too many to take a risk and dig up the stable code for that. So let's leave stable version as such as it is and prepare new features in devel branch for 1.3(alpha-beta) and 1.4(stable) releases.
It will move in time a debut of saxophone support a bit, but it will make possibility to do it better and more calm.
Fortunately You are under Linux, so it will be much easier to prepare alpha builds to test.
With that finger-chart You gave me an idea about the widget - Would be suficient to have scheme-only widget instead of the full instrument as I thought before? I prepared mocup of it. This way, even if we will have build-in support 'only' for tenor, alt and soprano, it will be quite easy to configure Nootka for other types.
Last edit: SeeLook 2016-05-05
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Hi; I've only just downloaded Nootka, hoping to have it help me relearning saxophone, which I gave up almost 40 years ago.
I'm almost certainly jumping in too soon, as I've barely seen your program, but I'd suggest that to support instrument families like saxophones, you don't need specifics like "Tenor" and "Alto", you just need their transposing keys: Bb, Eb and (rarely) C. In almost every case (the exceptions would be in a few of the very high notes that are generally considered out of range, anyway), the fingerings are identical between all the saxes.
Thank You for keeping this thread alive...
I thought much how it may look but I'm still improving rhythms in Nootka score, so I didn't start implementing saxophones support yet.
It is good to know that fingerings are similar or even the same - it will be easier to make a sax widget universal, then have support even for whole sax family.
From programming side - it is the same difference, Eb, Bb or alt, tenor,
but for user (IMO), especially for beginning one, it is better to see it clearly: alt transposes to Es and sounds major sixth down, baritone transposes to Es as well but sounds octave and major sixth down and so. It doesn't require much efforts to implement.
Be in touch, I will be happy to show some real example in action.
Regards
SeeLook