Various music-related web sites and software.

See also music-related research papers.

Automated nuance

• Espressivo in Sibelius: mostly for swing

Analysis of musical structure

• Schenker analysis
• Automated Schenker analysis

Notation, scores, and editors

• notat.io Message boards about music notation. Some very knowledgeable participants.
• LilyPond: a textual Latex-like notation language, and software that renders it graphically. Feature-rich, and the site explores notational issues. Supports proportional notation and grid lines.
• MuseScore: desktop score editor. Open source. Uses MusicXML or its own file format. Used to support LilyPond; no longer does.
  • Original plans for 4.x
  • Current update
  • QML: Qt-based language used GUI plugins in Musescore.
• Noteflight: web-based score editor. Open-source.
• Finale: desktop score editor, commercial.
• Sibelius: desktop score editor. Commercial, limited version is free. No "export" option AFAIK.
• Ardour: Open-source DAW
• ScoreCloud. Web-based score editor. Save to local file only if pay.
• Flat. Web-based score editor.
• A course in music notation at Stanford
• IMSLP: archive of public domain music scores (PDF).
• forScore: app to display PDF scores.

Score scanning

• SharpEye. $170
• PhotoScore $250
• Audioscore Audio to MusicXML or MIDI. $250

File formats

• MIDI file format
• MIDI file format (better).
• MusicXML DTD for MusicXML. Used by various software: https://www.musicxml.com/software/

Programming

• MIDIUtil Lightweight Python library for generating MIDI files.
• Midi-writer: a possibly better library for this
• Music 21 fancy python toolkit for computational musicology
• JythonMusic: python music and graphics
• SCAMP: time deformations in Python?

Music instruction

• Several online courses by my friend Marc Sabatella: MuseScore, basic theory, harmony, counterpoint.
• Tomplay: an app follows along with you in the score. They sell the scores, which are in a proprietary format.
• Playground, a piano instruction method where you play along with simplified interactive scores, and the computer plays other parts so it sounds good. Cool idea, pretty well done.
• Smartmusic. Music-teaching software.

Audio rendering (MIDI to audio)

• Pianoteq: a piano VST based on modeling rather than sampling (which provides various advantages). Sounds really good.
• VSTHost: Win MIDI player for VST instruments. Looks unmaintained for a few years?
• VstPlayer MIDI player w VST. Win?
• Soundfont MIDI Player Win, VST
• Vienna Ensemble Pro 7 Mc/Win, VST. $213. Lets you control via Ethernet
• Piano VST instruments
• Kontakt - the 'definitive sampling platform'. I have no idea what this means.
• Scala: software for defining scales and exporting them in synth-specific formats.

Spatialization and HRTFs

Learning materials:

• Intro video
• Ambisonics video
• other videos by this guy
• Ambisonics: an approach to 3D sound using speakers rather than headphones.
• Pan laws
• People: Jonathan Abel (Stanford). Also Chris Chafe.

Software

• Essentia: various tools for analyzing audio: classification, beat, key, melody.
• TimeSide: Python audio library
• Python acoustics module. Unclear documentation.
• SpatialNotes (promising)
• Best DAW for this: Reaper; IEM , O3A
• libspatialaudio
• 3dti: a C++ library for 3D audio, with a nice demo program. Looks good.
  • Main repo
  • Examples
  • Demo on youtube (use headphones!)
• Spatial Audio Framework a C++ spatialization library. Unclear docs.
• OpenAL: another 3D audio library, targeted at video games though possibly useful.
• use of HRTF in OpenAL
• A public HRTF database

Audio I/O libraries

• PortAudio
• RtAudio
• OpenFrameworks

Distributed performance

• The Global Net Orchestra (Dannenberg, ICMC 2014)