chords2midi VS node-music-theory

I made a CLI version of this before, you might want to check out the algorithm to see how I did voice leading: https://github.com/Miserlou/chords2midi

Looks awesome, love the tab view.

If there other hackers who make music here, I wrote this:

https://github.com/Miserlou/chords2midi

for writing chord progressions on the command line. I use it for building progressions which I drag into my DAW. It has voice leading, which required me translating an algorithm from 18th century German musical textbook into Python. I don't speak German and there were no unit tests in the 1700s so I'm only fairly certain that it works properly.

I will make a plugin version once ableton supports CLAP.

I ended up creating a lighter version of this for one my projects, https://github.com/Miserlou/chords2midi

I think that something that Alda looks like it lacks right now is doing things around intervals rather than notes, as transpositions and key changes will be very tedious without embedded knowledge of intervals.

The whole thing is based around a Python library called Mingus, which I think gives you most of what you'd ever need to build a music programming project.

https://bspaans.github.io/python-mingus/

This is cool, I made a similar command line tool for generating the same sort of thing: https://github.com/Miserlou/chords2midi

> abstracts certain music related objects (scales, chords)

I've been thinking about that again recently & attempting to resist both creating such an abstraction and re-inventing the wheel. :)

The first format that came to mind for its cross-language potential was essentially "Music Theory expressed in JSON format".

Yesterday I did another search for what current options there might be and after a very circuitous path ended up on an old version of the Tonal Javascript library I've already been using. :D

Specifically:

* https://github.com/Cycling74/node-music-theory/blob/518babe7...

* https://github.com/Cycling74/node-music-theory/blob/518babe7...

But the next abstraction level of associated "operations" (as documented by e.g. https://github.com/Cycling74/node-music-theory/blob/518babe7...) are still expressed in Javascript.

My impression is that there are a few tensions that complicate the creation of a "universal" cross-language/tool solution:

* Static vs dynamic storage/representation. e.g. Do you statically store the set of notes in a scale or store the intervals & the operation(s) needed to generate the result dynamically? e.g. https://github.com/Cycling74/node-music-theory/blob/518babe7...

* Reuse vs reinvention (time taken): When starting out it seems the amount of Music Theory most people want to use & have encoded is quite small. So initially the time required to "re-invent the wheel" is quite small vs time required to find & use a common shared abstraction.

* Reuse vs reinvention (knowledge gained): I know, for me, part of the motivation related to re-inventing the wheel is I also want to learn aspects Music Theory so I can understand/apply the knowledge in potentially non-programmatic contexts also.

I do think there is value in having the knowledge encoded in some manner so it's at least available for re-use for those who want it.