I know nothing about music notation, but I was very interested in LilyPond’s explanation of how and why it does some of the stuff it does: http://lilypond.org/about/automated-engraving/big-page

I wonder how much of this sort of work will end up in VexFlow.

I'm a lilypond user and I can tell you we're totally spoiled by the quality of that project - it is just immaculate. The Vexflow samples look very primitive by comparison but it's a great idea and with open work like lilypond already having tread this ground, hopefully they will have a lot of resources going forward.

Have never come across LilyPond before (for that matter I haven't used any software in that area since Sibelius about 5 years ago), but that looks amazing. Thanks for linking to the essay, most interesting thing I've read in a while!

I think I asked for it last time we saw this here, but this really needs a way to parse standard text-based tabs.

There are hundreds of thousands of songs already transcribed in a (somewhat) standard format that this thing can't yet read. It would seem a logical step to get it reading them.

The TabStave format that this thing reads might make sense to programmers, but I'd bet your average guitar player couldn't make sense of it. As a result, I can't imagine we'll see much music transcribed using this pretty library unless somebody comes up with a graphical editor or a way to read the existing format.

Most of those hundreds of thousands of songs have no rhythm notation to parse.

But then neither does the default notation for this thing. It has the ability to specify note durations, but doesn't require it.

Tab at least has spacing that can be used to infer note durations relative to others within a single piece.

Zed Shaw talked about it some time ago on The Changelog. See the blog post for more details and examples:

http://thechangelog.com/post/1097381443/vexflow-html5-canvas...

Classic music notation is pretty and all, but it's about 1000x easier to learn (and read, even if you know how to read music) this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O93rQtWJVM

Have to disagree with you here. Classical notation is much easier for me to read than that.

Agreed. That (youtube) method may be better for non-musical people who haven't actually learned but... if they spent the time learning to read music they'd find it far better.

Classical music isn't just pretty. It's the written language a composer uses to communicate musical ideas to a performer. It's highly expressive. Many trained musicians can sight-read a piece of music on the fly and make it sound wonderful.

What you linked a cool idea for helping people visualize notes on a piano but is nothing close to a replacement for real written music.

Here are a few reasons why traditional musical notation is far superior to timed falling bars (such as this Synthesia thing, or Guitar Hero, Rock Band, etc). These are elements which provide important and useful information and detail to the performer.

- key signature

- chord shape

- exact relative duration (whole, half, quarter, eighth, etc.)

- dynamics

- phrasing

- articulation

- time signature

- measures

... and on and on. Traditional notation has worked really well for hundreds of years. Once learned, it is not so mystical or difficult, and actually makes a lot of sense.

This appears to be heavily geared towards guitar music. I'd like to be able to write out piano music (or perhaps just any music in general).

I'm hoping for an ABC parser to complement the tab. Unfortunately I can't read music no matter the notation.

Wow, this is pretty awesome. What would people use it for, though?

Now if only we had math notation in all the browsers!

Sites for sharing music note sheets can move to use this technology instead of using static pictures. This allows collaborative editing of music sheets directly on the site.

I would imagine music scores in IPads or other touch sensitive screens. No more books or sheets.