| To
write Byzantine music with the usual Byzantine
Notation is a fairly difficult task using Word,
for example. There are of course some particular
commercial tools with which we can write and
perhaps roughly listen to (most of the times out
of tune) what we wrote but our creation can not be
studied or modified by others except perhaps by
those who have the same program with us. The use
of these programs is based on the Word philosophy.
Each menu button or an appropriate key combination
has the effect of directly displaying on the
screen the musician character we want.
Unfortunately, the placement of syllables centered
beneath the notes is an absolute headache as any
addition or removal of a musical character in the
middle of our track. It is probably impossible to
change the font of music, the size of the letters
or double line of music. These changes almost
always create irreparable damage to our original
text structure. Free TeX technology is and was
available to thousands of scientists to write
student and other scientific texts. Here the
philosophy is completely different. There are no
buttons but only commands. So, to write ‘good
morning’ for example in bold face (thick writing)
we do not need an editor and pressing a button! We
simply type \bf{good morning} or {\bf good
morning} to get the thick ‘good morning’! The \bf
is a specified command and we must therefore
respect it from a syntax/structural point of view.
So, \Bf is something completely different from \bf
and thus probably the TeX program (or XeLaTeX or a
similar one from the same family) will not be able
to get us an output/outlet//exit. We should
mention at this point that the files with .tex
suffix are simply text files without any
alignment, font, images and so on. They have to
"run" with a specific free program (in our case
the XeLaTeX) and take the output/outlet/exit
(which is in Pdf format and not Word). Before we
run our file, {\bf good morning} has no visual
effect. After we run it, then everything becomes
alive and in our pdf file we actually see the
‘good morning’ thick. Therefore, we can not ‘see’
a .tex file if we don’t run it first! This is not
a disadvantage opposite Word. Word and the like
are designed interactively of course, ie. by
pressing a button to have directly the
corresponding visual effect. However, with TeX we
can achieve with proper training senior texts both
in accuracy and display quality. We just have to
wait a few seconds to "run" our TeX file to see on
the screen its pdf output (so our .tex file is one
thing and its output/outlet/exit is another. In
Word, input ie. our word file we run ie. process
any time coincides with the output ie. the visual
effect we get). We must, therefore, take time to
learn programming in TeX ie. to learn the syntax
of the language, learn the commands, how we create
our own commands out of the existing, how we
‘load’ command packets others have built for our
needs etc. If all this scares us, then we should
not be disappointed because first, we will have
learned a great, free tool that has been built out
of the hard work of thousands of scientists to
produce any typed form our text (even newspaper,
brochure or a huge poster) and second, we will be
able to understand how to use the appropriate
commands to write easily, accurately and
understandably Byzantine Music (and basically with
any music font desired). We will not need much
memory to recall the appropriate key combination
to enter the musical symbol called ison
(this is done with the command \ison), or the
musical symbol called kentimata (with the command
\kk). The \ison and the \kk as well as the
remaining commands are in a ready XeLaTeX package
we offer you free to immediately start to write
Byzantine music! ABCNotation(*) started by Chris Walshaw in the 80s, who thought to write to stave traditional French bagpipe music with TeX tools. Later in the early 90s, James Allwright developed in C language the abc2midi program that gave the user the ability to produce in addition to the stave, an outlet/output/exit in .mid format to listen to his composition! The support of abc2midi was undertaken by the amazing Seymour Shlien since 2003. In September 2014, we found that the abc2midi could gain marvelous opportunities like those found in professional sequencers (Cubase, FL Studio and so on). For this reason, we contacted Mr. Shlein. The result of the collaboration was the program to be "on fire", began to be enriched rapidly with new commands (bendstring, controlstring, MIDIdef, MIDIx, vol etc.) built by Mr. Shlien and acquire great potential in realistic formatting (shaping) of the sound so that we are now able to imitate very accurately violin being played, for example, by a skilled fiddler. We give here as an example of one of the most difficult instruments – the violin - because the sound is produced by the movement of the bow rather than the simple stroke of a chord. So, there are many different parameters on which the ultimate/final sound that comes out of the instrument depends. Of course, we should not expect the abc eg to chant to us. We can not do that (only by using the abc, we need music programs that have word builder and unfortunately we have not). However, we can produce an appropriate output (in .mid format) that by dressing it with appropriate timbres we can obtain the natural sound of the violin or of some other "rich" instrument which simulates all of the human voice tones. Therefore, we believe that from now on, ‘petaste’ will not just be a "flight" of the voice or ‘antikenoma’ a "hanging" of the voice etc. as described by the theory of Byzantine Music. All other ornamental characters of Byzantine Music can now be attributed perfectly and scales are able to sound with unparalleled accuracy (the separation system of a scale in 72 points per octave is mathematically-theoretically incomplete, acoustically awkward and does not properly attribute at least the diatonic scale). One of our future goals, which we hope to succeed with the contribution of volunteers who love music, is to connect the two technologies. In other words, after writing Byzantine Music with LaTeX technology or XeLaTeX, a parser will be in charge of converting our .tex file in .abc form (of abcnotation) and this in turn will produce an output/outlet/exit to stave in .mid using appropriate free programs. Finally, the use of OCR technology will give us the ability to scan a music book of Byzantine music and in a few moments we will have it in electronic form of .tex, .abc and .mid! The tambour of Kyrillos Maramarinos.
If you have a keyboard, then you can use it(by pressing the appropriate keys), to reproduce the sound for better convenience than your mouse! (If you have problem with your Browser when pressing some Keys, then try disable some options. I had problem with '/' (slash forward) key in Firefox) Abbreviations used: Yekta: Yekta, R. Türk Musikisi. (Translated from French by O. Nasuhoğlu), Pan Yay., İstanbul, 1986. Μαρμαρηνός: Θεωρητικόν Κυρίλλου του Μαρμαρηνού 1749, Βυζαντινή Ποταμηϊς, Τόμος ΙΑ, Χαραλάμπους Καρακατσάνη(Αθήνα 2004). Στεφανίδης: Θεωρητικόν Βασιλείου Στεφανίδου του Βυζαντίου 1819, Βυζαντινή Ποταμηϊς, Τόμος ΣΤ, Χαραλάμπους Καρακατσάνη(Αθήνα 1997) Κηλτζανίδης: Μεθοδική Διδασκαλία Ελληνικής Μουσικής, Κωνσταντινουπόλει 1881. Μουσική Επιτροπή του Οικ. Πατρ. (1881): "Στοιχειώδης διδασκαλία της Εκκλησιαστικής Μουσικής - εκπονηθείσα επί τη βάσει του ψαλτηρίου", Κωνσταντινούπολις, 1888. Informations are also retrieved from the book: Sources of 18th century music, Eugenia Popescu and Adriana Sirli, 2000 Instabul and the paper: A computational study on divergence between theory and practice of tanbur fretting of Ali C. Gedik, Barış Bozkurt and Cem Çırak, at Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies, 2012. Our musical Keyboard is based on JS Dynamic Audio Synth, created by Keith William Horwood. On the following pages we will find all the necessary details and suitable packages to write Byzantine Music in Byzantine notation using XeLaTeX and to stave with abcnotation. |
| Free Software(*) for
writing Byzantine Music to stave using
abcnotation. Free Software(*) for writing Byzantine Music in traditional notation using XeLaTeX. Composers and Compositions(*) of Byzantine and Traditional Music. (*) Click on the thick words to enter the corresponding page. |
