♩ ScoreRender ♫

Though I used to play piano during old days (that’s why most of the demo pieces are from piano ), pianist aren’t the kind of music player I admire most. At least, not as strong as towards drummer. I never said pianist is no good; their virtuosity for difficult (sometimes terrific) pieces keeps me still addicted to concertos like Rachmaninoff’s and Prokofiev’s ones; but there are entirely different challenges for drummers, at least viewed from outsider’s angle. Example?

Sounds familiar? How about this one:

Probably even starters can learn these rhythms very soon, as they are easy ones. Even people who haven’t played drum in their live can tap these rhythms with finger in no time (hey, drum games on game consoles don’t count!). But I haven’t finished: what if one need to:

• Beat these rhythms non-stop for more than 10 minutes
• Make absolutely no single error
• Play at constant speed thoughout the whole passage, without anybody noticing any tempo change

That is not so easy. This is the case for first rhythm, which comes from Ravel’s Boléro. Think about beating the same rhythm again and again and again for 12+ minutes without any error, and controlling tempo / loudness at the same time! Probably even professional drummers can’t do that at single pass. It needs undivided attention and dedication in order to achieve the result.

For 2nd rhythm, which comes from Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony, it’s not so demanding for drummer — just about 7-8 minutes instead of 12+ minutes (in Ravel’s own interpretation probably around 17 minutes). But every other element is the same: repeat the same thing over and over, non-stop, no mistake, very gradual crescendo like Boléro. And again, it’s snare drum’s call.

No, I don’t think I can devote such concentration, that’s why I give my thumbs up to these drummers.

Upon a time I have had compared the results of various notations side by side in my own blog, split into several posts. But comparing them within one single post is cooler, and easier for comparison purpose. So here presents the beginning 2 bars of Prokofiev Piano Sonata No. 8, second movement:

ABC:

Guido:

Mup

Lilypond

PMW:

Among all notations, Lilypond takes me the most time to get positions of various dynamics and texts right. Much time is spent on Guido one too, but documentation on Guido is considerably easier to read than Lilypond’s, and much manual layout simply can’t be done by Guido .

I have been saying that ABC notation shows promise; now I want to take back to word. It doesn’t even allow specifying text marks in arbitrary position! This is 2008, not 1988, but still. Though ABC standard version 2.0 has it, but (1) it’s a draft, and (2) which software is implementing 2.0 standard?

2008-09-28 Edit: Add Philip’s Music Writer counterpart since it is recently supported.

Hint: it comes from main theme of a certain game, a classics within its genre. Few player would ever forget the melody, it’s so simple, so crystal clear, and so touching.

2008-10-02 edit: Time to disclose the answer. It’s the opening theme of Final Fantasy X, played with acoustic piano. And no, the music on main FFX website is just midi, it can’t represent the quality of the real game music.

Here is just some old fragment used for demonstration purpose in my personal site; as usual, click on the image to view the source.

Guess I should try to write some tips about how to use mup. But mysteriously my subscription to mup-users mailing list was terminated long time ago and I’m unable to contact Mup people ever since.