i was transcribing some songs for violin after picking it back up (mostly metal, which i have to take some liberties with to sound good on a violin + kick drum :> ), and thought about writing a language (maybe a rust steel module) to hand the typesetting for me, as writing out & erasing e.g. slurs can take a while. but lilypond really is good enough that there wasn't much about it i'd want to change, either syntactically or semantically (as really, i only need a very small subset of it). any language i do write, if i choose to, would probably use it as a backend --- its rendering is very good :)
c_hastings 12/22/2025|
have you figured out a good tool flow for going from music to transcription?
I've used ai.splitter to generate stems, but need to go and identify tones and notes before plotting on to a sheet of music. I'm looking at doing this as a beginning cello student.
mackeye 12/22/2025||
to be honest, i've been playing violin for a number of years and my strategy is still to listen to a part of the song, rewind until i can play it (even if slowly), then write that down. some of the pieces i want to write down are twin-guitar pieces, where i need to (generally) choose the melodic guitar over the harmonic. i haven't found AI good at that, but, thinking now, i haven't tried it in years, so it may have gotten good enough? sorry for the lack of much insight, lol. (for metal, finding tabs online can at least help with the rhythm, so i just need to try and transcribe the notes & flourishes).
yakshaving_jgt 12/22/2025||
Haskell is also a popular choice for music production and live music performance.
It’s quite new, but I’ve been interested to try out this Rust-y syntax language that compiles to SuperCollider: https://vibelang.org/
hmokiguess 12/22/2025|
Oh wow, first I hear of this one, quite interesting! How did you come across it? The vscode extension seems quite neat too, excited to try it out.
turboladen 12/31/2025||
IIRC on r/rust.
dmd 12/22/2025||
And at least 5 times a year someone designs a new one where it is painfully obvious that they're almost entirely unaware that anyone has ever designed one before - or if you're very lucky, maybe they've heard of ABC.
veunes 12/23/2025||
This list is such a time capsule in the best way
hellobluelings 12/22/2025||
There is also literate programming for music, right? Just like Donald Knuth describes it in his literate programming approach? See for example the videos by Fauci etc. They say things like eh eh, pause then play music using items such as a pen, there is even a conductor. Very entertaining. Is that true? Or just my imagination?
A few months ago I outlined a spec for a new modern programming language inspired by LilyPond I call Capo. I haven’t done anything with it yet but the idea is that it compiles to MNX, which is the (still in development) successor to MusicXML, becoming a language that could be used as a scripting language in any program that supports MNX or as a standalone text-based music tool. Thought this group might find it interesting: https://github.com/Capo-Lang/capo
ofalkaed 12/23/2025|
Can you give a rundown on how it differs from lilypond? What deficiencies you are addressing?
oliverpaddock 12/24/2025||
It’s mostly just for fun, but lilypond has a bit of outdated syntax in modern programming terms. The main difference though is that lilypond compiles to music engraving, whereas capo compiles to a more universal file format that can then be used to engrave, or inserted into another file, or opened in another program.