Under Ubuntu 22.04, Frescobaldi starts with an error: The area for displaying the music sheets says that Frescobaldi unexpectedly passes an argument of the type float to a function in qpageview /highlight.py respectively qpageview/shadow.py. Now, you can ‘google’ for the cause — or read the following lines:

Google answers the query Frescobaldi Python 3.10 with a row of bug reports. This row includes the one titled “Frescobaldi 3.13 crashes with python 3.10 #1398″. Frescobaldi itself says in its about-dialog that Ubuntu 22.04 contains version 3.1.3. And on the ‘shell’, the command python3 --version indicates that Python 3.10.4 is installed. Also, this combination does not (directly) work.

Thus, without any workarounds, we seriously cannot use Frescobaldi on Ubuntu 22.04. It’s too difficult for the composer if she does not see the effect of what she has written ‘lilypondian’. What can she do?

• On the one hand, she could import package upgrades until Ubuntu has fixed Frescobaldi - but would have to work without that tool until then.
• Secondly, she could customize the code herself — as described by Jorma Louhi.
• Or, thirdly, she could install the newer version 3.2 via pip

sudo apt-get remove frescobaldi
pip install qpageview
pip install frescobaldi

The prerequisite for this, however, is that we install the other libs and tools required by Frescobaldi, i.e

sudo apt-get install python3-pip
sudo apt-get install python3
sudo apt-get install python3-qt5
sudo apt-get install python3-ly
sudo apt-get install python3-poppler-qt5
sudo apt-get install python3-pygame

And in what way is this …

… part of the overarching topic FOSS ? Well, my professional life is dominated by free software and open source compliance. But sometimes I find more offbeat tools that are still worth sharing — at least with my forgetful future ‘me’. To whom I like to recommend — for example — suitable, advanced editors. Or ancient preparatory work. Or some free music editors for compositoy work. But with some posts, I just want to remind my later ‘me’ of attitudes, points of view, and attitudes. So that I don’t fall behind myself. That’s what it’s about in here too.

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Ubuntu 22.04 offers both, Musescore‑2 and Musescore‑3. I had already had good experiences with Musescore‑3. Thus — and to be on the safe side — I completely removed the older release, before I installed my preferred version:

sudo apt-get remove --purge musescore
sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt-get install musescore3

Then I opened my standard test song in Musescore‑3. And I got a mess of noises while I tried to play it. The internet told me, that there seems to be a bug evoked by using pulse-audio and musescore‑3 together. MuseScore‑3 should supposedly reduce the pulse latency to an unusable small value.

If this was true, I should be able to fix it by overriding the current pulse latency value using an appropriate environment variable. So I opened up a bash, entered ‘export PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30‘, and called  ‘musecore3‘ from the command line. And indeed: no more disturbing playback noises. But when I started Musescore‑3 via the official menu – (i.e. without evaluating the environment variable set in the shell), the noises ‘came back’. So I verified the suspected cause. Next, all I had to do was to convince Ubuntu 22.04 to set this pulse latency value within the boot procedure. For this, I had to add a specific shell file into the profile.d directory:

sudo echo "export PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30" > /etc/profile.d/pulselat.sh

From now on, the musescore‑3 version that comes with Ubuntu 22.04 plays my score without any annoying noises.

But that did not affect the phenomenon of ‘lost’ sound fonts. Whenever I stored a new sound file into my directory  ‘MuseScore3/SoundFonts‘  for making them accessible in accordance with the documentation, Musescore did not find them. But this time — as so often — the cause sat in front of the keyboard: Recently, I had changed my home directory. But in this new directory, I still used the old content — unchanged. Therefore, paths containing my previous directory still showed up in the Musescore‑3 configuration dialog. I could put as many new sound files in my sound directory as I wanted. Musescore did not find them. To fix this, I had to update the older names in the Musescore‑3 configuration file ‘~/.config/MuseScore/MuseScore.ini‘  for making the fluid-R3-GM-Soundfont and the arachno-soundfont accessible.

And in what way is this …

… part of the overarching topic FOSS ? Well, my professional life is dominated by free software and open source compliance. But sometimes I find more offbeat tools that are still worth sharing — at least with my forgetful future ‘me’. To whom I like to recommend — for example — suitable, advanced editors. Or ancient preparatory work. Or some free music editors for compositoy work. But with some posts, I just want to remind my later ‘me’ of attitudes, points of view, and attitudes. So that I don’t fall behind myself. That’s what it’s about in here too.

The post Musescore 3 under Ubuntu 22.04 — without scratching noises appeared first on FODINA 4 FOSS.

Musicologists have a hard time — namely if they want to enrich their LaTeX texts by score examples and harmony analyses. Up to now, there did not exist any study of whether and how that could be realized with free software. This article summarizes a German-written self-referential tutorial teaching what’s possible and what is not with respect to LaTeX and Musicology:

How it started

In the beginning, there was my task to write a musicological work. I had already explored and documented how one can write humanistic texts with LaTeX. proScienta.ltx — a project ‘hosted on GitHub‘ — covered the results, a former version was labeled ‘myCsrf’. Their specific intentions have been described in a sophisticated German tutorial and in a shorter English version.

Nevertheless, I did not know how one could generate musical examples with free software and embed them into LaTeX texts. The first rough internet recherche presented a lot of tools and methods but did not provide any manual. It did not deliver any explication on how to successfully combine which tools and did not find any tutorial on how one could link notes and harmony analyses.

So, I postponed my original task and examined the topic LaTeX and Musicology: I preferred to know the best method before I started to not back the wrong horse. Finally, my investigation was documented in a larger text: It reviews smaller tools, describes usable backend systems, discusses frontends, tests converters and delivers a map of conceivable and really possible toolchains.

As usual, I have published the sources of the eBook LaTeX und Musikwissenschaft as open-source-software. Additionally, I have uploaded the compiled pdf-file ‘Musikwissenschaft mit LaTeX’. The point is, that this investigation backhandedly became a self-referential tutorial that explains, what it shows. This article summarizes the core results of that study

Backends

We know three free backend systems for embedding scores into LaTeX texts: the ABC notation method, MusixTeX, and LilyPond. All these techniques create well-readable scores. But LilyPond has the edge over the others.

The ABC backend — as well as the LilyPond backend — creates pictures of scores that are embedded into the LaTeX text as graphics. Hence, it is systematically not possible to comment or modify the examples on the LaTeX level. Both backends use a simple representation language. But again, the LilyPond language is a bit smarter. And both backend systems only allow integrating simple harmony analysis symbols into the scores. They do not offer a method to represent complex harmonic relationships on a level that fulfills the needs of musicology.

The alternative — MusixTeX — works differently: It represents the notes on the LaTeX level. That allows, to comment and improve the scores by LaTeX-based symbols. This capability is used by the LaTeX package harmony. It offers the possibility to integrate very sophisticated symbols into the music score. But one has to pay a heavy price for using the method with its elegant results: the syntax of MusixTeX is so complex and unwieldy, that it decreases the productivity of its users.

Hence, the situation was a bit inconvenient, even if one only considered the backend systems: A musicologist had either to keep in mind, that he would need a lot of time to create his examples. Or he could use a simpler representation language and had to refrain from using the symbols his profession required

A way out

I could not accept one of these positions. Therefore I interrupted my running investigation and developed a library, which should at least be able to do that for LilyPond, what harmony did for MusixTeX. Consistently, I named it harmonyli.ly. As usual, I published harmonyli.ly as open-source software, created a harmonyli.ly internet page, and wrote a complete harmonyli.ly tutorial. So, the method LaTeX + LilyPond + harmonyli.ly became a real alternative to LaTeX + MusixTeX + harmony. Here comes the first example that indicates the potential of harmonyli.ly:

Thanks to the help of the LilyPond community, harmonyli.ly has become a tool for musicologists, which functionally exceeds harmony and is documented on a level, which eases its use.

Frontends

Musicologists are also musicians; they prefer to read and write scores instead of having to deal with special representation languages. Therefore, I wanted to learn, which frontend systems resp. editors could create input for which backend system. An internet query provided a bunch of candidates. I tested the relevant items with respect to their availability and usability. In the end, 7 candidates remained: EasyABC, Denemo, Rosegarden, MuseScore, Canorus, Frescobaldi, and Elysium. But at last, I found that

• only the semi-graphical editors Frescobaldi and Elysium could directly and successfully deal with LilyPond and harmonyli.ly
• there did not exist a frontend for MusixTeX — neither directly, nor indirectly by using a converter
• one could use MuseScore as a graphical editor for LilyPond if one accepted to export the results as MusicXml, to convert that result by using musicxml2ly, and to subsequently insert the harmony analysis symbols via Frescobaldi or Elysium

Conclusion

So, finally, I met a very reduced result — even if I considered the existence of converters:

• In the end, one cannot set up an ABC based toolchain for integrating music examples into LaTeX texts.
• The advantage of the method LaTeX + MusixTeX + harmony is its seamless integration into the LaTeX environment and the possibility to enrich the symbols by LaTeX syntagms.
• The disadvantage of the method LaTeX + MusixTeX + harmony is the complexity and the unhandiness of MusixTeX. That there does not exist any specific (graphical) MusixTeX editor does not simplify the world.
• The disadvantage of the method LaTeX + LilyPond + harmonyli.ly is that the scores are only embedded as prepared images. Therefore, one has separately to consider the intended resolution and scaling.
• But there are several advantages of the method LaTeX + LilyPond + harmonyli.ly:
  • The syntax of LilyPond is obviously more simple than that of MusixTeX.
  • Frescobaldi is an excellent semi-graphical LilyPond editor.
  • Elysium is an excellent Eclipse-based LilyPond editor.
  • In the future, Canorus could become the third editor.
  • Those, who need a graphical editor, could use MuseScore, if they agree to export and convert their work and integrate the harmony analysis symbols in a second step.

Consequences

Hence, it should be clear, what I will use when I will start my task, which stood at the beginning of this adventure: I will use LaTeX + LilyPond + harmonyli.ly.

Overall, I am happy that I could floodlight the jungle of opportunities provided by the internet and that I found really usable ways. Now I know, what’s going on. And I need not fear that I could have to change the horse during my ride and lose results that I’ve created as part of the process.

But I wished, I had got this study by another guy instead of having to write it by myself. That would have saved a lot of time. Thus, I hope, that others can use my prework and spend the time they gain on more productive aspects of their life.

And in what way is this …

… article related to the topic ‘Sciences’? To write humanities papers (on Linux), you need an appropriate scientific LaTeX framework. For papers on musicology in particular, scientific texts must be expanded by music examples — mostly written with LilyPond and its libraries. That is the topic also this post wants to support.

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