Representation of the musical symbols in data processing

The Symbole S used in the Western music (like in the musical typologies derived or connected with this one) raise certain difficulties of data-processing coding. How to rather code, for example Symphonie in if major than Symphonie in if major flat ?

No Character set running contains the fundamental symbols indeed. Unicode included them however well. LaTeX allows also a simple handling.

Typographical remark in connection with the sharp

Contrary to an generally accepted idea, the numerical Symbol # (hash), directly available on the majority of the keyboards of computers, is not a true sharp. The english-speaking, in particular the Americans, name it “number sign” or “hash”, and it is useful, inter alia, of equivalent with number within the meaning of “number” (#5: number five , “number five”), and to pound , “delivers”, when delivers it in question is a weight and not the currency (5#: five pounds , “five books”). It is about old a Latin binding. Symbol # being however unknown French-speaking uses, when were able the first keyboards to have it, one named the key carrying it “touches sharp”, believer to deal with such a sign. The english-speaking, however, say well hash key or pound key (“ hash touches” or “touches delivers ”).

Coding

Unicode

The three symbols representing deteriorations are coded in the block of the “various Symbols”:

Natural sign ♮ (U+266E):

UTF-8 : 0xE2 0x99 0xAE;
UTF-8, octal representation: \342\231\256 ;
decimal entity HTML: & #9838; ;

Flat ♭ (U+266D):

UTF-8 : 0xE2 0x99 0xAD;
UTF-8, octal representation: \342\231\255 ;
decimal entity HTML: & #9837; ;

Sharp ♯ (U+266F):

UTF-8 : 0xE2 0x99 0xAF;
UTF-8, octal representation: \342\231\257 ;
decimal entity HTML: & #9839; .

In addition to these three characters, Unicode makes it possible to code the majority of the other symbols of a partition. The characters necessary are in the block “musical Symbols Western” (U+1D100. U+1D2FF). Their posting by a Moteur of returned remains however problematic.

Latex

Under Latex, it is possible to code the symbols of deteriorations easily:

Natural sign: \ natural; result: $\ natural$ ;
Flat: \ flat; result: $\ flat$ ;
Sharp: \ sharp; result: $\ sharp$ .

Lilypond

The elementary rules of coding of the music under Lilypond are:

the notes of musics are coded with the Anglo-Saxon manner: C for C natural, B for B natural, etc to obtain a Flat, one adds are ( these , bes ) and to obtain a sharp, one adds a is . A silence notes R (of English rest ).
the keys are coded by \ key treble for the treble clef, \ key low for the bass clef and \ key viola for the C clef 3.
the rates/rhythms are coded by numbers noted after the note. 1 is a round, 2 white, 4 black, etc For example, aes4 represents black A flat, cis2. represent white pointed a C sharp.

Example

One can compare hereafter the aspect of the hash or sharp by abuse notation (#), and that of the true sharp, initially with the character Unicode ─ posting thus depends on the Unicode font faces which you installed ─ (♯), then with LaTeX ─ the emulator of Wikipédia will probably represent it by means of an image ─ ( $\ sharp$ ).

See too

Internal bonds

to also see Software edition of partition

Music and musical theory

Coding of the characters

ISO 8859-1
Unicode
musical special Characters, symbols
TeX, Latex and Assistance: Formulas TeX

External bonds

http://www.berlioz.tm.fr/rousseau.html: bill of character (in connection with the software editor of partitions “Berlioz”: http://www.berlioz.tm.fr/), allowing the posting of the majority of the musical symbols
guide of the difficulties of drafting in music
http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1D100.pdf: list Unicode characters of the block “Western musical Symbols” for the majority of the musical symbols
intuitive Représentation of the rate/rhythm using the ASCII code

Random links: