Getting raw sheet music notes for a program to read
Hello! I love the website, this is my first time here.
I wanted to try and find music I think I like based on what sort of melodies I think I enjoy. I think I like pop music with a lot of notes that are off the original key (has to be manually be denoted with flat, sharp, or neutral. sorry my music theory vocabulary is lacking) and ones with lots of half steps.
I am a capable programmer, I'd just need to get the information in the sheet music into my hands.
Is there a way to do this with an API on this website or somewhere else?
Comments
I cannot understand your question. Perhaps if you post in your native language, one of the many forum users might be able to answer your question.
In reply to I cannot understand your… by underquark
nah, English is my one and only native language. Maybe it's just my trouble putting programming into human speak. Or i suck at communicating. Whichever.
So, one way to give information would be to send me a string of notes when I request a song.
I ask musenote through a program call (API) "hey give me the sheet music for the song 'good night'"
I would expect something to return like:
E,F,G#,A,B,A#,C,G,C,G,Bflat............
In reality the stuff returned to me would be much more complex, but maybe this helps communicate the idea?
In reply to nah, English is my one and… by dfreelan
You wrote:
I would expect something to return like:
E,F,G#,A,B,A#,C,G,C,G,Bflat............
Certainly you realize that a string of note names lacks other important musical information: for instance, the time interval between notes (e.g., fast notes, slow notes), whether some notes are played simultaneously (e.g., chords)...
So then you wrote:
In reality the stuff returned to me would be much more complex...
You are correct.
Here's a simple sequence of notes saved as an uncompressed MuseScore file which you can open in a text editor to see the more "complex stuff":
Simple_Sequence.mscx
You can also open it in MuseScore to listen to it.
See:
https://musescore.org/en/handbook/3/file-formats#musescore-native-format
which explains the difference between a compressed (.mscz) and uncompressed (.mscx) MuseScore file.
In reply to You wrote: I would expect… by Jm6stringer
So is there a way to download a lot of mscx files without manually clicking on every single song I want?
In reply to So is there a way to… by dfreelan
Two things to consider:
In reply to So is there a way to… by dfreelan
mscz files are the most common MuseScore files. Unzip an mscz to read the mscx contained within the zip archive.
A lot of mscx files for downloading will be hard to come by.
As an alternative, you might consider MusicXML:
https://www.musicxml.com/
MuseScore can import and export MusicXML.
Also, for a lot of music files, see:
https://musescore.org/en/node/38081
In reply to nah, English is my one and… by dfreelan
There used to be an API for musescore.com, but it got shut down die to having gotten abused
In reply to nah, English is my one and… by dfreelan
As mentioned, simply a list of pitch names wouldn't be very useful, it lacks way too much info. A MusicXML file, on the other, has everything needed and is easily machine-readable. Also look into the music21 programming system (Python-based) that provides all sorts of very useful primitives importing MusicXML and for then processing the music - no need to reinvent wheels here. Once you've written your program in music21, all you need is a set of MusicXML to feed it, and over on msuescore.com you can download whatever you want. If it's a pop song or anything else currently under copyright, you'll need a Pro account. For more info on the score sharing website musescore.com, best to ask over there. This site here is for support fo the music notation software itself.