Hookpad notation style coloration

• Oct 19, 2021 - 21:20

There is a pre-existing plugin which colours note heads according to pitch, however this seems limited to each note having fixed color eg C = red. Therefore irrespective of tonal centre the note colour (other than C maj scale) doesn't correlate with scale degree across different scores .

There is an interesting proprietary software idea which uses coloured piano roll type notation as insight into melodic/harmonic decision making and analysis using a set colour value for individual notes and chords according to their scale degree. So for example red will always be root scale degree irrespective of scale/mode, however it does this at the expense of separating the concept from standard music notation (which is its intent). The idea is to quickly and intuitively identify "stable" and "unstable" notes alongside harmonic possibilities.

I think this might be a valuable tool and possible to achieve within musescore if it were possible to add some algorithm to a plugin which allows for automation of color of each notehead to be conditional and a function of its scale degree with defined scale.

If unfamiliar to you this URL explains the "hookpad" concept and application

https://www.hooktheory.com/support/hookpad

Any thoughts or interest from anyone in taking this further?

Cheers

Martin

Comments

• Oct 19, 2021 - 23:14

Hi
thanks for reply. Yes that’s close, my understanding is that movable Do only manages major scales. Regardless, my limited understanding of programming suggests that perhaps that specific plugin code could be modified so that input variables for scale attributes could output coloured heads according to desired scale in addition to or instead of SolFa lettering? I am hoping someone with coding skills might have an interest in this thread and comment. Cheers Martin

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• Oct 21, 2021 - 08:14

I think it could be done, but you need to explain precisly WHAT should be done.

There are 12 sounding pitches each octave and 35 Tonal Pitch Classes (each sounding note can be written three ways - f.ex.: C, B#, Dbb)

If You can't define precise rules, good strting point could be to create some examples manually.

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• Oct 21, 2021 - 22:48

Hi

Thanks for your comment, I’ll give that some thought.

Considering algorithmic steps - If a value for the attribute which denotes color of a given pitch is applied to a pianoroll cell (in musescore) can (or will) the same attribute value be automatically applied by default to that cell’s notehead colour in notation view and or visa versa?

Cheers

Martin

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• Oct 22, 2021 - 17:00

Thanks for interest. I understand that noteheads can be coloured by pitch, I am trying to understand how attributes are allocated, in this case is pitch colour allocation connected between piano roll and standard notation? As far as intention of plug-in I am pondering, the idea is to have rapid visual cue to distinguish between stable and unstable melody notes at a given point in time against a harmony choice (this would array of variables) assuming melody belongs to a specific choice of scale at that point in time, therefore a chromatic would be outside of scale at that point in time and could be coloured accordingly….. perhaps specifically all notes outside of the scale might have same distinguishing colour.

Thanks for input :)

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• Oct 24, 2021 - 03:09

That's wonderful sammik ,

I tested plugin on a couple of scores and it seems to work perfectly. A couple of times when I tried to refresh the score after making note changes the plugin stopped working but after quitting and restarting the plugin it functioned as expected.

Is it possible to link the colour attribute from noteheads to the colour displayed in its respective piano roll editor cell address? From a scale degree perspective the piano roll display is much cleaner and would be a good adjunct if not too onerous a task.

Many thanks sammik!

cheers

Martin

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• Jan 28, 2022 - 09:54

Hi, stable and unstable melody notes seem a rather rough decision. I have a book that does a scientific research on notes according to their number of common harmonics and this seems to have influence on musical composition. If colours could be attached accordingly it might be more appropriate? A matter of research could be refreshing to work on.

Something I wonder about? How to in/output Musescore into Hookpad or Hookpad+?
I read there seems to be difficulties with midi files in/out already?

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• Jan 28, 2022 - 13:43

Thx for reply. The question was about midi in/out of hookpad? I send them a pdf by email and they couldn t upload to hookpad? How do you get your color notes into musescore easily?
You know you may convert a utube into mp3 and then into midi and upload to either hookpad ? for repair and optimizing or to musescore for more functions. But what is the result, do you get a good score to upload again to utube?

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