Tim's Music directory

These music compositions are provided for your entertainment, and I politely request anyone downloading these files that all copies, performances, etc., should give due credit to the composer.

* PostScript® Sheet Music (8.5" x 11")

* PostScript® Sheet Music (A4 size)

Music Typography

Creating publishable-quality music scores is never easy, but if you need a program to produce top-notch scores, be sure to check out xcircuit on the Programs page. "xcircuit" was originally written for drawing circuit diagrams, but as its major features are 1) catalogs of frequently-used objects and 2) everything able to be user-defined from the bottom up, it lends itself quite nicely to music typography. Note that when compiled, "xcircuit" will install its own circuit library as default, but this behavior can be changed to load the music library by default (see the README file after untarring the distribution). The PostScript pages of music at the top of the page were drawn with "xcircuit" and can be edited with the same (or with Adobe Illustrator).

There are other efforts around to provide freeware for music typography, most of which are concerned with actual typesetting, or having a system which can accept music as a notational stream and figure out how to break it into staffs and pages, expanding and compressing measures as needed, just like a text typesetter expands and compresses white space for correct left-right justification of the text. The goal, of course, is not to have to enter any music by notation, but from a keyboard (i.e., through MIDI). . . or better yet, directly off of a microphone, tape, CD, etc. However, the latter method is a problem akin to speech recognition. Music typesetting is not easy, either, having always been more art than science.

For a wealth of information, see Lilypond, part of the ``GNU Music Project (GMP).''

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