[OSC_dev] OSC replacement for MIDI

[Jeff Glatt]

> I am a musician

Me too. I gig professionally every week (and I'm doing 2 gigs today, in 
fact).
I mostly do solo work, but have also worked with a number of other
musicians.

> found myself coding using midi note numbers in scripts
> for repetitive music.

Yeah, I've done that too (well, not repetitive music because that stuff
bores me to tears -- but in trying to replicate more "adventurous" music
that sounds like it was played by human musicians), because I'm also a
programmer. But out of the many musicians I've worked with, an
incredibly, incredibly small percentage work with any sort of "music
programming language".

The vast majority of musicians don't "script" music. They "play" it, via
a traditional musical instrument. That's not to say that it's "wrong" or
"bad" to "script music". That's just to say that, when you design a tool
like that, then you're not designing it for the vast majority of musicians
to use. Nothing wrong with that. But I'm talking about something that
is going to be useful to most musicians. And that means a user
interface that doesn't show frequency nor cents nor any other
"scientific" representation of pitch, but rather, uses standard note
names like A4 or presents notes drawn upon manuscript. (And frankly,
you'd be surprised how many musicians don't even read manuscript.
So you _must_ be able to tell them the note name).

For example, a musician using a sequencer program such as Cakewalk
or Cubase will typically use the manuscript display to edit music. But even
the alternative displays such as the event list, or piano roll, don't show
MIDI note numbers. They show note name.

>  "60" means nothing, but is learnable

If I told a musician to play MIDI Note Number 60, most of them would
look at me like I was crazy. If I told them to play a pitch that's 100 cents
above middle C, the typical reply would be "What??? You mean I'm
getting paid a dollar for each note I play on this gig??".

It's either note name, or you hand them a manuscript if they read music.

> "60.5" is a quarter tone, that's easy too

What??? I've never heard a musician refer to a quarter note as 60.5.

> 234.7 438.9 will never mean anything useful in musical terms

Well, it _does_ mean something very, very useful in musical terms. It's
just that a typical musician doesn't know what you're talking about.

> it's not at all backward compatible.

Huh??? How can you have a pitch that doesn't have a frequency?? The
frequency _is_ the single thing that ties all tuning methods, and forms of
music, together. Nothing else does. (ie, Cents are really meant to be used
with a 12 tone western scale -- not non-western scales).