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Printing Music with CSS Grid

MilStdJunkie
10 replies
20h22m

Nice to have an alternative to Lilypond (lilypond.org), but given the extreme complexity of notation, I would bet that any brevity gains are short lived.

For those Asciidoc freaks among you, Lilypond is fairly easy to get running in your Asciidoc toolchain of choice. I use the DocBook PDF pipeline, and the lilypond output is quite nice looking. It's awfully TeX-like.

atonse
4 replies
20h19m

But does Lilypond generate responsive sheets?

That to me was the coolest part of this (apart from what others have said, the power of modern CSS)

bollu
1 replies
8h25m

Yes, lilypond generates SVG that rescales smoothly

atonse
0 replies
6h44m

So the measures on a line automatically wrap if viewed on a phone?

Tokkemon
1 replies
19h46m

They can be rendered at any size.

lukan
0 replies
19h6m

A PDF is still not that responsive. Clean HTML/CSS is.

TheRealPomax
2 replies
19h54m

Not everyone needs to typeset a full symphony with all the crazy notation for every single instrument though, having an easy responsive web presentation for even 50% of the "simple" scoring you do is a fantastic option to have.

Tokkemon
1 replies
19h47m

But this solution won't even get you that far, let's be honest.

TheRealPomax
0 replies
4m

Can't say I share that conviction? This is absolutely perfect for stuff like "I came up with something, let me score it and share it" without having to reach for notion/musescore/etc or lilypad.

stephbd
0 replies
20h0m

I would also suggest checking out ABCjs for web rendering.

mrweasel
0 replies
10h50m

If you can make do with a more limited feature set, I'd properly go with a CSS alternative, rather than using Lilypond (depending on your environment and use case). Lilypond is fairly complicated and not without security risk and have been used as an attack vector due to it being able to embed Postscript.

Tokkemon
9 replies
19h52m

It's a nifty solution. But speaking as a music engraver, it could use a lot of improvement, and I don't think there's enough tolerance in CSS to make it work. The beams, slurs, and ties, in particular have real problems visually. This is why other methods of getting notation into the browser don't use such tools. You need pinpoint precision for vector rendering, which is why almost all browser notation is done with SVG or some sort of Canvas drawing.

Other than the clever solution of using CSS, why would you do this? One can already do scalable notation in the browser with other tools (Check out Adrian Holovaty's Soundslice or Sibelius Cloud Publishing).

scop
6 replies
18h39m

What is a music engraver? I could google it, but I would appreciate a music engraver actually telling me vs some random page on the internet.

Tokkemon
3 replies
18h15m

Sure. It's an old-fashioned term for the artisans who engraved music notation onto metal plates. These were then inked for pressing. It's a highly specialized skill and requires a deep knowledge of now notation works and how musicians will respond to it. Today it is all done on computer but the artistry of knowing how the notation should look and the meaning behind it is still there. That's the basics but the work we do is quite varied and complicated.

It happens that I work for Avid as a designer for Sibelius, the leading music notation program in the world. I also run the Music Engraving Tips Facebook group if you're interested in learning more.

amiga386
1 replies
16h21m

That's very much it. You could also make an analogy to the arts of typography and typesetting.

It's of the same importance to a composer or musician that the notation is legible and beautiful, as it is to a graphic designer or reader that type and layout are legible and beautiful.

If the GP is interested in the topic, there are great videos by Tantacrul on his experience redesigning the notation font for MuseScore [0] and his overview of MuseScore 4.0's engraving improvements [1] - in particular this second video, concerning mainly layout, shows just how far this CSS approach would have to go to have a truly legible, reflowable layout in the face of beams/slurs/ties.

(I don't want to take away from anyone on the Sibelius team, they're likely even better experts on the subject than Tantacrul is, but as far as I know, they didn't make long-form Youtube videos about the topic! He also likely got the job of leading the MuseScore redesign thanks to his previous videos that critiqued and reimagined the interfaces of music composition software... including older versions of Sibelius [2] and MuseScore [3])

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGo4PJd1lng

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qct6LKbneKQ&t=2004

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hZxo96x48A

blitt
0 replies
1h54m

I know absolutely nothing about notation software, but I remember watching that MuseScore rewrite video (link [1] above) a few months ago and was absolutely enthralled. Definitely recommend watching Tantacrul's videos to anyone who wants to learn more.

analog31
0 replies
18h5m

As a player (jazz bassist) I'm amazed by the subtlety of making notation work. Oddly enough, most of my band's material is still not in computer readable form. A lot of it was hand copied.

n_plus_1_acc
0 replies
6h31m

It the equivalent of typesetting for music. Choosing fonts/styles, nudging spacing, improving redability, experimenting with page layout, etc

xhevahir
0 replies
16h40m

One can already do scalable notation in the browser with other tools (Check out Adrian Holovaty's Soundslice or Sibelius Cloud Publishing).

Can either of those be incorporated in one's own software, without paying somebody? (I don't see a license for this project, but I'm guessing it will be a lot more permissive than whatever that Sibelius thing has.)

Also, the examples for this project are simple leadsheets. I think your average jazz musician is probably a lot less fussy about notation than a professional music engraver would be.

mbo
0 replies
17h3m

Other than the clever solution of using CSS, why would you do this?

Seems lightweight enough for maybe a music theory blog post or interactive notebook.

adrianh
6 replies
16h22m

Impressive hack — kudos from a fellow sheet music software developer!

I've spent more than 10 years now building Soundslice, which does web-based sheet music rendering. I believe we were the first to do "responsive" web notation (that part of the site launched in 2014).

Here's a tech talk I gave with a lot of details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH5EtQge_Bg

Here's an example of responsive Soundslice notation: https://www.soundslice.com/slices/zzNlc/ (in the settings, set the stave width to maximum to get "Fit to screen" for the true responsive effect)

We've got a whole suite of tools built around this, including an excellent web-based editor, rich practice functionality and a relatively new scanning feature (extracting the musical data from a photo or PDF).

I agree with other commenters here that this CSS Grid approach could be handy for lightweight projects but it likely isn't up to snuff for the incredibly subtle and complex world of full scores. With that said, I just want to stress again that this is super cool and I'm glad it exists!

heroprotagonist
4 replies
6h28m

Could you perhaps elaborate about what makes it 'not up to snuff', given how much you used it as a chance to promote your own stuff?

colonwqbang
0 replies
1h41m

Perhaps you noticed that the beams aren't really attached to the notes they are supposed to be beaming together.

OP doesn't show any multi-stave (i.e. "full score") example at all -- if the system could do that, it would likely have been part of the demo.

This is extremely cool technology, but it's clear that more polish would be needed before it's ready for general use.

asddubs
0 replies
6h23m

Maybe the segment on engraving of Tantacruls Musescore 4 video is a good explanation of some of the things involved:

https://youtu.be/Qct6LKbneKQ?t=2005

the whole video is worth watching as well (and there are several videos on the channel focusing on the UI of notation apps, worth watching for anyone who does UI but isn't interested in music production as well)

FelipeCortez
0 replies
4h8m

Take a look at the visual tests for VexFlow to get an idea of the complexity music engraving can have: https://www.vexflow.com/tests/

2024throwaway
0 replies
5h58m

Such unnecessary aggression towards someone who built something cool and useful.

navbaker
0 replies
2h55m

Oh wow, small world! I use soundslice nearly everyday as an end user of a few music education sites!!!

vintagedave
4 replies
20h14m

This is extraordinary. While JavaScript is needed now, I’d encourage the author to see what needs to be added to CSS to allow a CSS-only solution, and promote it in the CSS community. For example, repeating the clef when wrapping is akin to a sticky table header, and would have more applications than only music.

Some CSS notation is wholly new to me:

.stave > [data-pitch^="A"][data-pitch$="5"] { grid-row-start: A5; }

I’ve never seen CSS selectors with square brackets before. Apparently it’s an attribute selector: https://css-tricks.com/attribute-selectors/

wizzwizz4
2 replies
19h36m

I'd suggest a ::line pseudoelement for that. We already have ::first-line, which could perhaps be considered an abbreviated ::line:first-of-type. Though, ::first-line doesn't seem to support enough properties to be useful here, so maybe another approach is needed.

stephbd
0 replies
19h28m

My only thought on this was to have a strip down the side with a vertically repeating background of an SVG data URL with the clef in it. But I don't like it. It'll be brittle. And it wouldn't support clef / key / time changes very easily.

mananaysiempre
0 replies
7h9m

I don’t know that this could be done cleanly without intertwining stlying and line breaking, which quite honestly sounds like a nightmare. (Line breaking is enough of a horror show as is, what with ligatures and bidi and ...)

mewpmewp2
0 replies
19h27m

These css selectors are actually fairly common I would say. They were used for querySelector a lot before Angular, React, etc. In addition in current times they are frequently used to grab elements by their data-testid either for jest tests or e2e tests.

russelg
0 replies
18h37m

Awesome post! I can see myself using your planner for sure.

knighthack
0 replies
18h35m

This was an interesting (and unexpectedly) practical use of CSS for non web-dev purposes. Great idea!

bredren
0 replies
18h42m

Hey, that's a great lightweight tool. Thanks for sharing that.

thrtythreeforty
2 replies
21h3m

I started the article thinking "ohhh the horror, this will not go well." And I ended up being mildly impressed with the typesetting quality, especially for the relative simplicity of the approach. So kudos to the author for demonstrating the flexibility of CSS.

I am concerned that there are lots of edge cases, essentially ligatures for engraving, that might not compose so well. A triad, or the author's called-out relative head spacing of 8th and 16th notes, or letting the program align different parts across different grids - would this also work well? Lilypond has proven to be exceptionally flexible for these kinds of complexities.

stephbd
1 replies
19h56m

It would be nigh-on impossible to align parts across different grids – but it's perfectly possible to generate one huge grid with multiple staves in it. I'm pretty confident that will work out.

dsmmcken
0 replies
16h26m

align parts across different grids

Maybe a CSS `subgrid` would help? Subgrid is newly available. (I know nothing about music notation, and basing this entirely off that statement).

spopejoy
0 replies
14h36m

Not web, but https://musescore.org is free software that reads and writes musicxml.

sonovice
0 replies
13h48m

Also have a look at https://www.verovio.org for a pretty complete but still free solution.

spankalee
1 replies
21h21m

This is very cool! Like the author, I'm pretty impressed that just CSS can get you this far.

I'm very excited to see the <scribe-music> custom element too! I had an intern work on wrapping VexFlow with web components a few years back, but the summer ended before everything was finished, and it hasn't been maintained: https://github.com/PolymerLabs/vexflow-elements/blob/web-com...

A maintained and easy-to-use library could do a lot of good for music notation on the web.

sonovice
0 replies
13h46m

There is https://www.verovio.org/ which is both easy-to-use and really well maintained.

microtherion
1 replies
10h37m

The visual quality is really good.

I'm not entirely convinced of making this responsive, in the particular area of Jazz leadsheets. I've found myself preferring line breaks at regular intervals (mostly every 4 bars, with exceptions for pickups and alternate endings), rather than trying to cram as many bars as possible onto each line.

stephbd
0 replies
10h29m

The beauty of the system is that a flex box rule of flex: 1 1 25%; will give you 4 bars per line (each averaging 25% of the width). The system is flexible.

donatj
1 replies
10h1m

I have spent weeks recently working on a little side project converting MIDIs to colored children’s piano sheet music. I am most of the way there but have been dragging my feet on building the web ui specifically because I was unsure how to render the notes in a flexible way that could look good on multiple devices. This looks like it could be a good jumping off point, and I fully intend to give it a try.

My daughter absolutely loves my Little Tikes piano from the 1980s but all the sheet music I find online, even for the newer Little Tikes pianos, have different colors associated with notes. I have built up a small library of simple MIDIs, and my intent is to have some preset toy pianos to choose from or let the end user specify colors-to-notes manually.

hantusk
0 replies
8h27m

For a shortcut, Musescore has a plugin called colornotes that does this, installable from the GUI. You can alter the color scheme by editing the .js plugin code: https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/blob/master/share/ext...

It can also print note names inside of each head.

ulrischa
0 replies
18h58m

Increadible what css can do today. It is some kind of general purpose representation language

todotask
0 replies
9h22m

I utilized JavaScript to render music notation from pppp to ffff iirc that can connect to a MIDI keyboard, allowing users to practice along with the interactive notes. Initially, I experimented with Adobe Flex before transitioning to web-based solutions and yes, it can read and play any MIDI files to my SF2 soundfont.

The only problem is that MuseScore community took years to fix a missing measurement in MusicXML structure, I had to patch the code on my own.

toastal
0 replies
10h23m

This is a really clever use of grid & a case where the named templates is actually well done instead of overused.

sfink
0 replies
19h19m

This feels so wrong in one way, and simultaneously so right in another.

rocken7
0 replies
19h22m

imagine a bot drone that flies around a big city like NY, and just tags walls + suitable spots with interesting gen art from various sources .. likely a lawsuit in the making but cool to see.

rdevsrex
0 replies
19h1m

This is pretty cool!

rcarmo
0 replies
20h38m

Pretty awesome!

ramijames
0 replies
20h37m

I'm super impressed.

naltroc
0 replies
4h42m

woah, amazing work! The interactive (transposable) at the very end should be top of the fold imo. Super impressive.

ivanjermakov
0 replies
21h5m

This feels like a CSS benchmark haha

emadda
0 replies
11h52m

Cool, I often use grid for precise placement of items even for small widgets like toggle buttons.

If you’d like an intro into grid:

https://cssprinciples.com/3/grid/

elijahbenizzy
0 replies
14h8m

This is great!

darepublic
0 replies
12h53m

beautiful music notation. The main page of the site also has a tasteful use of position sticky!

coldtea
0 replies
19h52m

Looks good, and with surprisingly clean CSS.