soma-cli

compositional tools for generating LilyPond data and rendering MIDI

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Overview

soma-cli is a Node.js-based CLI, providing compositional tools for generating PDF scores and MIDI files of musical material.

Despite the abundance of emerging music projects taking advantage of the Web Audio API, few, if any, offer exportability to formats supported by modern Digital Audio Workstations. This seems to limit their application to that of novelty -- undoubtedly creative in exploring modern web technologies, but ultimately impractical for use in the workflow of professional musicians and digital composers.

The existing LilyPond project is already excellent at what it does: generating PDFs of musical scores and optionally, MIDI files of the output score. However, the syntax can be tedious for those who don't want to have to write markup language just to generate music.

soma-cli aims to provide a set of modular tools for generating musical material that can then be immediately integrated into a musician's mature process. It abstracts away common musical conventions and choices a musician may make, quickly providing raw materials to later be developed as the user sees fit. The intention is not to realize a system that writes music for you, but rather one that hopefully takes some of the tedious busy work out of making music.

Examples

The soma-cli printScale major all 16 fold command above, will generate the PDF output below:

as well as an accompanying MIDI file of the exact same musical material.

Installation

npm i -g soma-cli

Note: you will also need to install LilyPond. soma-cli uses this for automatically compiling the output .ly files into .pdf and .midi.

soma-cli currently only offers support for macOS. Extending support to Linux and Windows is relatively trivial, and will be added in future releases.

If you are receving a Cannot find module error upon installing and running soma-cli, you likely need to point your NODE_PATH to the correct directory. You can do so by adding the following line to your .bashrc or .zshrc, depending on your shell:

export NODE_PATH=/usr/local/lib/node_modules

Upon first running, soma-cli will create a soma-output directory in your Home directory (~). All output will be saved there.

Commands

printScale (alias: ps)

Prints a scale (or multiple scales), with several different parameters

soma-cli printScale <sType> <key> <quant> <tail>

<sType> - Scale type

Scale type	Argument
Major	major
Minor	minor

<key> - Key

Key	Argument
C	c
Db	db
D	d
Eb	eb
E	e
F	f
Gb	gb
G	g
Ab	ab
A	a
Bb	bb
B	b
All keys (from C - B)	all

soma-cli also accepts a user-defined sequence of keys, provided as a String, as its <key> argument. For example, 'c db e f' will print the keys C, Db, E and F, in that order. The key sequence can be of any length.

<quant> - Quantization of scale

Quantization	Argument
Whole note (1/1)	1
Half note (1/2)	2
Quarter note (1/4)	4
Eighth note (1/8)	8
Sixteenth note (1/16)	16
Thirty-second note (1/32)	32
Sixty-fourth note (1/64)	64
Hundred twenty-eighth note (1/128)	128

Dotted notes can be indicated by adding a . after the integer argument (i.e. 8.)

<tail> - Sets the "tail" of the scale

"Tail"	Argument
Rest	rest
Add the second to last note	fold
Add the first note (up an octave)	turnup

chordGen (alias: cg)

Generate chords within a given key

soma-cli chordGen <type> <key> <count> <order> <num>

<type> - Scale type

Same scales are available as in the printScale command

<key> - Key

Same keys are available as in the printScale command

<count> - Number of notes in the chord

An integer from 1 - the selected scale length. Unique chord permutations are limited based on the total number of notes in the selected scale, and number of notes selected per chord.

<order> - Ordering of notes in the chord

Ordering	Argument
Sort notes alphabetically	sort
Sort notes in the order they were generated (i.e. random)	unsort

<num> - Number of chords to generate

A number from 1 - ∞. Unique chord permutations are limited based on the total number of notes in the selected scale.

Version History

See CHANGELOG for full details

Contributing

Still in early gestation, the project will primarily be cared for and developed by its original maintainer (me). If you are interested in getting involved in the project, have issues or feedback, please reach out to me directly -- [e-mail]

License

MIT © 2018 Nicholas Morera