Assembled Wisdom!

I seem to have been graciously forgiven for my demarche about what
can be passed to the parameters.  So here is another suggestion, perhaps
useful to Unix/Linux users.

In the following, I am assuming that the orchestra is set up and
standard, and that the user is busy scoring a piece, writing a perhaps
complicated .sco file, at any rate one with lots of notes.

Instead of remembering what those notes actually are, one can make a 
file -- using emacs or vi<g> -- called  myfile.sco.DRAFT .  Here's
what a hunk of   myfile.sco.DRAFT might look like:

i 1     0       .3      0       [n1]
i 1     .4      .3      .       [n2]
i 1     .8      .3      0       [n3]
i 1     1.2     .3      .       [n1]
i 1     1.6     .3      0       [n1]
i 1     2.0     .3      .       [n2]
i 1     2.4     .3      0       [n3]
i 1     2.8     .3      .       [n1]

If one thinks of n1, n2, n3, . . . as representing the ascending notes
of a major diatonic scale, one sees immediately that I'm writing
"Frere Jacques".

Now such a file isn't a .sco file, but a DRAFT of one.

To make a true .sco file, one uses the standard Unix text editor sed,
in the following way: from the command line one runs the command:

	sed -f notefile myfile.sco.DRAFT

This command leaves the file   myfile.sco.DRAFT alone, but outputs
something else, depending on the commands contained in   notefile .

Here is an example of a  notefile:
#  stuff following the 'pound-sign' is comments
#  you can describe what this scriptfile is for
s/n1/440/
s/n2/440*9*.125/ 
s/n3/440*5*.250/ 
s/n4/440*4*.333/
s/n5/440*3*.5/

and you can easily believe that the 's' means "substitute" and
instead of n1 one gets the value 440, instead of n2 one gets the
value 440*9/8  (but don't use the '/' here! it will confuse sed), etc.

The output of the above call to sed is written to the terminal, and
can of course be redirected to a proper myfile.sco.

The advantages of this are at least two.

1.  As remarked, a person can more easily keep track of, and type,
n1, n2, n3,  etc, rather than 440, 495, 550, 586.66, 660.

2.  One may decide that 440 is too high, in which case one can
change the 440 in the notefile to, say, 400, and make a new
myfile-lower.sco.  Or one might wish to change the tuning to 
tempered intervals . . .

Now I _have_ tested the above, and throw it open for comment,
criticism and possible adoption.  Of course the running of a
myfile.sco.DRAFT through such a filter can be used in other
ways, depending on one's ingenuity(motivated, as always, by
laziness<g>)

Best wishes,

Alan

-- 
Alan McConnell :  http://patriot.net/users/alan
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