Fractal composition plugin

• Sep 2, 2020 - 15:58

I'm thinking about writing a plugin for fractal composition but I'm not sure whether Musescore is the right frame to do it or if it even supports the functionality I desire. The most elementary functionality should be this: the user enters a number of motifs as the base material of the fractal. Then for any note in any of the motifs, they can select a motif, shorter copies of which will be inserted at the relative pitch and position of that note by an algorithm, and this in a recursion so that, if a motif is copied which contains a note that is marked as the place of insertion of another motif, another, even shorter copy of that motif will be inserted in the copy of the note at the next iteration of the recursion loop. The trouble is this: the length of the copies of the motifs is determined by the length of the note it is inserted into. So you might want to mark a whole note as the insertion point of a three-note motif, but then the length of each resulting note would be 1/3 of a whole note, which we don't normally have notation for. I'm primarily writing this for digital performance so I'm not too worried about how to convey it to a performer, but is there a way to tell the program "the length of this part of the score is as long as the duration of this note, so standardize the duration values accordingly" or is this outside the functionality of Musescore?

Any help will be appreciated.


Comments

Using your whole note example, there is standard notation that musicians understand to break the whole note into 3 notes - the triplet, which would give you 3 1/2 notes. You would normally put a triplet bracket on the notes to indicate this (at least in the first of consecutive measures).

It will take some programming, but with my limited knowledge, I think the MuseScore plugin capabilities would support this.

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