MaxScoreA conference on new media such as the Music in the Global Village conference also creates opportunities to present new research and development. The focus is on real-time composition and notation, which constitute an important ingredient of network music performance. The ability to compose music in real-time according to given rules and to have the result immediately displayed in standard notation on computer screens adds a new dimension to this recent art form that relies on advances in network technology as much as on successfully integrating musical ideas, and hence, gives traditionally trained musicians the opportunity to partake in performances ordinarily geared towards geeks and technophiles.To this end, the Music in the Global Village project has commissioned a new Max object from Nick Didkovsky, New York-based composer, guitarist and programmer, who has developed JMSL, the Java Music Specification Language. This powerful music environment also contains JScore, a sophisticated and idiosyncratic music notation package which now has been fully integrated into Cycling ’74’s MaxMSP graphical programming environment via the MaxScore object. With this object, MaxMSP possesses powerful notation capabilities which brings it up to par with other composition environments such as OpenMusic and PWGL. Nick Didkovsky describes his tool as follows:MaxScore provides the computer music composer with common music notation directly in the Max/MSP environment. MaxScore is a Max object which accepts messages that can create a score, populate it with notes, perform it, and export to popular formats for professional publishable results. MaxScore currently supports export via MusicXML for input into Finale, as well as LilyPond format, and SCORE by San Andreas Press. MaxScore is more than a notation tool, it is an interactive performance object. MaxScore can play back a score and drive your MSP patches through a well-defined instrument interface. Scores can be created and modified in real-time. You can add notes explicitly by defining their properties (specifying a quarter note triplet as duration and middle C as pitch), or generate an arbitrary stream of musical events and use MaxScore’s transcriber to notate them automatically.MaxScore was programmed in Java Music Specification Language by Nick Didkovsky (but requires no Java programming), and is freely available to the public.MaxScore was commissioned by “Bipolar - German-Hungarian Cultural Projects.” Bipolar is an initiative of the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany. MaxScore requires a JMSL license to run, available at www.algomusic.com
 Link to MaxScore
ScoreTranslatorIn order to connect MaxScore to the highly specialized notation interface of Quintet.net, the network performance platform of the European Bridges Ensemble, Hungarian composer, programmer and physics student Ádám Siska wrote the Java-based ScoreTranslator object which converts JScore’s XML tags into Max lists and adds additional information about music spacing. Its proper functioning is the prerequisite of tapping into the vast field of real-time composition and notation within the framework of Quintet.net.<p>
Link to ScoreTranslator</p>
Both works were commissioned by Bipolar, the sponsor of the Music in the Global village project.