Pen-Based Interaction for Intuitive Music Composition and Editing

Abstract

This chapter deals with pen interaction and its use for musical notation composition and editing. The authors first present existing pen-based musical notation editors and argue that they are dedicated to classical musical notations and are often constraining for the user. They then focus on their generic method that is in particular based on a formalism that models how to interpret the strokes drawn in on-line structured documents. To analyze an element, it models a coupling of a global vision (its position relatively to the other elements of the document) with a local vision (its shape and that of its components). The authors also present the hand-drawn stroke analyzer associated to this formalism. Finally they demonstrate how the presented method can be used to design pen-based systems not only for classical musical score notations, but also for plainchant scores, drum tablatures and stringed-instrument tablatures.