Denemo

The Denemo team have been hard at work, and the new JACK midi framework is taking shape. Those who notate large works will know that notation application playback is often challenging, as soundfonts just don't give an accurate aural portrayal of what you've written, which is useful particularly when scoring for film......Users are often resigned to laying out a work in a midi sequencer which can at least give some indication of an end result, using large sample libraries,  and various tools to at least emulate a  "closer to live" performance.

Jeremiah, Richard, and Nils, have taken this challenge on, in a notated format, and so far, progress is excellent. They're still in the middle of building the jack midi framework, but from my testing so far, there's a real potential for a professional quality result, for those of use who write fulltime. Denemo has seen planty of changes recently, including a wholescale rewriting of many parts of the code, and the team have been extremely busy trying to lick this app into shape. The JACK midi structure is not a small job by any means, and given the recent changes and features added to the JACK server, particularly the midi components, it would be fair to say, the Denemo team will have a state of the art playback system when this structure is complete.

For those that don't know, Denemo is a music entry system and a front end to the professional print quality engraver, or music typesetter, Lilypond. As a former orchestral player from some years ago, i missed the Lilypond revolution, but having seen the printout Lilypond generates, i can say from experience this is professional quality. Denemo seeks to simplify the process of writing score for Lilypond, and does it pretty well. I've been in the process of learning the Lilypond language as a means to add this skill to my toolset, but progress is slow in days already short of time. Denemo bridges that gap, and enables me to write score to a high standard printout, quickly, with its notation view input.

The jackmidi playback system is the next generation of feature set within Denemo, and although there was a previous system in place, it fell short of modern day expectations, and was often somewhat problematic in use. We wish the Denemo team success, and are viewing this application as a default notation component in the OpenOctave Project toolset. It's matured to the point of regular checks and tests on our part, and continues to be on our radar.

Finally, i'm pleased to say that the Denemo team "get it' in terms of workflow, so user will have two major features to enjoy, when the programme is fully up to speed, so to speak. The workflow is already highly user definable, and those who are familiar with the Scheme coding language, can quickly and easily write their own scripts to carry out a specific task, and share those scripts with other users. The Denemo team have done many already, and these can be downloaded from their central repository from within Denemo, so the application is future proof as well, as much as is possible, anyway. There's still more to come with dynamics, bank and patch changes in staff, and other features in the queue, to look forward to. Some of these are already available in scripts, and for those of us who are more familiar with a full days work at the helm with little time to learn a new language, the scripts are becoming available as menu items and actions on a regular basis.

More to come, but great to see a good programme getting better, and adopting a modern playback system that will cater to many, particularly orchestral and film writers with large orchestral sample libraries at their disposal.

Alex.