Music Composition, Notation and Play back System for Sri Lankan Standard

Abstract

In the field of music use of notation plays a vital role. There are different types of Music Notations among various regions around the world. Western Music Notation system is the most popular. In the early era notations were created by hand. When Computer became day to day tool certain musicians made some efforts to use it for music compositions. In the process of this attempt, computer based notation systems were discovered and it is so far used only in western music.Sri Lankan Musicians are more familiar with Hindustani Classical Music and its notation System. Due to their lack of knowledge in western music notation system, they are unable to adopt themselves to the computer based western music notation systems. It is the very reason which I selected the Music Composition, Notation and Play back System for Sri Lankan standard. Prior to develop this application, I studied existing Western Music Notation software. By doing so I observed the structure, Interaction Methodologies, System Interface, Special Features and etc. Then I studied about the Sri Lankan Music, especially Sinhala song structure as the Sri Lankan Music very much based on Songs.With the knowledge gathered from the above mentioned methods, I found the core music notes used in Sri Lankan Music. Then I recorded them as separate Audio WAV files. In Sri Lankan standard music, we use Sinhala symbols to indicate music notes eg: i" rs" ." u...etc. In programming Language like java, C# or any other computer language, Sinhala language symbols are not supported for programming. Therefore I created Sinhala music symbols as small image icons and added them to the project. Then I developed the Project using NetBeans IDE as my software development tool and Java as my programming language. After the development I tested the application by using Alpha and Beta Testing methods.Result obtained in testing and evaluation process, I finalised the above mentioned application with the following main features, Arranging the music structure for composition, Listen to individual music notes, add notes to composition, remove or replace notes in the composition, save music, listen to your composition by each section, save the composition as PDF and print the notation. After the study of the project and the result obtained, I strongly feel that a Music Composition, Notation and Play back System for Sri Lankan standard can be introduced to the Sri Lankan Community. In the future, this can be further improved by adding advanced features.