Square Note: A Gregorian Chant App
  • Fr. Matthew Spencer
    Posts: 100
    Coming soon...just a teaser video with no sound:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_O2OXPQdK8

    So far, features include:
    • Currently over 500 chants from the Kyriale and the Proper of Seasons for the OF and the EF. More to come
    • Chant rendered on the fly, looks best on larger screens and tablets as you can imagine, but still works on even small phones.
    • Searchable database of chants, by incipit alone or even by full text search of the chants.
    • Note playback for fast learning of chants, or to get your schola on the right note!


    Let me know if you have some good ideas for other features to include! :)
    Thanked by 7JulieColl Ben jczarn Adam Wood tomjaw GerardH bhcordova
  • TimTheEnchanterTimTheEnchanter
    Posts: 206
    Thanks, Father! Please let us know when this is available.

    One question I had: will the notation render in horizontal/landscape orientation as well? If I need to look at music on my phone, I tend to turn my phone sideways and read it that way, where I can go a line at a time.
    Thanked by 2Fr. Matthew Spencer eft94530
  • Fr. Matthew Spencer
    Posts: 100
    TimTheEnchanter: Yes, it sure will, didn't do it in the video because it would've gone sideways, but it will adapt to any screen size and orientation.
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    YES.

    As someone who sings every sunday at the EF on my android tablet, I am very excited for this. Will there also be a user accessible database on the backend, like GregoBase?
    Thanked by 1Fr. Matthew Spencer
  • Fr. Matthew Spencer
    Posts: 100
    Ben, I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do something like that, though I haven't decided the best route to take for it. Certainly within the realm of possibility though!

    Actually, the architecture allows for on the fly editing of gabc code too (not unlike the exsurge Javascript library I work on too), but it's rather tedious to enter gabc when using a limited mobile keyboard so I haven't invested much time in making this work yet.
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    As a web developer, I fully realize this isn't as easy as I make it sound, but considering the active community there, working to proofread and add scores, I wonder if a direct integration into GregoBase might be a good option? It would continue to increase the scope of the app's scores without much work from you, and would allow people to fix things for everyone when they find errors.

    So far, there's multiple graduals, antiphonales, processionariums, the Cantus selecti, Liber Hymnarius, among other books there....

    And of course, if there's any way I can be of assistance, don't hesitate to reach out via PM or other methods.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    Well, if you have all the chants somewhere, making them accessible shouldn't be _that_ hard. Are you packaging up all the chants with the app, or fetching them on the fly from an API?

    Also, have you given any thought to Open Sourcing this project?
  • Fr. Matthew Spencer
    Posts: 100
    Right now the chants are packaged with the app in a few JSON files that get imported into a SQLite database for use at runtime. In theory it wouldn't be that hard to expand the chants available or make the collections editable or updatable. Just a matter of determining priorities for features is all!

    Integration with gregobase would be awesome, but I've never researched whether the database is exposed through an api or not...?

    I've open sourced both caeciliae and more recently exsurge, but no plans to open source this project right now.

    Ben, eventually I'll need help testing it out, so I'll look you up when I get to that point!
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    Did you transcribe the chants yourself?
  • Fr. Matthew Spencer
    Posts: 100
    Adam, no, they're all from GregoBase, imported into a google sheets doc for collaboration and processing, then exported via script to JSON. Unfortunately some manual tweaking is still necessary at the time being for some of the gabc as my chant renderer doesn't support 100% of the gabc feature set...but that's getting better with time too.
    Thanked by 1Adam Wood
  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    Integration with gregobase would be awesome, but I've never researched whether the database is exposed through an api or not...?


    Even if it isn't. for the public, perhaps they'd open it up to you? I would if I were them! It'd basically be a gregobase app.

    In any case, I'm really looking forward to seeing more of this app.
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    This wonderful site seems to drag the code from Gregobase...

    http://bbloomf.github.io/jgabc/propers.html
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • JesJes
    Posts: 576
    Can you upload different chants and make different semiology adjustments?

    This looks very cool to me. Way above my head as to how one does this.
  • EMH
    Posts: 47
    I want it.
    Thanked by 2Jes Patricia Cecilia
Add a Comment