Numbered Music - Rousseau on your mobile phone !

A new vesion 1.2 of Rousseau has been posted that incorporates color coded key signatures. It makes use of Scriabin's scheme which represents the various keys as colors, roughly following the spectrum through the circle of 5ths.

           

When colors are activated, key signature display is replaced with a bpm (beats per minute), indicating time between taps on your keypad. This allows for quick check of a song's tempo.

On a web page, how do you print dots over and under numbers for octave changes as well as the slash and backslash to indicate a sharp or flat? The trick is to use an online image processor as in this example.

For this harmonic minor scale, the code to insert is

  <img src=http://normanschmidt.net/nmn.php?nmn=6_7_*1_2_3_4_x5_6>

LaTeX can also be used

  <img src=http://wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=6~~7~~\dot1~~2~~3~
              ~4~~\slash\hspace{-2mm}5~~6>

to write the same scale.  

The Rousseau Music Book uses LaTeX.

Allons dan-ser sous les or-meaux  animez  vous jeu - nes fill - ettes


Allons dan-ser sous les or-meaux  galans pre-nez  vos cha -lu -meaux


Repetons mille  chansons net -tes et pour a -voir le coeur joy-eux Dan-


sons a-vec nos a - mou-reux  mais...  n'y  restons jamais seul-et - te


A la ville on fait bien plus de fra - cas


Mais sont ils aussi gais dans leurs é - bats


Toujours con - tens  Tousjours chan-tans


Plaisirs sans art    Beauté sans fart


Tout leurs con-certs valent  ils nos mus -et - tes?

Chanson Negre


Li - set  -  to   quit - té  la    plaine,  Moi  per -  di   bonheur à  moi.


Yeux  à    moi  semblent  fon - taine,     Di-pis   moi  pas  miré   toi.


Le jour quand moi coup-er   Can-ne,  Moi son -  gé    à  L'amour  moy


La nuit  quand  moi dans Cab - an - ne,  dans Dor  -  mir  moi quinbe toi.


(melody by Rousseau from a manuscript at the Geneva public library)

A mobile phone is ideal for entering notes in numberd musical notation.
The keypad layout looks like this:

	key entry notes 1-7
modulate		sharp/flat=double click modulate
	octave up/down

At Allen's house I discovered a book on Java and found out that it was pretty easy to program my cell phone. So over the past couple of weeks I wrote the Rousseau music program for my Nokia 6267. It's amazing how technology and screen size have improved on these devices. If anyone is buying a cell phone (except maybe for the iPhone that doesn't have JavaME yet) it can probably run this program. It's lots of fun and great for ear training!     Download the Rousseau program