[Foundation-l] WikiMusic

Mon Dec 12 14:49:12 UTC 2005

hello everybody,

 We now have a free encyclopedia. We now have a free library. We now have
free pictures. Now we have to *free the music*
(http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimania05/Presentation-JW1
) and make it available for everyone. But with the preservation of the
wiki-idea: publishing music with a free license, or publishing music in the
Public Domain.

Let's make a WikiMusic. A Wiki with:

   - *both score and text* of a free piece of music
   - the *music itself* in a playable music file (in different versions,
   for example one version with trumpet, one with a whole orchestra, not MIDI)
   - the *sheet music* in a wiki-text format
   - *information about* the piece of music.

The WikiMusic has to be *user-friendly* as well. So NO WikiMusic just for
expert musicians, but also for people who are just looking for a nice work
of Beethoven. There has to be a system to *search* in this Wiki in a
user-friendly way, too. Maybe the so-called Parsons
code<http://www.musipedia.org/pcnop.0.html>(
http://www.musipedia.org/pcnop.0.html) can be used?

The WikiMusic wiki has to *allow for growth*. Not just for experts, but
rather also for people with little knowledge of the software.
Lilypond<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_LilyPond>is at the moment
still too difficult, too technical, for this purpose. Maybe
there are possibilities to make it easier to enter scores into a Wiki. Maybe
it is possible to integrate some kind of keyboard (java applet) in the
software, and have the software rewrite it into Lilypond-like formats.
Perhaps a (java) applet to drag and drop the notes into the score can be
developed, so a full score can be reproduced in a Wiki. And that such will
be transcribed into the Lilypond format automatically is our dream.

The Wikimusic has to be *editable*. So not just the creation of new scores
has to be easy, but also their editing. Maybe some way can be found to
change the rather complex format of lilypond into a drag-and-drop idea, so
the sheet can be altered easily. Later the sheet can be transcribed into the
standard format again.

WikiMusic must, last but not least, be *able to survive*. Not only with its
envisioned community, but also with a protection from vandals. It may prove
to be be hard to maintain the usual wiki-way here. Some brainstorming about
this issue needs to be done. How can vandals be checked best, by a mere
possibility of *listening to the differences* perhaps?

You can help with this! Today a proposal is posted on meta (
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikimusic_II and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimusic_II), and there are still a lot of
technical issues to be solved. Plese add your comment, and get the project
on it's way. Every bit of help and comment is welcome. I hope to see you
there.
 Effeietsanders (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/gebruiker:Effeietsanders
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Effeietsanders
)