arealb

Arabic Real Book

A collection of Arabic tunes formatted à la Real Book. The output is published on MuseScore.

Each tune consists of several files:

• tune.mscz - the original tune sheet (MuseScore file)
• tune.musicxml - the generated standard tune sheet (MusicXML file)
• tune.pdf - the generated tune sheet PDF file
• tune.mma - the accompaniment script (MMA - MIDI Music Accompaniment file)
• tune.mid - the MIDI file generated by MMA with the above as input

Installation

• Install MuseScore and set $MUSESCORE to the MuseScore executable (default: musescore)
• Download MMA and set $MMA_HOME to its root folder (default: ../mma)
• Ensure pdftk is accessible on the $PATH
• Run npm run grooves to update the MMA grooves database with the contents of the grooves/ folder

Building files

• npm run build:midi to generate MIDI files from MMA files; append <tune> to process a single tune
• npm run build:musicxml to generate MusicXML files from MuseScore files; append <tune> to process a single tune
• npm run build:pdf to generate PDF files from MuseScore files; append <tune> to process a single tune
• npm run build to run MusicXML and PDF build steps; append <tune> to process a single tune
• npm run build:arealb to generate arealb.pdf from MuseScore files

Playback

• Ensure timidity is accessible on the $PATH
• Ensure aplaymidi is accessible on the $PATH
• Run timidity -iAD
• Copy mmarc.example to mmarc to set the correct MIDI player parameters
• Run npm run play <tune> to preview a given tune