Playground for fiddling with musical notes

I wanted to redo the frets of my Setar. Common instructions are based on length of the strings and the distance of each fret from the nut. I don't like inaccuracies, so instead, I decided to find the accurate location of each fret based on the frequency. To this end I needed to calculate the frequency of the notes corresponding to each fret.

Iranian music, and consequently the Setar, has quarter tones accidentals (Koron and Sori). Therefor a hash-like table listing all notes available for conventional western musical instruments with semitone granularity was not enough. I started a python script to calculate the note frequencies for that purpose, ... and kinda got carried away... hence this repo.

Example

Entry point examples:

$ python3 -m entry_points.notes_disk_entry -v
$ python3 -m entry_points.notes_disk_entry -s -f <path-to-save-file>

$ python3 -m entry_points.piano_entry -v
$ python3 -m entry_points.piano_entry -s -f <path-to-save-file>

$ python3 -m entry_points.tar_entry --fret-count 27 --base-note C4 -p
$ python3 -m entry_points.tar_entry --fret-count 27 --base-note C4 -v
$ python3 -m entry_points.tar_entry --fret-count 27 --base-note C4 -s -f <path-to-save-file>
$ python3 -m entry_points.tar_entry --fret-count 27 --base-note C4 -v --annotate

• Circle of notes entry point output:

• Piano entry point output:

• Tar entry point output:

  print-out

    ```bash
    0	C4:	261.6255653005986 Hz
    1	C#4:	277.1826309768721 Hz
    2	Dk4:	285.30470202322215 Hz
    3	D4:	293.6647679174076 Hz
    4	Eb4:	311.1269837220809 Hz
    5	Ek4:	320.24370022528126 Hz
    6	E4:	329.6275569128699 Hz
    7	F4:	349.2282314330039 Hz
    8	Fs4:	359.46139971304194 Hz
    9	F#4:	369.9944227116344 Hz
    10	Gk4:	380.83608684270297 Hz
    11	G4:	391.99543598174927 Hz
    12	Ab4:	415.3046975799451 Hz
    13	Ak4:	427.4740541075866 Hz
    14	A4:	440.0 Hz
    15	Bb4:	466.1637615180899 Hz
    16	Bk4:	479.82340237271336 Hz
    17	B4:	493.8833012561241 Hz
    18	C5:	523.2511306011972 Hz
    19	C#5:	554.3652619537442 Hz
    20	Dk5:	570.6094040464443 Hz
    21	D5:	587.3295358348151 Hz
    22	Eb5:	622.2539674441618 Hz
    23	Ek5:	640.4874004505624 Hz
    24	E5:	659.2551138257398 Hz
    25	F5:	698.4564628660078 Hz
    26	F#5:	739.9888454232688 Hz
    27	G5:	783.9908719634985 Hz
    ```
  

Tests, coverage, linter, formatter, static type check, ...

$ black . --check
$ isort . --check-only
$ mypy . --explicit-package-bases
$ pylint $(git ls-files '*.py')
$ pytest
$ pytest --cov=. # $ pytest --cov=. --cov-report html; firefox htmlcov/index.html
$ pyreverse -o png -p music_uml **/*.py

TODO

Improve/Refactoring

• fix all TODOs in the code. pylint is currently suppress so not to flag them, remove suppressions.
• drawing module is not actually tested and only covered through entry point unit tests. Add unittest for that.
• Negative (and zero) frequency doesn't have any physical meaning in the context of music. So the constructor of the class Frequency does not allow it. Now it became problematic when we want to compute "frequency difference" between a Note and a Frequency. This will be needed when trying to tune an instrument. Currently class Frequency does not implement __sub__ and Note.frequency_difference returns float. Allow negative values in class Frequency and fix the above issue.

Documentations

• List some common tuning of the Tar/Setar (e.g. C4-C4-G3-G3-C4-C3 and more)
• add common tuning for different keys ("Dastgah"): Wikipedia has a list (Double check)
• move Tar entry point output (notes and image) to documentation
• add Setar Photo.
• add Fret tying schema/drawing
• add "fret string thickness" for Tar and Setar
• add "fret round" for Tar and Setar

# fret round count for Setar - 25 fret - according to Wikipedia (double check)
{1:3, 2:4, 3:4, 4:4, 5:3, 6:4, 7:4, 8:?, 9:3, 10:3,
 11:4, 12:[3,4], 13:4, 14:3, 15:4, 16:3, 17:3, 18:4, 19:?, 20:[3,4],
 21:4, 22:4, 23:3, 24:3, 25:4, 26:3, 27:4, 28:?}

Future Work

• Figure out how to print Sori/Koron - see lilypond.
• Add Qt gui? Or maybe a Web-Gui frame-work, whichever easier!
• Add tone (actual audio) from frequency
• Add keys, scales and chords?
• add audio analysis? like a Tuner?
• extend to other instruments, start with Guitar and then Ney?
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch
• dynamics are the amplitude of the sound wave
• check out Circle of Fifth

Reference

• Proposal to encode two accidentals for Iranian classical music: Unicode proposal.
• Setar on Wikipedia: Farsi entry and English entry.

License

Copyright (C) Saeed Gholami Shahbandi

NOTE: Portions of this code/project were developed with the assistance of ChatGPT, a product of OpenAI.
Distributed with a GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE; see LICENSE.