Pascal Programming for Music Research

Book excerpt: Pascal Programming for Music Research addresses those who wish to develop the programming skills necessary for doing computer-assisted music research, particularly in the fields of music theory and musicology. Many of the programming techniques are also applicable to computer assisted instruction (CAI), composition, and music synthesis. The programs and techniques can be implemented on personal computers or larger computer systems using standard Pascal compilers and will be valuable to anyone in the humanities creating data bases. Among its useful features are: -complete programs, from simple illustrations to substantial applications; -beginning programming through such advanced topics as linked data structures, recursive algorithms, DARMS translation, score processing; -bibliographic references at the end of each chapter to pertinent sources in music theory, computer science, and computer applications in music; -exercises which explore and extend topics discussed in the text; -appendices which include a DARMS translator and a library of procedures for building and manipulating a linked representation of scores; -most algorithms and techniques that are given in Pascal programming translate easily to other computer languages. Beginning, as well as advanced, programmers and anyone interested in programming music applications will find this book to be an invaluable resource.