Scripted musical notation available

[J. Landman Gay]

I have just posted a solution for Macintosh users who want an easy way 
to play scripted musical notation in Revolution or MetaCard. Shakobox is 
a combination stack and supporting application which interprets 
HyperCard-style musical notation and plays it back using the QuickTime 
MIDI musical instrument library. All 128 MIDI instruments and sound 
effects are available for playback, with full control over pitch and 
velocity.

The stack ships with both the 68K and OS X versions of the supporting 
application "PlayCommand", which is embedded as a set of custom 
properties directly within the stack. An install button copies 
PlayCommand to your hard drive where it is immediately ready for use. If 
you want to distribute stacks built with scripted notation, you can use 
the same technique and installer scripts to ensure that your users also 
have the PlayCommand application available.

There are some minor limitations to this initial release; see the stack 
for details. Even so, it is often possible to play multiple scripted 
note strings simultaneously to achieve simple chording or harmony. There 
is an example in the stack.

Because it relies on AppleScript, Shakobox is a Mac-only solution. But 
since most of the requests for scripted notation have been from 
HyperCard converts, maybe that's enough for now. If anyone is interested 
in building a DLL for the Windows side, please let me know.

The PlayCommand application was written by Jon Bettencourt, who holds 
the copyright, but it is being distributed free of charge. You can get 
Shakobox at: <http://www.hyperactivesw.com/shakobox.html>

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com