BachBro - Free and open-source tools for musicians and music researchers

(c) 2018 Paulocracy

1. Introduction

BachBro is a set of free and open-source tools for musicians and music researches which lack in most other common music programs. All tools are provided in a single graphical user interface. BachBro is written in Python 3. For Windows, binaries are availabe at the releases.

An additional music data editor - which can be run in a modern web browser - is also provided.

Except of the audio recording, all tools work with non-western quarter-tones. "b2" stands for a half-flat, "#2" for a half-sharp.

BachBro's tools are:

1. "View scales/chords": Viewing of scales and chords (also with non-western quarter tones) on piano and a user selected instrument. The scale can also be shown as a MusicXML file in a user selected sheet editor.
   This tool is useful to find out how a scale can be played on an instrument and to analyse the scale visually.
   It is also possible to click on the notes of the user selected instruments to show a user selected range of intervals. The set can intervals can be also chosen from a user selected genre, such as 'classical western' music.
2. "Find scales/chords": The user can select or deselect notes (in ascending order and in the order of the user selected instrument), and find scales which contain the user selected notes, i.e. all scales which do not have at least one of these notes are not shown.
3. "Fractions calculator": Calculation of rhytms as a sum of note lengths. It is useful for determining a rhythm from a heard piece of music.
4. "Record from .wav or via microphone": This is a GUI interface for 'aubio', an external note recognition program. If the user has installed aubio on his system, he can perform an aubio note recognition from a prerecorded .wav audio file or by playing music to his microphone.
   The note recognition result is shown as a MusicXML, which is opened in the user selected sheet editor.

2. How to install and run BachBro

Read INSTALL.txt for an explanation of how to install and run BachBro.

3. How to learn to use BachBro's functions

The best starting point to learn how to use BachBro is its manual, which can be found in BachBro's "docs" subfolder. It can be accessed in BachBro's window menu via "Help->Manual (in web browser)", too.

4. How to edit the music theory data

All music theory data used by BachBro is written in human readable JSON files. You can find these JSON files in the "data" subfolder. The most convinient way to edit the data is the "BachBro data editor", another open-source program, which is provided with BachBro, too. Simply open "data_editor.html" in BachBro's main folder with a modern web browser (e.g. Mozilla Firefox), allowing JavaScript and pop-ups for this file.

BachBro's manual (in the "docs" subfolder) explains and shows the usage of the data editor in the section "BachBro data editor".

5. Licensing

BachBro is free and open-source.

• Read LICENSE for BachBro's program license.
• Read NOTICE.txt for additional license information, i.e. the licensing of the external projects which are used by BachBro.
• Read the chapter "Addendum: GNU Free Documentation License" in BachBro's manual in order to read the license of BachBro's manual.