MasciiLink
MasciiLink lets you use the power of Mascii directly in your url. This means you can spontaneously create a link, like composersnotebook.com/play?[e_d]c_(c_d)G_(e_e)E_eC_(d_d)G!_*d, typing your music directly into the link itself, and then anyone who clicks the link will instantly hear what you've written! Go on, try clicking the link, then click your browser's "back" button to come back to this page.
The basic concept behind MasciiLink is the same as Mascii, so if you're unfamiliar with Mascii, start with the Mascii quickstart tutorial.
Since MasciiLink is typed directly into an url, MasciiLink is limited to only legal url characters, which means that certain characters used in regular Mascii cannot be used in MasciiLink.
But that's fine, we'll just use different characters instead! So why not just use these different characters all the time, you ask? Because regular Mascii is easier to type and read.
There are two main differences to know about when going from regular Mascii to MasciiLink:
| regular Mascii | MasciiLink |
|---|---|
| Uses spaces to separate note groups, measures, etc | Uses underscore ("_") instead of spaces |
| The pipe ("|") equals a bar line. So this piece has two measures: e d c . | e d c . | No bar lines! Every top-level item, whether a note or parenthesized group, is treated as its own measure. In regular Mascii, putting a series of freestanding notes without specifying any measure markings would stuff all the notes into a single measure by default, but in MasciiLink these would all be given their own measure. The significance of this is that in Mascii each note would progressively be shorter as it divides them evenly into the measure, but in MasciiLink the notes stay the same length because each one is put into a separate measure. Of course, in MasciiLink you can still subdivide the beat using parentheses as normal, but by automatically giving each top level element its own measure, MasciiLink lets you quickly jot down a tune without worrying about measures. |
And that's about it. The other differences are unlikely for you to run into, but you can read about them at the end of this page.
To create a musical link that you can send via email or post to a message board, just do this:
- Start your masciilink with http://composersnotebook.com/play? and then type your music at the end of the url using MasciiLink notation.
- You're done! Send the link! Or if you're a careful sort of person, click the link you just created to hear it yourself before sending.
Finally, here are the remaining differences between ordinary Mascii and MasciiLink not yet mentioned:
- Obviously, MasciiLink also doesn't allow comment lines (since it's all one line anyway).
- Ditto for multi-line pieces -- polyphony has to be squeezed onto one line, which is perfectly possible, just less pretty than regular Mascii.
- The rhythmic notational convenience of {} is not allowed, since these are not considered valid url characters. The more useful [] convenience is still fine though.