When we hear music, we are actually hearing abstract patterns, and those patterns can be expressed in various ways as scores (musical notation). Seen from this cognitive (and perceptive) angle, music is a very good choice for providing people with new kinds of creative experiences. Hence, rather than going for media devices (such as photography), the authors have correctly opted for “giving people creative experiences of computation itself,” through functional abstractions that lie behind music aesthetics.

The paper introduces two new systems of scores. The first one is Sonic Pi, a simple domain-specific language intended for school children, and the second one is Overtone, a more complex and powerful functional language that will be better appreciated by adults. Both are open access.

From my experience with music analysis, I know it is not just the note pattern but how it is rendered that determines its emotional content. And this “how” aspect is reflected not just through the pitch, loudness, onset, and duration of notes, but also through the transitory and non-transitory pitch movements taking place between them. I’m interested to see how far the two coding systems can capture these features.

This is an interesting paper on music pedagogy. The target audience is anyone (young or old!) interested in music.