DrumLace - A Domain Specific Language (DSL) for Drum Programming (Short Paper)

Abstract

In an ever expanding world of musical technology, and due to the evolution of computational power in the last decades, a subdomain emerged where software represents a tool for musicians. Within that subdomain a large variety of approaches exist that allow users to create, define, improve and analyze music. One of these approaches involves the development of text-based languages, that allows the user to define music only through text in a way that enables the development of tools which make possible the printing of the musical sheet describing the score, as well as the generation of different audio files - in WAV, MP3, or other formats - that other music software, such as software synthesizers, can use to play the described score.
This project aims to develop a new language, focused on percussion instruments, that allows the description of rhythms, via text or via a visual language - made available trough a Graphic User Interface (GUI). Moreover, that new music DSL supports the use of functions applied to the rhythms and allows the generation of various outputs. This narrow focus on drum programming, as opposed to music as whole, aims at providing an easier to learn syntax, a simple to use tool and an environment open to the integration of more complex concepts presented in the world of percussion.