One of my long term goals for DrumBurp has been to get it playing the drum tabs that you write. Unfortunately, a total lack of knowledge on my part about how to do that was proving to be a bit of a barrier 🙁
This weekend, I finally bit the bullet and learnt how to create MIDI sounds from Python. The awesome Pygame proved to be my salvation. A couple of days coding later, and I’ve got a working prototype up and running. w00t!
- Appropriate drum note played when you add a note to the score.
- Play the complete score.
- Export the score to a standalone midi file.
It’s kinda awesome, I’m quite pleased with it 🙂
I’ve got a few more things I want to get working before I release the new version. Firstly, specifying different noises for each note head on a drum – requiring a whole re-work of the kit specification data structures and interface. Most of this is done, there’s just a bit of polishing needed.
Secondly, I want to make sure that this new feature plays nicely with old DrumBurp scores. I’ve written about 30-40 songs with the old versions, I don’t want to have to completely re-write them. The new kit specifications will need to fill in a lot of data about note heads that was missing in the old scores. I have a plan for this, it should work out OK.
So DrumBurp is moving onwards and upwards. Expect a new release soon!