A better way to specify notes?

[ndim]

Traditionally, beep has been using a combination of the -f, -l, -D, -d, and -n parameters to specify notes and sequences of notes.

I am certain there are better ways to write notes in a way which is both less verbose, and easier to read and write at the same time. I am also certain that over the last 20 to 40 years, there must have been utilities using notations which at least give good ideas.

This issue is to discuss and document better ways to write notes, and to discuss integrating a better note notation into beep.

[dawidi]

Here's what I did with shell script wrappers around beep:
sound
This is just a slightly more elegant way to specify frequency,duration pairs - named after the SOUND command in BASIC.
spkplay
This interprets a music-oriented notation similar to the PLAY command in BASIC, setting the tempo, note lengths, octaves, staccato/legato playing styles, sharp/flat notes etc.
Like so:
spkplay t114 mn l16 o4 c d f d l8 a. a. l4 g ms l16 c d f d l8 g. g. f mn l16 e l8 d l16 c d f d l4 f l8 g e. l16 d l4 c l8 c l4 g l2 f

[ndim]

Thank you for that information.

Also, a quick remark on the command line argument checks:

if [[ "$@" == "" ]]; then

The "$@" expands to multiple arguments if the script is called with multiple arguments like script.bash foo bar bla, which results in the test expression being evaluated to be [[ "foo" "bar" "bla" == "" ]] which does not appear to be what you intended here.

Are you sure you did not want to check "$*" == "" here instead, or maybe even "$#" -lt 1?

[dawidi]

Indeed, "$#" -lt 1 would be better, that's what I meant to do. The "wrong" way still coincidentally does the right thing, but not for the right reason. Thanks!

[ndim]

The BSDs appears to have a kernel implementation reminding me of the IBM BASIC way of specifying notes, which the speaker(4) man page describes pretty well:

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=speaker&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+13.0-RELEASE+and+Ports
https://man.netbsd.org/speaker.4