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1. The system must allow the user to finetune the MusicXML output by editing the input. For example, if the output for measure 42 is not what the user was hoping for when they load your output onto a viewer, your system must present this measure (or a range of measures) so that the user can edit accordingly. This includes metadata such as setting a different time signature for some of the measures.
2. The system must allow the user to save any edits made to the input.
3. The system must support repeated measures. The drum example below contains many instances of repeats.
4. The system must also support grace notes. Any sequence of hammer-ons or pull-offs that is preceded by the character “g” should be treated as grace notes.
5. The system must deal with errors in the input in a user-friendly way. Minor errors should be treated as warnings but should not stop the conversion process. Major errors in particular measures must be presented to the user to fix them.
6. The system must of course support all three instruments and as many as possible of the features shown in the two examples below.

Anyone interested in learning how to play a particular piece of music can usually find help on doing that on the internet in a variety forms, such as videos or tutorials. A common way to convey the way to play a given song for instruments such guitar, bass, or drums is through the use of tablature or tab. These are often created in text as it is the easiest format to do that in. See two examples here:

Guitar tab

Drums tab

Look up some of the tabs for your favourite songs to get a feel for what these look like. You will see that they often have different styles which will be one of the challenges for our project.

Now, while text tabs are great in terms of helping you figure out a song, they are rather hard to read, cannot be easily adjusted, e.g to play the song in a different key, and cannot easily be turned into audio. There are many other formats out there that do not have these issues, but the fact is that the majority of the songs are more easily found in text tab form.

The music research community has developed a free format, called MusicXML, that can be used to precisely denote a piece of music. You can find everything about it here. This format is supported by many music apps, such as MuseScore, that can do all the things listed above, such as display the song in an easy to read fashion, transpose to another key, play the song etc.

However, no easy way to transform a text tab to a MusicXML one exists.

Our project will be to develop a software system that allows the user to input a text file containing the guitar, bass, or drums tablature for a song, and produces a MusicXML file that can be used for the purposes listed above.

Detailed requirements for our project will be developed during the term.

• Guitar tab explanation

• Guitar/bass notes on the fretboard in standard tuning. Lower string is at the bottom. The note on fret 5 is the same as the note at the next higher string at fret 0, i.e. open (except for the G string where that happens at fret 4). The lower note in a guitar is E2, i.e. E in octave 2, while on a bass it is E1.

• An example of a guitar text tab, and the corresponding MusicXML file. Please note that the MusicXML may have a lot more info, e.g. regarding layout. This is the bare minimum MusicXML file that represents the input.

• An example of a drum text tab, and the corresponding MusicXML file. Note that this example uses two voices (drums are often notated in two voices, one for the feet - bass drum and pedal hi-hat - and one for the hands). Once one voice has been specified in a measure, the <backup> tag is used to go back to the beginning and start notating the second voice. More on this here.

• You can preview any MusicXML file by dragging and dropping it onto this page.

<!--   Venn diagrams are a great way to present relationships between sets of objects, such as set intersection or set difference. They can be drawn in many different ways   We will develop a desktop app that can draw **customizable Venn diagrams**.   Precise requirements will be derived during the term.   ====== New requirements added on February 26! ======   - Your system must allow the users to select multiple objects at once in order to customize them, e.g. select all objects in the intersection, and increase their font size - Your system must also implement an Undo / Redo mechanism   ====== Stakeholder requirements added on March 3! ======   - Each element in the Venn diagram may have a longer description that is by default hidden, but the user must be able to display it - The app must support a mode where the user is asked to arrange a set of tags on the Venn diagram. Once finished, the user can compare their arrangement to a previously hidden correct answer     TalkBox is a device that helps anybody, who is unable to talk, communicate. Each TalkBox has a number of buttons that the user can press to play pre-recorded audio files. Some of the buttons on the TalkBox may be used to load different sets of audio files.   {{:talkbox.jpeg|TalkBox}} We will develop two pieces of software to help family members configure a TalkBox device with audio appropriate for their situation.   **1. TalkBox Simulator**   A piece of software that simulates the behaviour of any TalkBox device.   Has a user interface similar to that of the device.   The number of buttons and their functionality is configurable.   Is fully tested to behave as the hardware device.   **2. TalkBox Configuration app**   A user-friendly GUI-based app that allows for the configuration of a TalkBox device with appropriate audio.   It will provide facilities to record audio, or select already pre-recorded audio files.   It will allow the user to associate audio files with buttons in an intuitive way.   It will store the configuration in a USB flash drive to be used with an actual TalkBox, or will launch the Talkbox Simulator to test.     The TalkBox Configuration app and the TalkBox simulator will communicate through the use of a TalkBoxConfiguration object that will be serialized   **Important Requirement**: Your code must serialize and deserialize an object that implements the [[http://www.eecs.yorku.ca/~bil/2311/TalkBoxConfiguration.java|TalkBoxConfiguration]] interface.   The TalkBox Configuration app must create a directory called TalkBoxData that contains the serialized object (extension must be .tbc) and the audio files. It can then launch the TalkBox Simulator and provide the path to the TalkBoxData directory as a runtime argument.   **New requirements added on March 6**   **New Simulator requirement**: If the user presses a button while an audio is playing, that audio stops before the audio corresponding to the button starts   You may have to look into naming, searching for, and stopping threads   **Second new requirement**: Your system must log all actions the user takes in both apps   What buttons they press, what menu options they select etc.   The Configuration app must have a way to visualize the Simulator logs   This will allow the caretaker to optimize the configuration   You must also create **a third app**, called TBCLog, that visualizes the Configuration app logs   The purpose of this app is for the research team to determine how users use the Configuration app         To be posted.   -->