musthe

Music theory implemented in Python. Notes, scales and chords.

It is still in development so feel free to read the code, fork and make pull requests! They are very welcome!

Installation

To install:

$ pip install musthe

Development install

To install as development:

(Optional) Create a virtualenv:

$ python -m venv env
$ source env/bin/activate

Then install:

$ pip install -e .

How to use

It is very simple, everything is coded in a object-oriented style, for example:

$ python
>>> from musthe import *
>>> a = Note('A')  #Default A4
>>> a
Note("A4")
>>> str(a)
'A'

Suppose you want to create tension, so you want the perfect fifth or the minor seventh of that A, so you do:

>>> fifth = Interval('P5')
>>> seventh = Interval('m7')
>>> a+fifth
Note("E5")
>>> str(a+fifth)
'E'
>>> str(a+seventh)
'G'

Though it is important to see that the octaves of those notes are different:

>>> a.octave
4
>>> (a+seventh).octave
5

Now let's see basic chord usage:

>>> Chord(Note('A'), 'M')
Chord(Note('A'), 'M')
>>> Chord(Note('A'), 'M').notes
[Note("A4"), Note("C#5"), Note("E5")]
>>> Chord(Note('Bb'), 'dim').notes
[Note("Bb4"), Note("Db5"), Note("Fb5")]

You can use a string to construct a chord:

>>> Chord('C#aug7') == Chord(Note('C#'), 'aug7')
True

Default chord type is 'M' (Major).

Now lets try scales:

>>> s = Scale(Note('B'), 'major')
>>> [s[i] for i in range(len(s))]
[Note('B4'), Note('C#5'), Note('D#5'), Note('E5'), Note('F#5'), Note('G#5'), Note('A#5')]
>>> s[0]
Note('B4')
>>> s[-11]
Note('E3')

It return a list of Note instances, so if you want a cleaner result should do something like:

>>> s = Scale(Note('B'), 'major')
>>> [str(s[i]) for i in range(len(s))]
['B', 'C#', 'D#', 'E', 'F#', 'G#', 'A#']

To check if notes and chords are contained in a given scale:

>>> Note('D#3') in s
True
>>> Note('F3') in s
False
>>> Chord('C#m') in s
True
>>> Chord('CM') in s
False

Now let's try some advanced stuff: given a list of chords, find all scales that contain those:

>>> chords = [Chord('Cm'), Chord('Fm7'), Chord('Gm')]
>>> for scale in Scale.all():
...     if chords in scale:
...         print(scale)
...
C natural_minor
Eb major

If you have lilypond installed, you can make little melodies using this program, an example is given in 'lilypond_example.py'

Contributors

In alphabetical order

• David H
• Edgar Gavrik
• Federico Ferri
• Gonzalo Ciruelos
• Marco Heins
• nvoster
• Sri Raghavan
• Sylvain
• zsinx6

License

See license file.