OPUSMODUS NOTATION
OMN: A Music Notation and Composition Language
OMN (Opusmodus Notation) is a symbolic music language designed for composition, transformation, analysis and score generation.
A single OMN expression can represent pitch, duration, velocity and articulation together. Musical ideas remain compact and readable while retaining the structured information required for algorithms, playback and conventional staff notation.
OMN FUNDAMENTALS
Four Musical Parameters in One Expression
An OMN event can combine four fundamental elements: length, pitch, velocity and articulation. Their consistent order makes musical material compact enough for computation while remaining recognisable to a musician. Parameters may be written together or handled separately. Opusmodus can extract, generate, transform and recombine them without losing their relationship to the original musical phrase.
Length (q)
Defines the duration of the event. Length values can describe notes, rests, tuplets, tied durations and rhythmic groupings.
Pitch (c4)
Identifies a note by pitch name and register. OMN also supports chords, intervals, microtonal pitches and other pitch structures.
Velocity (mp)
Controls dynamic intensity using familiar musical markings or numerical values suitable for playback and transformation.
Articulation (leg)
Describes performance information such as legato, staccato, accents, ornaments and other notational attributes.
ONE REPRESENTATION, MANY USES
Write, Transform, Hear and Notate the Same Material
OMN acts as a shared representation across the Opusmodus environment. A musical phrase written or generated in OMN can be inspected as text, separated into individual parameters, transformed with compositional functions and recombined into new material.
The result can be heard immediately through playback, displayed as conventional notation, examined through graphical analysis or exported for use in another musical workflow. There is no need to recreate the musical idea for each stage.
Write or Generate
Enter musical material directly or create it through algorithmic and generative processes.
Extract and Transform
Work with pitch, length, velocity or articulation independently while preserving their musical relationships.
Listen and Analyse
Audition the phrase and examine its structure through analytical functions, plots and graphs.
Notate and Exchange
Display the result as a score and prepare it for MIDI or MusicXML workflows.
MUSICAL TRANSFORMATION
Transform Musical Ideas by Parameter
Because OMN preserves the internal structure of a musical phrase, transformations can target precisely the information the composer wants to change.
Pitches may be transposed, inverted, filtered or reordered while the rhythm remains intact. Durations can be expanded, reduced, quantised or replaced without changing the pitch sequence. Dynamics and articulations can likewise be generated, mapped and applied as independent expressive layers.
Select
Extract pitch, length, velocity, articulation or other information from an OMN expression.
Transform
Apply operations to the selected parameter using rules, functions, mappings or generative processes.
Recombine
Assemble the transformed parameters into new OMN material ready for playback, analysis and notation.
OMN IN PRACTICE
See and Hear OMN in Practice
These examples show OMN within practical Opusmodus composition processes. The programs generate, organise and transform musical material, then present the resulting OMN structures together with their audible results.
Counterpoint
Bruno Maderna, Serenata Per un Satellite (1969)
Tonnetz
Tonnetz transformation and generated notation.
Microtonality
Luigi Nono, Fragmente-Stille, An Diotima, Violin 1 (fragement, 1979-1980)
Micropolyphony
Micropolyphony example for two choirs.
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