denm (dynamic environmental notation for music): A Performance-centric Music Notation Interface

In this thesis, I describe the state of development for an automatic music notation generator and tablet-based graphical user interface. The programs currently available for the automatic generation of music notation are focused on the compositional and theoretical aspects of the music-making process. denm (dynamic environmental notation for music) is being designed to provide tools for the rehearsal and performance of contemporary music. All of the strategies underlying these tools are utilized by performers today. These strategies traditionally involve the re-notation of aspects of a musical score by hand, the process of which can be detrimentally time-consuming. Much of what performers re-notate into their parts is composed of information latent in the musical model — the musical model which is already being represented graphically as the musical score. denm will provide this latent information instantaneously to performers with a real-time music notation generator. The thesis presents a few of the techniques currently used by performers of contemporary music, the features with denm that are designed to make these techniques more efficient, as well as the underlying algorithms that make this possible.