What is this?

Nocturne is a lean & opinionated music notation platform. I'm on a mission to improve sharing music notation on the web, currently specific to piano composition.

Current features include:

  • responsive music notation with mobile device support
  • a growing catalogue of public domain music
  • MP3 streaming and interactive playback
  • custom music notation themes
  • ...more coming soon

Who is this for?

  • students of piano
  • students interested in music theory

Why did you build this?

I was tired of looking at monochromatic PDFs on my mobile device while I studied music, taking inspriation from vim (with gruvbox) and it's minimialism.

The UI is designed to emphasize the score and empower musicians. Because of the minimalism, there is some information loss:

  • anything that can appear as text element (tempo) has been hidden. In the future, you will have control over certain music elements appearing on the page.
  • currently ignoring repeats in playback

Why is it called Nocturne?

The term comes from the French word "nocturne" meaning "nocturnal" or "of the night.", a stlye that was popularized in the Romantic era by composers like Chopin.

The app name repurposes the original definition as Dark Mode + Music Notation = Nocturne

What's with the cat?

"Batcat" is the app's mascot and is based on my darling cat. Bats are nocturnal. I had thought cat's were nocturnal too but apparently they are are crepuscular, which means they are most active at dawn and dusk.

cat

Who are you?

  • I'm a web developer nearing 15 years of experience.
  • Also a music lover, currently obsessing over Bach and piano practice

I am particularly interested in using the platform for static analysis of Bach's works

Also, I may have a bit of a problem:

bachaholic

Contact

I can be reached at nocturneapp@proton.me