singlenote

Singlenote is a term used in music technology to describe an approach to representing and processing musical data as sequences of discrete single-note events. Each event characterizes a moment of sound by its onset time, duration, pitch, velocity or loudness, and optional articulation or instrument designation. This abstraction emphasizes the monophonic or per-note nature of performance.

In practice, a singlenote dataset consists of a ordered sequence of records. Each record encodes when a note starts, how long it sustains, its pitch, and how loudly it is played. The representation is lightweight and well suited to streaming, efficient storage, and real-time synthesis or analysis.

Formats for singlenote data are typically simple and human-readable, including JSON-like structures or streaming event formats that resemble MIDI note events. Singlenote streams can be layered to create polyphonic textures by mixing multiple independent sequences, or used directly for monophonic instruments and line-based melodies. Timing accuracy can include microtiming deviations for expressiveness.

Singlenote is not a replacement for MIDI but a complementary abstraction. It can be derived from or converted to MIDI files, and it aligns well with event-based processing in digital audio workstations, live coding environments, and music education tools.

Limitations include challenges representing chords without layering, and potential loss of timbral information that is not embedded in the single-note event. Nevertheless, the approach supports clear separation of pitch, duration, and dynamics, making it useful for transcription, analysis, and procedural generation.