section the main concept of a maquette. Maquettes aim at unifying these two previous representations in a unique family of objects.
4 Maquettes
The maquette is an OpenMusic entity aiming at representing, in a same object, patches and scores. It is a new concept of score where the static description of musical structures and the definition of dynamic computational processes seamlessly coexist. The user may go back and forth between these two metaphors by considering the maquette as a score (in traditional or graphical notation) or as a set of interconnected processes. The maquette allows to solve the problem of combining the design of high level hierarchical musical structures, the arrangement of musical material in time, and the specification of musical algorithms. Just like other meta-objects, maquettes may appear as a view or may be opened in a maquette editor, which is basically a 2-dimensional surface with time flowing along the x-axis. This surface contains several blocks that we call temporal boxes. In the maquettes, the hierarchical nesting of musical structures and their temporal order can be represented in an explicit visual way. In the musical sketch presented in the Figure 8 made by the composer Mikhail Malt, temporal boxes have been disposed on the maquette surface.
Horizontal temporal box positions correspond to onset values in absolute time. Durations and intensities are given by their horizontal and vertical extensions. Pictures have been associated to the boxes in order to yield an elementary musical semiotic. Thus, triangles correspond to chords whose resonance decrease quickly.
